From bus stops and billboards above rows of shuttered shops in freezing January wind, the faces of intubated coronavirus victims stare down at us.

This is the British government’s bleak new lockdown ad campaign; huge posters with the heavy saturation and high contrast redolent of cheap horror film publicity which demand that you look suffering people in the eyes and justify selfish rule-breaking. It employs the schlocky attack ad style pioneered by American political strategists, except the subject of the attack is not an opposition candidate, it is you. Such ads can be brutally effective in elections, but they display a shocking lack of understanding of what can actually persuade people to shift their behavior.

Most simply, a behavior change message must ask people to do something they are capable of. One of these ads reads, “Look him in the eyes and tell him you can’t work from home,” as if the crowds on London’s morning rush hour Tube trains are furtively sneaking into their workplaces for a thrill. In the first lockdown, one-third of workers were compelled to continue working. Over the summer, the government was even more assiduous than employers in ordering workers into the office, telling people flatly to return to work or lose their jobs. This appeared to be a major market intervention on behalf of the beleaguered landlords of chain cafés.