Over at SocialButterfly Alex started a conversation about
awareness fever – the propensity for organizations to frame their social
marketing programs and communication campaigns with the objective of building
awareness. Mike picked up the theme at Social Marketing Panorama and looked at
why so many practitioners default to communication efforts.
To add to this discussion, I suggest that a question
you should be asking yourself before reducing awareness fever is ‘what do I do
when they agree to focus on behavioral outcomes?’
Behavior change is the hard part, and why people seem to be so comfortable with
‘just’ building awareness of problems and possible solutions. Advertising and
public relations agencies have said for years “Hold us accountable for
awareness or brand image, not sales.” Their rationale is that it is the sales
people who need to ‘change the behavior’ of the consumer to make the purchase –
advertising and promotions can get people into showrooms, stores and other
places where you stock the product, in sufficient quantities, at the right
place in an appealing way, but that last step… that’s someone else’s
responsibility. Unfortunately social marketers don’t get to pass off to others
the responsibility for behavior change.
Once you persuade people to focus on behavior, everyone
realizes they are in the land of dragons. They have very long names, but some of
these dragons include:
HowWillWeKnowWeAreAchievingBehaviorChange?
HowMuchChangeWillWeGet?
HowLongWillItTakeToShowAnImpact?
WhatDoWeNeedToDoToChangeTheTargetBehavior?
DoWeHaveTheResourcesForThis?
SO if you agree that reducing awareness fever is important,
and you want to incite passion for behavior change, from my experience here
are some of the answers you should have ready for these dragons.
Be ready to talk about what makes sense for behavior change
from the people’s POV [pdf] – not from the evidence or science-base. Be the advocate and voice for people in your meetings - others will be happy to talk from science and many other POVs, especially the devil's advocate. If you haven’t
done some formative research yet, understanding the people's POV needs to be the priority, and not
just discovering more answers that define the problem. We can sit around a conference table
and blue sky ‘what abouts…?’ but bring the people into the conversation early
and often (some of you may even be bold enough to suggest that they sit at the
table with you).
Determine the relevance of what the ‘ideal health behavior’ (that's the one with the evidence base) is to
their daily lives and be ready to negotiate what fits (not what is ideal);
discover the times, places and frames-of-mind when people will be most open to
the idea of behavior change; and decide whether the appropriate incentives and
opportunities exist to engage in new behaviors. If you have done the research,
and answered the questions, then proceed. If not, go back and get some
information if you want to give reasonable answers to those dragons.
Select behaviors that are steps along the way to ideal
health behaviors such as going for one day or week without smoking cigarettes,
having one serving of a fruit or vegetable each morning, or taking a 10-minute
walk every work day. Look at learning new behaviors as a gradual shaping
process, not an all-or-nothing change event. That attitude will come through in
your program and communications and suggest to people that what you are asking
is indeed possible.
People can change their behavior in a quantum moment or over
several weeks. Changing a behavior AND maintaining that new behavior are,
however, two different processes and your program needs to account for those
differences. If you are going to measure change over time, how much time is
enough to show a population impact? That depends on the size of your population
(you will be able to detect changes in smaller ones more quickly), how many
different ways you seek to engage people in the process (one way will fit only
one type of person, deploy as many channels and places as possible), and how
you plan to measure it. Using a cohort design by asking people to sign-up and
report their progress and then doing pre- and post-program evaluations is more
likely to demonstrate an effect than pre- and post- random population sample
where sensitivity to change is largely driven by the resources needed to have a
large enough sample size. [And in the cohort design the question can be raised
whether the pretest sensitized participants to pay more attention and be more
vigilant or consistent with their change efforts.]
And finally, have ready some benchmarks for the dragons to feed on.
You might start with these – one that plays to the resources side of the
equation, and two others that play to what works under optimal conditions (experiments):
(1) In
1994, Phillip Morris implemented a marketing strategy to move a sagging market
share of Marlboro from 20% to 25% in the US. The strategy cut domestic earnings
that year by $2.3 billion – but it worked. So as for those goals for behavior
change, think hard about what is realistic unless you have a few billion to
throw around. And I have to note the magic 5% number appears – make sure
the dragons see it too!
(2) Then there’s the 5% solution where the research finds that health communication programs, across a variety of health promotion topics, achieve an average 5% change in the target behavior.
(3) And have a few recent peer-reviewed articles available that provide some basis from which to estimate what amount of change to expect, among whom, over what period of time. Just be sure to remind the dragons that these findings come from experiments that significantly alter reality (or control for it), and unless your program has the resources to do the same things they did, scale back expectations accordingly.
Craig,
This post seems like the next logical extention to the awareness/communication fever discussion. Good "reality-tested" questions to consider and resources to be the St. George in one's project. I think your suggestions give hope to those burned out with, and battling, awareness fever.
I have to tell you--and you wil already know this--that many planning efforts never get this far. Or never get this far in a systematic fashion. Planners and implmenters "do the right thing" by accident, rather than by design.
Honestly, it is a wonder that behavior change efforts are ever as successful as they are.
Mike N-W
Posted by: Sm1guru | 03 March 2010 at 01:18 PM