Creative thinking links drama with design to drive behavioural change

Can behavioural change communications extend beyond health and safety issues to help drive business growth?

Matt Pearce is the head of planning at DDB Melbourne

Nobody does behaviour change communications better than the Aussies. The Kiwis are pretty great too, but I reckon we’ve got an edge on them.

From showing the “bloody idiots” on our roads, to educating about “dumb ways to die”, to asking parents to help “stop it at the start”, to reminding sun-lovers to “slip, slop, slap”, we’re an inventive bunch when it comes to finding ways to reduce the harm we can pose to ourselves or others.

These campaigns have helped grow the groundswell around societal issues that have a direct cost on our health, safety, enforcement and welfare systems. And not to forget the immense human cost too.

But despite our exhaustive and excellent efforts over the past few decades across a range of social and behavioural issues, people still slip through the system and act or think the opposite of what they need.

It seems we’re entering the stubborn part of behaviour change.

Plenty of us agree that not wearing a seatbelt is dangerous, but still many road deaths occur because people have decided not to buckle in. Plenty of us think that casual racism is socially unacceptable, but many people still attack others. And plenty of us know that physical activity reduces future health risks, but only one in five of us reach the guidelines.

We’re hitting the threshold of agreement and understanding, but the opposite still happens.

There are many reasons for this, of course. Psychosocial forces, emotional hot states, one’s capability, time, effort and motivation each play a role.

So, for those issues where it’s becoming harder to change what people know, think, or believe, how can we better harness creativity to shape their environment or experience to spark the right behaviour?

OK, some others might call this a nudge. But to reduce the opportunity that these design-led behavioural interventions can present as a “fly-on-a-urinal”-type idea misses the whole point.

They shouldn’t strive to be unconscious but designed to actively spur people into action in that moment. Whether that’s helping them to have fun, to keep them being a good parent, to challenge or dare them, or to help them connect with something or someone.

Take some recent work for Movember with “Mancestry”. This world-first experiment used history to keep men healthy by analysing the DNA in their moustache hairs and linking it to great moustachioed men from the past. It created “health by stealth”. First, by making it fun for men to engage with their health by linking it to ancestral discovery – who doesn’t want to see if they are related to Genghis Khan?

But this stealthily provided delivery of personalised data revealing the health markers within the DNA that each man should be aware of.

So rather than preach to those who typically push down or ignore their health issues, Mancestry made a routine health check a silly, shared thing to do.

Or our “Safe Plates” product. As a tired dad starting to feed my daughter, I know enough about choking risks, windpipe sizes and that you need to cut up grapes. But try recalling all of that on two hours of sleep.

Safe Plates shows the right food size on the same plate you’d serve your little one on, with instructions on the back in case of that rare choking episode. It easily reduces the risks at a glance and looks great too – something you’d have in your home alongside fancy wooden toys.

Or a solution to the opioid epidemic gripping the US: 855-HOW-TO-QUIT. This is a helpline that turns the object of addiction into a way out, reaching out to people in the most critical moment – when they have a pill in their hand ready to swallow. The helpline used the familiar opioid pill codes as phone extensions, connecting the caller with a person who managed to quit that very same pill, sharing their experiences and advice on how to quit.

Imagine being a dependent user of opioids, looking at that code, and rather than seeing their addiction they’re now thinking about someone that can help them. It’s powerful, effective stuff.

Each of these design-first interventions shares common strengths. They’re context-first, conscious of the state or barriers a user faces, are fun, desirable, or empathetic, and most of all, elegantly crafted.

Now, as a leader of a communications agency, this is not to discount communications at all. Maintaining saliency of issues, educating those at risk, engaging influencers and striving for generational change is still critical, particularly in vital health and safety issues.

But we need to start colliding the drama with the design if we want to solve these stubborn issues.

Matt Pearce is the head of planning at DDB Melbourne.