BrainFuel

In this episode we chat with the King of COM_B Professor Robert West as we discuss his popular behavioural science model --- COM_B --- As one of the original authors alongside Susan Michie and Lou Atkins we explore with Professor West how he feels about the success and popularity of the framework.

We cover the basics

We chat about his current work with the new Welsh Behavioural Science Unit and their joint publication Improving health and wellbeing: A guide to using behavioural science in policy and practice: (Co-Author Ashley Gould) with a focus on:

[00:01:07] - Thank you for your support

[00:02:11] - 2022 By the Data

[00:03:07] - 2023 2 Words to live By

[00:06:00] - A dosage of Kindness at the core

[00:08:15] - Introducing guest Robert West

[00:10:06] - Rise of COM-B Model

[00:12:56] - COM-B Model value in other markets and vertices

[00:14:51] - Wales creating a behavior science guide

[00:19:30] - Straight from the principles

[00:23:07] - Breaking down Egocentric bias

[00:25:57] - Energise: The secrets of motivation

[00:28:13] - Treat your Perspective as a Hypothesis

[00:29:13] - The NEAR-AFAR framework

[00:33:57] - Health and Well-being is a shared responsibility

“The popularity of COM-B is due to its ability to provide a formal framework for a concept that has long been intuitively understood by many” Professor Robert West

Approximately mentioned @ 00:10:06

  “The COM-B model provides a starting point for understanding behaviour change, allowing you to use the four elements of normal, easy, attractive, and routine to determine the right behaviour change techniques to use in a given context.” Professor Robert West

Approximately mentioned @ 00:29:33

Tools for Thought, by Waddington (1977)

Our February bootcamp sold out before the end of January. Be the first to hear about the next Bootcamp training by signing up to our weekly podcast email called Brainfuel - it's a mini breakdown of what we covered in the podcast and useful links to events and what's happening in the busy world of behavioural science. 

Subscribe by visiting  www.socialinsightmarketing.co.uk/podcast 

Today’s episode (36) welcomes Dominic Ridley-Moy a consultant in behaviour change communications with extensive experience in Local Government working closely with the CAN Council, Co-Chair Local Public Services Group, Chartered Institute of Public Relation and the founder of the Behaviour Change Network.  

Dominic shares three predictions for behavioural science in 2023, tells us about his fantastic 5-week course ‘Behaviour Change Masterclass’(starts 19th January 2023) and his chosen book Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.

  2023 predictions from Dominic

 Links

 The next Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp is live. The first Bootcamp for 2023 is on Wednesday 22nd February.  Click here. The Early-bird is open.

Want your team to get on the same page around behavioural science?

Book a call with Ruth to discuss your needs.

Dear Bootcamp,

I have no time!

I have turned into the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland!

 ANON

Bootcamp says…..

Often the first thing we do when we have no time is drop our audience insight work. We need to understand our audience. The world is now too noisy to not lead with insight.

"Our messaging has got to be based on our insight & time. To do that give it some time. It doesn’t need to be a lot!" Ruth Dale

 The final Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp is on the 2nd November - click here

 Want your team to get on the same page around behavioural science?

Book a call with Ruth to discuss your needs.

Episode 34

Dear Bootcamp,

Every year we run health campaigns reminding people not to use emergency services for non-emergencies and we also frequently tell them not to miss their appointments as it costs loads of money and appointments are hard to come by. So if they cancel someone else use that appointment.  We are still tackling the same issues a decade later, what else can we do?

Best wishes

ANON

Bootcamp says…..

You are using a messaging strategy called ‘negative social proof’.

Negative social proof is essentially when you use examples of the problem behaviour or your lead in your messaging with the negative message. What you want people to stop doing.

All it does is place the problem at the front of the mind and can go as far as to normalise that behaviour and in turn give permission for others to join the herd and do the very behaviour you don’t want.

Professor Robert Cialdini, Dr Noah Goldstein and Steve Martin ran a research project at the Arizona Petrified Forest testing what messages would stop the visitors from stealing pieces of petrified wood. They divided the park into three zones and posted two signs with different messages in two of the zones and left the third zone as a control group.

Sign one: Please don’t remove petrified wood from the park, in order to preserve the natural state of the Petrified Forest.

Sign two: Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood from the park, changing the natural state of the Petrified Forest.

What was the result? Did the messaging impact on behaviour?

Yes!

Sign two tripled the amount stolen! 😲

The lesson?

Tell people what you WANT them to do.

Do not lead with what you do not want them to do.

Links

BAD LUCK, HOT ROCKS (badluckhotrocks.com)

 The next Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp is live. The final date for 2022 is November 2nd. The Early-bird closes 12th October.

Click here for half price training places before they run out.

 Want your team to get on the same page around behavioural science?

Book a call with Ruth to discuss your needs.

Q. What is the biggest mistake when planning behaviour change marketing?

A. No behaviour change goal.

This episode explores the reasons why we may not start with behaviour change goal and the confusion between a policy goal and a behaviour change goal.

Ruth shares two case studies and how the focus shifted when using behaviour change goals.

We explore how you can stop running more awareness campaigns, and shift from piling knowledge onto people that doesn't lead to action.  How you can get more creative and increase your impact.

“Not having a goal is a symptom of not actually knowing what we what our audience to do.” Ruth Dale

The next Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp is live. The final date for 2022 is November 2nd. The Early-bird is open.

Click here for half price training places before they run out.

Want your team to get on the same page around behavioural science?

Book a call with Ruth to discuss your needs.

#commshero 2022 19-23 September

This episode offers you practical tips on community building by expert guest and #commshero community builder Asif Choudry.

Asif is marketing and sales director at We Are Resource and has built a global communications network called #commshero.

What started as an online communications conference 8 years ago is now a strong and vibrant community all year round. This year's #commshero conference lasts 5 days and...

If you look at the #commshero website you will see the saying - “With great power comes great comms responsibility” and we couldn’t agree more so we were delighted to welcome Asif to talk about how he created the legendary #commshero.

“We are so good at making everyone else look good …that is why we set up the community - to create the safe space for people to actually be positive and shout about the stuff they have done and share that best practice with the community. It shouldn’t take a pandemic to make a CEO to recognise the value”

See you at #commshero 2022 starts on the 19th September. 

The next Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp is live. The final date for 2022 is November 2nd. The Early-bird is open. Click here for half price training places before they run out.

Want your team to get on the same page around behavioural science? Book a call with Ruth to discuss your needs.  

This episode welcomes the 👑 queens of communication Leanne Hughes & Rebecca Roberts  to chat about meaningful engagement with young people looks like and how to do it.

We focus on the fabulous Awkward Moments sexual consent campaign in Scotland. This campaign took a behaviour change approach and adopted COM_B to understand what young people needed to help them talk about intimate moments and sexual consent.

Leanne developed the campaign on the commissioning side with NHS Scotland and commissioned Rebecca founder of Thread & Fable to develop and activate the campaign.

Through engaging with young people the ‘Awkward Moment’ came through as a clear theme and trigger moment from which to enter these conversations.

There is so much in this episode – loads of learning points, aha moments and don’t dos! Ever!!

Young people are given the space to inform the campaign at every stage of the process.

Messaging is tested on young people that are not involved in the process!

Evaluation is incredibly focussed across behaviour and campaign tactics.

Channels: (2-week testing)

Professionals' resources are included.

“The learning was not to give over scripts half created for comment – that’s not fair on young people - they will be polite they won’t be able to say what they really think. What’s unique about our process and campaign is they had the space all the way through and had the ability to speak on every stage” Leanne Hughes

“ young people are not a homogenous group ....you have to go beyond and proactively get the right people in the room...." Rebecca Roberts

Your team, your priorities, bespoke day built around behavioural science. Perfect for bring a team together – at partnership level Integrated Care Service level or your immediate teams.

Book your call with Ruth

 "here's my hook - now what is their potential question  - next answer that question"

Today’s episode welcomes Jeremy Moser, an incredible content marketer. He is co-founder & CEO at uSERP, a performance SEO & Digital PR agency. Founded in 2019, Jeremy’s uSERP helps SaaS brands like monday.com, ActiveCampaign, Freshworks, Hotjar, and hundreds more, grow organic traffic and revenue.  

Jeremy has also written a brilliant copywriting course (links below) and is co-founder of a new time-saving SAAS tool called Wordable  - it takes care of a lot of the tedious aspects of content publishing, making it easy to publish things at scale. 

This is a conversation on copywriting fundamentals. It runs on one theme: naturally pushing your readers into going from one line of copy to the next.

Jeremy breaks down the strategies to adopt to make your copy interesting, relevant, and SEO-friendly. 

High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove

Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

https://jermoser.com

Jeremy's course (I found it of great value) ➡️ https://www.copycourse.io/

A time-saving solution for content (I'm starting to wish we used this) ➡️https://wordable.io/ 

In this episode, we look at 3 ways you can use behavioural science to help ease NHS pressures.

 ‘Long waits for emergency care, previously only seen in the depths of winter, are now commonplace. In April, more than 24,000 people waited more than 12 hours to be admitted to hospital from A&E – a more than 45-fold increase compared to a year ago.” April 2022, Siva Anandaciva, Chief Analyst at The King’s Fund

 When we are in a state of emergency behavioural science tells us that our evolutionary survival defaults and social norms will kick in. This is called System 1 and it is where our subconscious will drive our default decisions. And in our society, for so long our default norm, when faced with a medical emergency, has been to contact 999 or go to the Accident & Emergency department.

So the question is - can we reset that social norm?

Can we influence people to reset their automatic choices so that when with they need to make a health service decision they choose the best service for their needs and not automatically A&E?This means we need to communicate with patients outside of health settings  - in other words - not only as patients but as people going about their everyday lives. 

Public Health prevention messaging has always been upstream and now with the emergence of the newly formed Integrated Care Services, there is the opportunity for NHS health messaging to shift beyond the patient and talk to people.

This episode shares two examples 'Help Us Help You' as an NHS prevention campaign and 'Listen to Your Gut' as an example of a more upstream prevention campaign.

The gods of behavioural science are used to illustrate how they reduce uncertainty in their homepage design and copy and I share how when running behavioural deep dives one key insight was people's uncertainty around diagnosing and treating health concerns. 

When we are uncertain we look around for social proof.  We want to be part of the group and we will look for social proof to guide us in our decision-making and choices.  Fitting in was once essential to our survival and our evolutionary code can still demand that of us.  That’s why social proof, case studies, testimonials and stories are so important. Social proof is closely linked to the 'Band-wagon' effect.

1. Ensure your upstream prevention work is still clearly aligned with strategic goals of easing pressures. 

2. In behavioural science we talk about the barriers a lot - understanding our audience so we can reduce them. In this context - we must understand what is making them uncertain. Why are they hesitating to call 111. Without addressing this head-on all the marketing is pure noise.

3. Plan strategically Integrated Care Services are a unique opportunity for change communications. 

Join as a Team or at  the next Bootcamp to get this stuff nailed! 

Wednesday 6th July - NHS pressures

“A really fun, interactive, and informative day which provided a wealth of information in a short space of time. Well worth making space in your diary for this course."

Sarah, Head of Communications NHS

"A really interesting course for anyone who is either at the start of their comms career, or is looking to build upon their knowledge and practice. Ruth was down to earth, friendly and extremely knowledgeable, without being intimidating." 

Laura, Head of Communications & Engagement, NHS

This episode welcomes Elina Halonen, behavioural science advisor at Square Peg Insight to talk about her favourite tool for thinking behaviour change framework C.O.M._B

Elina’s experience draws from 20 years market research with 10 years within behavioural science space, she uses COM_B on her projects with public sector and commercial organisations.

Elina highlights the importance of defining the problem and defining the audience and however tempting it is not to skip past this – BEFORE using COM_B.

(This temptation is based on two things – this is the hard part and two pressure to get going and just do something!)

Unless you are as specific as possible and you clarify what you are talking about stakeholders will talk across each other.

When you stay vague you can go in circles.  (We’ve all been there!)

“It’s like building a house on shifting sands.”

It’s also important because without understanding the behaviours you won’t in turn understand the scale of change needed – different behaviours have different scales of change.

Elina also highlighted how “time pressure can lead to thinking errors” so use COM_B as a checklist to support your thinking.

Use COM_B to group data and expand thinking.

 Books & links

 Connect with Elina via LinkedIn or via her website Behavioural Design | Square Peg Insight

Behaviour Change Marketing Team training days

Your team, your priorities, bespoke day built around behavioural science. Perfect for bringing a team together – at partnership level Integrated Care Service level or your immediate teams.

Book your training day before the end of 10 July and get a special bonus – one -to – one campaign planning session with Ruth.

These 90-minute sessions (RRP£299) take place after the training day where we go step-by-step through your plans to ensure your application of behavioural science is the best it can be.

This can include the insight, behavioural proposition, channels & content, chosen behavioural framework (usually COM_B or E.A.S.T or both) and stakeholder plan.