BrainFuel

This episode welcomes award-winning communicators Nicola Bonas, Keri Ross and Amanda Nash.  

Nicola and Keri both work at NHS Devon Clinical Commissioning group soon to be Integrated Care System for Devon. Nicola is the Associate director of communications, involvement and inclusion and Keri Ross is the Senior communications manager.

Amanda is based frontline as Head of communications at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust.

This is a jam-packed episode!

The theme for this show was winter pressures but as you will hear we cover so much more than that including

1: the importance of marketing as a system.

“working as one team with one plan that we all contribute to has been definitely something that we’ve continued to grow and seen massive success from” Nicola Bonas

2:  From the pre-pandemic days. Nicola shares her experience of developing the childhood flu vaccination campaign #thumbsupforcoby. This campaign was based on the tragic death of young Cobi, and driven by his parents.

“it came from a really real place, two parents experience and a community behind them is what led it to be successful” Nicola Bona

3:  Winters here Jon Snow! It’s all year round. For two reasons

 “Winter did used to be a very defined time period with a very defined set of pressures that came with it I think those pressures now run right through the years and they have been for the last few years” Keri Ross

4: Insight is the core to the message development. Insight tips from Keri include good relationships with voluntary sector organisations, community groups and networks to draw down resources and expertise such as the  Academic Health Science Networks.

 “Insight is really the core of everything we then design and develop. We need to understand what peoples experiences are of services and what their understanding of services to really know how to reach them and design something that will connect with them and make a difference.” Keri Ross

5: Case study: Think 111 is a campaign built out from insight. An understanding of the need to reset social norms, make it easy and reach people all year round – when they are not in an emergency situation. The team worked with Healthwatch to run qualitative research sessions to understand their audience and why they had attended the Emergency Department.  Because the team evaluates they know that 78% people had tried another service before attending the Emergency Department.

The constant pressure is keeping up with demand

6:  Understanding people is at the heart of what we do: You can do this by reviewing published work too. Lift and shift!

  “Insight is core to behavioural change, its about understanding the people whose behaviour you are looking to change, understanding what motivates them, what barriers they face and what will drive them and sustain them -  intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.  That’s what we’re good at – we always come back to – what do the people that we are trying to influence what are they currently doing and why?”

7: Case study: Reducing Do Not Attends (DNAs) at outpatient appointments

Amanda used the learning from a randomised control study at Barts Hospital (2015) that successfully reduced DNA’s by 3% following some simple word changes in outpatient text message reminders.

Text-based reminders: (messaging not exact)

Plymouth University Hospital achieved their lowest ever rate of DNA’s to new and follow-up appointments. To read more about this study click on this link.

Nicola’s books:

Keri’s book:

Amanda’s books:

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 June 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.

Today’s episode is dedicated to career progression, building confidence and motivation. We welcome Carrie-Ann Wade, NHS Director of Communications & Engagement and founder of Cat’s Pajamas where she mentors communication professionals to grow and thrive in their careers.

We talk all things confidence, stepping up as the expert and the importance of clearly demonstrating to stakeholders and senior management the high level of expertise that communications brings to the table.

Carrie-Ann stresses how essential it is to really nail the brief in order to be able to shift from output to outcome.  

“Communicators have the knowledge but need to have confidence to articulate it and join the table.” Carrie-Ann Wade

Career progression

 Carrie-Ann is available for mentoring and also runs a  12-week online THRIVE programme. This is a dedicated safe-space for communication managers and heads of communications to grow and thrive. Where you can have ‘unfiltered conversations’. The next programme starts in September.

 Carrie-Ann and her NHS Team also undertook the one-day Team Training we’re forever grateful for her kind words. It was a fantastic day.

"My team undertook Bootcamp...it was just brilliant for us..when you're embedded in an organisation that has lots going on and you're involved in so many projects sometimes it can be about just getting through the work and not applying the theory and evaluation. It was such a huge reminder about how important that is. I just wanted to say a massive thank you. It was such a brilliant day we all took something from it"

Thrive Programme

Bootcamp Team training  

Bootcamp team training days are all about your team, and your priorities, they are bespoke days built around behavioural science. Perfect for bringing a team together – at partnership level Integrated Care Service level or your immediate teams.

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. Aka the cat's pajamas.

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.

Email Ruth directly [email protected] or book a call to chat through your needs via calendy here -

Today’s episode welcome’s Adrian Searle and Steven Carroll from Police Scotland to talk about the incredible award winning ‘Don’t Be That Guy’ campaign.

THAT guy aims to reduce rape, serious sexual assault and harassment by having frank conversations with men about male sexual entitlement. It won the Drum Awards 2022 Public Sector campaign and is nominated for many more.  ‘Don’t be that guy’ went viral with excess of 6 million views of the hero video. The microsite that-guy.co.uk was  viewed excess of 160,000 page views.

Adrian and Steven talk through the process of the campaign from understanding the challenge to the importance of the ‘north star’ aka your behavioural goal or value proposition in execution. They share their tactics and how they shifted the narrative around this incredibly important subject.

They share how they developed the challenge into a strategy and from there the strategy into powerful creative.

The insight and the strength of the value proposition was integral to the success. They highlight how your communications should reflect your values – something we all strive for.

Stephen recommends – How To Stay Sane: The School of Life by Philippa Perry

Adrian Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping by Paco Underhiill

Crime recommendation: Dark Winter – Look into his eyes and prepare to die by David Mark

that-guy.co.uk

 Today’s episode welcome’s Jude Hackett to take us through the incredible free insight tool – The Empathy Map.

Jude is a behaviour change and social marketing consultant with 18 years of experience in Marketing and Strategic Communications, with specialisms in marketing for social impact, behaviour change and brand. Jude is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (FCIM). Basically a total pro!

The Empathy Map is a visualisation tool developed by Dave Gray in 2017 that we can use on our own, or with teams and stakeholders to capture our understanding of our users, patients, and residents. It helps build a shared understanding of our user needs plus aid decision making and shift messaging.

Dave Gray is a leader in the field of creativity. His website Gamestorming is well worth a visit for the wealth of resources he shares. Dave is dedicated to teasing creativity out of everyone by sharing the tools and systems of design thinking.

The Power of Ignorance: How creative solutions emerge when we admit what we don’t know. Dave Trott, 2021

Guest Resources/useful links

Get your empathy map by visiting the Gamestorming website here. Plus have a look around it’s amazing!

Contact Jude on LinkedIn or email [email protected]

1) How well do you understand your audience? Are you clear what you want people to do? Using the empathy map captures what you know but flags what you don’t!

2) The ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ sexual health research published by Dan Ariely in Predictably Irrational is a great example of demonstrating how our understanding of are audiences can completely change when and how we communicate.

3) A clear behaviour change goal is essential. (or value proposition!) Use the map to find yours.

Happy mapping and thank you Jude!

 If you enjoyed this episode please leave a review and share with anyone you know wants to get started and is passionate about making a positive change.

Want to know about how to use behavioural science in your comms & marketing? We love empathy mapping so much we have incorporated it into our Bootcamp training  days on 6th & 8th July and into our Team Training days. Join us to kickstart your skills or book a call with me.

Today's episode is all about making behavioural science real in the comms office.

Leanne Hughes and Polly Durrant both attended Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp earlier this year. Leanne and Polly kindly came on the podcast to share their experience and share how simple it can be to use behavioural science in-house.

Even though behavioural science is a relatively new skill set it is sometimes seen as ‘hard’ or complicated. But it doesn’t have to be -  you can use it – you don’t need a science background!  It’s also not just marketers with big campaign budgets it’s for all comms including internal, crisis and socials.

Thank you Leanne & Polly for making it real.

Polly’s choice - Why we resist: The surprising Truths about Behavior Change: A Guidebook for Healthcare Communicators, Advocates and Change Agents - Kathleen Star and Lee Householder

Leanne’s choice  - The Choice Factory: 25 behavioural biases that influence what we buy, Richard Shotton

Come find out for yourself at the next Bootcamp we'd love to meet you

This episode welcomes Dr Taylor Willmott behavioural scientist and thought leader in social marketing. Taylor is a lecturer in marketing at The University of Adelaide and also works with industry and government, climate change, reducing sexual violence, chronic disease, obesity prevention and much more.

This episode is all about why we need to use theory in our behaviour change intervention/campaign  design.

With so many people tackling similar problems we need to be able to share learning openly, transparently and evaluate with confidence – and that means using theory.

Using theory will reduce stress,  build confidence and

Taylor talks us through her recently published TITE process can help us get started and stay the course. TITE stands for:

T – theory selection. I – Iterative schematisation.  T – Test Theory E- explicit reporting

Taylor is very happy to take any questions and connect. You can reach her via Taylor Willmott | Researcher Profiles (adelaide.edu.au)

Taylors book recommendation: “Think Big: Take small steps and build the future your want”  by Grace Lordan

(I have since read it and am saving it for my teenage son. I wish I had this book when I was starting my career. Deep lightbulb moments alert!)

1) Use theory to design evaluation before you get started. Don’t let theory stop at the insight planning stage include it in your process evaluation as well as outcome evaluation.

2) If we don't use theory to evaluate we will be forever circling the drain! Revisiting the same challenges because we cant confidently share what works and what doesn't. 

3) Process evaluation is important – some of the intervention may work. Some may not. You need to know, so you don’t throw the theory out with the bath water!  Evaluation isn't black or white we need safe spaces to be able to share what doesn't work as well as celebrate what does. 

Today's episode explains COM_B the behaviour change framework for busy communication and marketing professionals.

Designed for busy pro's to get started in behavioural science and use this tool to define and understand the behaviour they are tackling. 

Don't let the idea of using theory or behavioural science in your campaign planning stop you.

Using COM_B will illuminate the stages of your campaign planning and help ensure you don't go down the wrong road. Instead, go down your audience's road.

Don't simply step into their shoes - but look at the behaviour through their eyes. Only then will your content truly influence and activate change. 

Further Resources:
Email [email protected] for your free interactive worksheet. 

ONE:  Systems Thinking is a fundamental term coined by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman who through is research established there are dual processes within the brain that function together. He published a ground-breaking book called Thinking Fast & Slow in 2011 which quickly entered the New York Times bestsellers list. He called  them System 1 and System 2 

TWO: System 1 also known as the homer brain (yes as in Homer Simpson) or the hare (yes the one from the tortoise & hare analogy) it is fast, automatic, dominant, developed over evolutionary to keep you safe. Making thousands of decisions a day on your behalf.

THREE: System 2. Aka Spock (yes the one from Star Trek) is slow, methodical, concentrates and is pretty lazy. 

FOUR: It’s important to understand that these processes work together and we should value both systems – although system 1. Challenge can be when using the right one. 

 FIVE: This Heuristics or biases or rules of thumb all mean the same thing. They are shortcuts that sit in our System 1 brain.  They have evolved with the human race, designed to keep us alive they make tens of thousands of decisions on our behalf – subconsciously  - every day. They pick up on the cues, the triggers, the fears within our environments and assign actions. They have been very popular in marketing and advertising for some time, for example anchoring the price or product, using scarcity or a sale to drive sales tapping into our emotions with powerful sensory tactics and using social norms to influence change. 

Why do I care as a communicator?

 Well because Spock is lazy and he doesn’t want to be used very often so if your work is confusing or unclear at any level Spock will kick in….and did I mention we’re lazy…. It is by no accident that advertising giants such as Ogilvy have been tapping into our emotions to prime us to associate that brand with emotions. 

In Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp Live & OnDemand we go deep into the world of behavioural biases to skill up on how we can use them inhouse to brief agencies, set strategy, develop copy and frame insight development. To ultimately understand our audience so we can communicate change, influence behaviour and increase impact.

Further reading: 

Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman 

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

Cast your mind back to January 2021. When I do that, I just can't get the Simon and Garfunkel song, Hazy Shade of Winter out of my head. And that's because I'm now associating it with Time. In the sense that in January 2021, we were still in the middle of the pandemic, and of course, behaviour change and behavioural science and the demand for behaviour change marketing based campaigns was at its height.

 And so we ran a survey called “Help. I am not a behavioural scientist, get me out of here" across public sector, comms NHS, local government fire police, and we asked what are your biggest challenges and how confident are you feeling in delivering communications based messaging using behavioural science.

The overwhelming theme that came back was time.

Everyone was saying they just had no time to actually do it, whether to learn it, or whether to apply it to the standards that they wanted. 

Time just was the biggest  B.S. barrier. 

To really respond to the survey we've now running…drumroll please. We're launching The busy communicators guide to behavioural science. So this is going to be some core worksheets that will be made available to you for your CPD for free. And excitingly, we're going to lead with audio learning, it's a really popular style of learning. 

3:18  

Okay, so welcome to the busy communicators guide to Prospect Theory. 

We're going to do a very short overview on this. Clearly, we can't fit everything in. And what I've done is I've taken out the most salient points that I feel are most useful for us in our profession. 

But I will put in the shownotes, lots of links to more detailed conversations and more detailed reading for you.  But I just want to highlight that I don't think there's going to be anything in here that you don't already know. But I think the penny will drop as to why those things happen. As a communicator, you already know that things really need to be really salient, we need to break through the noise. And so Prospect Theory is just a little bit about the science as to why. And it's really good because if you're ever tempted or away from these gut feelings you've got, I'd say, as a marketer, stick with the gut, and there's some science behind it. So hopefully do prepare for some penny drop moments as we go through. 

And I like to start now with taking your mind back 300 years. So if this was a history book, we'd have a big chapter title -  the end of the rational era, 300 years of rule, and a heralded mathematician called Daniel Bernoulli a Swiss genius. He espouses a theory called Utility Theory to understand how humans make decisions based on risk. Little do you know, standing in this beautiful Swiss court in 1738, that this theory would come to dominate The Western world of economics for over 300 years. So to reduce years of complex research and modelling down to one sentence, basically, the utility theory was that we, as in humans, you and me, will make decisions primarily to avoid loss. And these decisions would be useful or have utility. So they would be in our best interests, aka rational. 

So now, just close your eyes for a moment and imagine the BBC news readers from the 1950s. You can hear this premise in action, the driving force behind the tone behind the delivery of the news, you know, it was very much I'm sharing with you some information with the expectation that you will take it seriously and apply it sensibly. There definitely was the sense of here's the information now make a very sensible, rational decision. 

So let's jump forward to the 1970s. And not only is the first female prime minister being elected, the Walkman has taken the world by storm. And interestingly, in 1979, the UK public sector workers were on strike, they were demanding a 60 pound a week minimum wage and the 35 hour workweek. So whilst all that's going on a revolutionary new economic theory has arrived, that basically ends this 300 year rule of the rational. 

This theory is called Prospect Theory. And it is the work of two geniuses, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and his colleague, Amos Tversky.

7:13  

It signalled a huge paradigm shift that has continued to grow in strength to this day. And essentially, I like to call it the beating heart of behavioural science. And again, to really drill down years of complex research (they continued working on this until 1992) so literally years and years, decades of work into one sentence, it basically says that we are irrational. And we don't always make the best decision in favour of utility. 

So it sounds obvious, right? Yeah. How is this revolutionary? 

What's really important is it really truly was, this is a huge paradigm shift. And if we take a moment just to pause, and reflect on that, and if you think about your work, and the amount of requests that come in for you to sprinkle your fairy dust of magic, am I say that because I know it's cringe worthy. And I know it's so hated in the comms world, but if you think about all the incoming requests, there is so often this rational assumption that comes with them that please share this information. Yes, make it fun and lively. But please share this information with the expectation that the audience will hear it and do what is expected. 

So yes, it's a huge paradigm shift. But it's still a baby, we've gone through 300 years to 1979. I am older than this theory, I was born in 1975. So not by much, but still in the terms of science looking at it is it's a young theory, and it's still growing and evolving today, which is why behavioural science is just exploding. The research industry is just is huge. And it's growing a lot. So this is a cornerstone theory, which you can if you learn and understand you can be really confident in applying. 

So of course, it is slightly more complex than that one sentence and I'm going to share with you three concepts that break it down quite nicely. 

Certainty – offer a guarantee

Your audience wants certainty of avoidance of loss. And your audience will take greater risks to achieve that. You're thinking, you know, the more people lose, the more people are likely to actually take greater risks to avoid the loss because they've got nothing left to lose. And if we think about the national smoking campaigns been for well over a decade, I know I worked on them for 15 years, I think, and we've talked about it before. But one absolute genius move that they started and is probably familiar to everyone is that they do say that you're much more likely to quit using the service, and they even have a number. So is it 2.5. But anyway, they have a guarantee, they say you are much more likely to achieve your goal. And this is really important, especially when you're asking someone to lose so much when you quit smoking.

Okay. A nice fun example -  think about it in terms of products, when you're buying a TV, you know, they might say yes, we guarantee you can watch endless streaming of Netflix on our TV, absolutely wonderful cinema surround sound. And if you don't bring it back, no questions asked, okay, this is great, you might spend my money if I don't like it, there's no loss here. And this is really closely linked as well to the endowment effect, which we will come on to in a later episode, which just talks about the importance of getting people to try and use your information. 

The second is isolation effect. – We focus on differences more than we do similarities

12:08  

No surprises to anyone here that salience is essential. Prospect Theory explains that we as humans focus on differences more than we do similarities. 

Think of the matrix and the girl in the red dress, very salient, very obvious, and everyone goes and looks, but you know that already – you know that to break through the noise, you need to be as salient as possible. 

So for me as a marketer, I like this, because it brings out the role of the other elements of communication. So it brings out the role of the actual product of design of packaging, and all these other intrinsic paths that actually will take go a long way to reaching your goal. 

Loss looms larger than gains (2.5x larger)

So the other one is loss aversion. Loss Aversion looms larger than gains, our fear of loss is at least two and a half times greater than our joy of the game. 

It is applied in varying degrees, but it does remain consistent across everyone as we have a psychological response to loss. It's human nature to prevent that pain prevent that hurt. 

Importantly  the research pointed out something called a reference point. So a reference point was brand new, it did not exist in Utility Theory. The reference point understands that people will make decisions based on where they are in that moment. And this is why it is essential, because when we working with deprived communities, people without financial safety nets, their reference point is very different to someone else's reference point, who perhaps does have that safety net, which is why segmentation and marketing is absolutely essential. 

So if you think about your work programmes, and your campaigns, think about, well, how different does my audience respond to this loss? Do they perceive a loss? Is my current messaging triggering a loss when it doesn't need to? Am I talking more about gains than losses is human nature to focus on the losses?

They found in the research that we will quite naturally focus on what we're going to lose more than what we'll gain? So is it our job to actually make sure that we're shifting the narrative and making the game the game that bigger shiny a brighter, brighter, brighter, brighter thing to.

Ask yourself, do you understand your audience reference points?

14:57  

In 1995, the American Psychological Association studied the medal winners from the Barcelona Olympics. So they studied those wonderful Olympians who won their gold, silver and bronze medals. And it's a lovely way to illustrate the concept of the reference point. Because they found that silver winners were a lot unhappier than gold, and bronze winners. And that's simply because their reference point was, they were going for gold. So they have lost something. Whereas often in training and expectations, at a bronze medal winners level was actually the bronze was the highest, and perhaps they'd get fourth or fifth place. So they didn't lose. The study was done by the American Psychological Association, in 1995 and is a really nice way to just understand the power of framing and the reference point. 

And ultimately, at the end of the day, these are economic theories. And they're based around probability. But they're really useful for us to have as a deeper understanding of people, especially if we know there's some easy wins, we can make an are copy, and we're focusing in on a loss.

 And you can also easily shift it or I know my audience, I thought I did, but actually I don't, because I don't know what their point of references.

 I don't know what their reaction is to this loss. And actually, it could change your market research and your insight plan. Because you can might think I need to understand what the gains are.

 Transcribed by https://otter.ai