Impact of Scottish behaviour change programmes

Despite a significant reduction in marketing spend, the Scottish Government’is reporting meaningful and measurable campaign results from its social marketing programmes. These outcomes are great additions to the behaviour change evidence base.

According to The Drum (www.thedrum.co.uk) Gillian Govan, chief marketing officer for the Scottish Government, has shared some of the results from 2010/2011 work. Their article states that these included just under 140,000 registrations in Scotland for organ donation, a record number of responses and for every £1 spent saw a direct saving of £3.20 to the NHS.

The Drum further reports that an impressive uptake rate was reported for its season flu vaccination last winter, and a 61% reduction in repeat drink driving offenders, as well as a reduction of 38% in the number of drink drivers caught overall – potentially saving the economy £12m.

Field activity to promote smoking cessation saw over 80% of attendees to its field event take positive action to quit within two weeks, while knife carrying in Inverclyde fell by 35%, according to Strathclyde Police, as a result of a partnership and social marketing campaign, while there was a 29% reduction in knife carrying in Renfrewshire.

The Take Life On Campaign saw an increase of 20% in awareness amongst parents of the physical activity health guidelines for their children, while 71% of those who attended the campaigns field events recorded a positive behaviour change as a result.

The same campaign, working alongside supermarket chain Morrisons to provide free fruit items, saw a rise in fruit sales of 93%, while sales of couponed healthy food products rose by 75%.

Meanwhile, an alcohol unit measuring cup distributed as part of an alcohol moderation campaign was found by 87% of the target audience as useful, with just over half using it to try to reduce their alcohol consumption after attending an event.

Return on investment was found to be 1:18 when working with partners across various campaigns.

Over 6,000 requests for a Home Fire safety visit were requested from homes at risk of fatal fires while the Play, Talk, Read campaign led to 30,000 children benefitting from greater interaction with their parents in order to help them develop their word skills and learning. Over 14,000 parents were found to have responded to the educational offer, with over 15,000 being engaged through the campaign’s field marketing.  97% of those parents said that they were now playing, talking and reading to their children more frequently.

Source: The Drum.

James Cracknell – ‘use your head’

Last month it was exactly one year since James Cracknell was seriously injured in a cycling accident in America. His helmet saved him. James made a short film to encourage others to wear cycle helmets and encourages people to show their support by passing the film to friends and most importantly, when out cycling, ‘Use your head. Use your helmet.’

A great behaviour change viral encouraging the use of helmets among cyclists. Impressed by the combination of special effects and a raw and honest personal approach

Alcohol brief interventions

One of the health and lifestyle services that I have inherited since joining change agency ICE Creates is the successful Liverpool Alcohol Brief Intervention project which has been exceeding its targets for a couple of years – so one I was pleased to get my hands on!

A dedicated team is used to engage, inform and advise people across the city who are at increased and high risk from alcohol. The health intervention workers:

 

• Specifically target hard to reach groups
• Use sophisticated profiling  and local health needs assessments
• Utilise links with their extensive network of statutory, voluntary and community organisations
• Take the service out into the community
• Meet people on their own terms and ‘on their turf’.

A 10 point audit tool is used to assess current alcohol consumption behaviour and people’s readiness to change. If an individual falls into the hazardous or harmful categories, they are given a ‘validated brief intervention’. In these cases, appreciative inquiry and motivational interviewing techniques are used to examine their behavioural patterns around alcohol to maximise the impact and reduce the possibility of them not following up. This is proving to be an exceptionally successful behaviour change approach, and one I am proud to now be a part of.

I wrote a blog for my company earlier in the week which looked at this project, which you can read here

Marketing to Crazy People

Thanks to Martin Delaney and his Age of Change blog for the tip off for John Kenny’s Marketing to  Crazy People prezi – an interactive guide to using behavioural economics in marketing. Nothing gets me more excited on a Thursday evening than the combination of behavioural economics and prezi in the same sentence. This is  a fab selection of informative videos for anyone focused on driving behaviour change. You can read more from Martin at http://ageofchange.wordpress.com/ 

The doctor will see you now

I am really interested by the news today that a study has found that up to 30% of DNAs (did not attend) for GP appointments could be reduced, if behaviour change techniques are employed.

The study led by NHS Bedfordshire found that using techniques such as getting patients to write their appointment down themselves and getting them to repeat the appointment verbally to receptionists helped to reduce DNAs. Placing positive messages around GP practices confirming that attending appointments is the ‘social norm’ also helped to reduce missed appointment, the study said.

This is such simple stuff, yet if the research is to be believed, has significant results which can make a massive difference to primary care efficiencies, with little or no investment – now that makes for good ROI! Read more on the study here

Baroness Neuberger speaks on Behaviour Change

The House of Lords Science and Technology Sub-Committee have published their report, Behaviour Change.

In this video Baroness Neuberger, Chair of the Committee, talks about the challenges of changing the behaviour of a population and the findings and recommendations of the Committee, mentioning issues such as ‘nudge’ theory, the need for independent advisors and the lack of scientific evidence around changing a nation’s behaviour.

Could Wales lead the way on behaviour change

Wales apparently is on its way to become the first European country to enforce a tobacco ban inside vehicles in which children are traveling . According to a recent warning by the Welsh Government, will mount a renewed campaign to tackle smoking, alongside interventions and quit programmes, but if these interventions and campaigns fail to bring about any reduction in children’s exposure to second-hand smoke, it is quite likely that a ban on smoking inside cars carrying children will be imposed in Wales.

The use of legislative options alongside other tools from the behaviour change toolkit fits perfectly with the recommendations today from the House of Lords Select Committee on Behaviour Change which has suggested there is confusion within government over what nudging actually involved, as they had been given different definitions by officials.

According to the report, the government’s pursuit of non-regulatory steps had created an environment whereby nudge was being seen as something that did not require legislation. It talks about the challenges of changing the behaviour of a population and the findings and recommendations of the Committee, mentioning the need for independent advisors and a lack of scientific evidence around changing a nation’s behaviour.

For those of us working in behaviour change we have known for a long time, that whilst so called nudges are part of the approach, they should not be seen in isolation as a quick fix, but part of an insight-led, co-created and meaningful approach, that is supported by robust public policy and Government that puts tackling health inequalities, social mobilisation and other key issues at the heart of all it does.

More than a nudge

Reading the early commentary on the Changing Behaviour inquiry due to be published on Tuesday brings to mind the work of Professor Jeff French, and his recent keynote presentation at the World Social Marketing Conference in Dublin. This describes how nudges are not enough, and whilst he argues they should be part of the solution, they should be complemented by a range of techniques, articulated as either a smack, shove or hug. I won’t even attempt to comment on this, and let Jeff do so himself in a recent guest blog for ICE Creates where he is a Non-Executive Director. Read on here.

Lords report on behaviour change

As trailed earlier in the week, The Lords Science and Technology Committee has now issued its early findings to the media on its Changing Behaviour inquiry. It hopes its findings will help to shape the UK approach to behaviour change, with a welcomed and rounded view that nudges in isolation are not enough.

Having had sight of the embargoed press release yesterday, the first coverage to hit the wires has already pinged through on my Google alerts last night. (Clearly L’Italo Europeo fly in the face of such embargoes!). The year-long inquiry has investigated the use of behaviour change interventions – policies to change the behaviour of the population, including “nudges”.

According to L’Italo Europeo the report will include findings about:

• what science can tell us about changing behaviour;
• whether the Government’s use of non-regulatory policies, including “nudges”, to change behaviour in the UK is appropriate; and
• what the Government should do to make sure that its policies are always based on the best evidence about what will work.

Commenting on the inquiry, Committee Chairman, Baroness Neuberger, said:“A great deal of government policy is about trying to change the way the population behaves and recently the media has drawn particular attention to this Government’s efforts to “nudge” us to behave differently. The Committee wanted to investigate the science behind the Government’s attempts to change behaviour.

We found that, though a lot is understood about how to influence the way individuals behave, there are hardly any examples of properly evaluated policies to change the behaviour of the population as a whole. It’s exactly this kind of evidence – evidence about how to bring about change on a large scale – that is most relevant to what governments do. The fact that not much is known about how to change the behaviour of a population is a real cause for concern and means that the Government still have quite a lot of work to do. I hope that our recommendations on this, together with all of our other findings, will make a real difference to the Government’s approach to changing behaviour.”

The power of video in behaviour change (and a shameless plug)

In the spirit of openness I must declare a massive personal interest in the project discussed in this post, having being the client who originally commissioned it, before then moving across to work for the agency who delivered it. Despite this, my actual involvement was limited, but it is a great behaviour change project that colleagues on both sides of my CV have taken great pride in – and rightly so!

The challenge for NHS Coventry was to turn the curve in declining young people, I think aged around 16-24, attending local dental provision. The PCT had seen a marked drop and as ever wanted to try some innovative approaches to tackling this growing problem. From this the Social Change team at ICE Creates developed the enigma that is Lady Go’Diva, a post-modern pop starlet to challenge Lady GaGa’s crown (well in the West Mids anyway!)

In the first month the video has seen more than 3,000 hits on You Tube, with a massive viral push planned around the university freshers season later this year. It was a brave move for the PCT dental team to embrace this approach, but one that could prove to be clearly in line with future thinking, as this piece from Cisco suggests, that by 2013 video content will represent 90% of all internet traffic, and 64% of all traffic will be on smart phones.

The portability of video content is also a great benefit for deployment in appropriate behaviour change programmes, as the ability for people to share and embed in blogs or via social media sites has massive potential for reach into networks and groups that traditionally have been inaccessible. I hope to be able to share some great results from this campaign over the coming months, and if the buzz generated so far is anything to go by, I expect to see Lady Go’Diva recording that difficult second single some time soon – I dread to think what treatment Chlamydia Screening could get!

To find out more about this campaign, check out Osocio’s recent post here. And not wanting to just focus on the great work by my current and former employers, I thought best to also share this great video casestudy (another great example of how to use the medium) on a different dental social marketing approach by NHS Kensington and Chelsea/Lamerton Swales.