Conrad Bird, Deputy Director, Government Communication, Cabinet Office

Executive summary

This chapter reviews the role of strategic communication in recent efforts by the British government to promote behaviour change in support of domestic policy priorities. It draws out a set of key principles for effective strategic communication, and argues that they are applicable outside the domestic context.

Behaviour change is an enormous subject: the goal of many policy-makers throughout the world, and a life’s work for academics, social psychologists, think-tank researchers and an array of other professionals.

Just as large, however, is the gap that persists in many cases between theory and practice. Despite the existence of many models and some welldocumented case-studies, especially from the fields of health and education, professionals seeking to adapt this learning for application in other areas can find it difficult to do so. So often, the particular nature of the individual issue to be tackled, and the pressure to achieve results quickly, can obscure the underlying principles at work.

Nevertheless, it is possible to apply some of the lessons learned from the British government’s domestic policy experience to international issues such as globalisation, international terrorism and climate change. Indeed, in the UK sophisticated tools are already being employed to tackle some of these issues in the domestic context.

The importance of strategic communication

In trying to achieve behaviour change on a societal level, the British government has learned that a broad and complex mix of measures and tools is needed. Communication is only one element of this mix. For example, the government drive to reduce smoking has been arguably one of the most successful behaviour change campaigns. It has taken a range of interventions – from price controls, legislation and enforcement against tobacco smuggling to bans on smoking and restrictions on advertising – as well as hard-hitting information and advertising campaigns, to change social norms and drive down smoking to its current levels. And still there is more to do.

As this example shows, communication is truly successful only when it works together with other elements in pursuit of a common objective. Involving communicators early in the policy creation process accordingly pays dividends for all parties. This is evident in the work of the Department for Transport, which has a great deal of experience in integrating policymaking, policy delivery and communication in tackling key behaviour change issues: over the years it has been responsible for many highly effective campaigns to combat drink-driving and improve road safety, and has adopted an ‘education, enforcement, engineering’ model to tackle road safety.

For their part, if they are to play an effective role at the policy table, communicators have to think beyond their specialisation and channel their skills towards how communication can deliver business strategy or policy objectives.

This is the role of strategic communication, which can be defined as a ‘systematic approach to delivering business objectives by generating more effective understanding of audiences and more effective methods of connecting with them to develop solutions that shift attitudes and change behaviours’.

An audience-focused approach

Strategic communication is a discipline that puts genuine understanding of audience behaviour at the heart of its approach. It is based on a combination of social marketing principles (that is, those applicable to not-for-profit 109 activities), derived from work mainly in the fields of health and education, and private sector marketing tools that have been adapted to meet the specific challenges of the public sector. It involves working to meet long-term, complex social challenges rather than short-term sales targets, and recognises the fact that government needs to reach all sectors of the population (and usually weights its efforts towards the most socially disadvantaged) rather than just targeting those consumers most likely to buy a product.

This modern approach to communication has developed out of necessity. Governments and institutions around the world are facing challenges and opportunities presented by rapidly fragmenting media landscapes, 24/7 news machines and, most significantly, the huge impact of the internet and the possibilities for local and global networking offered by the new levels of interactivity available in the online environment commonly referred to as ‘Web 2.0’. These factors are dramatically altering the relationship between government and citizens, lending new urgency to the need for government to engage credibly with the public in order to change behaviours for the common good. Older, more established communication techniques simply cannot deliver in this modern environment.

The programme to apply this strategic approach to communication in the UK domestic policy context, called ‘Engage’, has been driven by the Permanent Secretary for Government Communication, Howell James, and endorsed at a high level in the British government. In the words of Sir Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service, ‘We need a much more strategic approach to communication to ensure that communication is at the heart of the policy process. It needs to be there at the start when we’re trying to work out what the policy is for. It needs to be there in the middle when we’re sorting out what the solution is and we’re engaging with people to get their views about how to make policy work best, and it needs to be there at the end.’

The key principles of strategic communication

1. Generating insight

At the heart of strategic communication lies a simple truth: great communication starts with an open mind and a listening ear. Genuine insight into our audiences is the first – and most important – requirement.

Seeking insight involves a systematic attempt to identify deep truths about people that, when acted upon, resonate powerfully enough to bring about a change in behaviour. As well as conducting research and analysis, it involves thinking like your audience, understanding their experience, mapping out the journey (mental and physical) you want to lead them along, and developing propositions that truly resonate with their interests and preoccupations.

The process of generating insight entails a combination of rigorous data analysis and well-honed intuition. An insight team will take audience data from a number of sources (for example government social and market research, environmental analysis and syndicated data banks) and combine these with the personal experience of the audience in order to transform data into understanding. The potential insights thus generated are then tested with audiences and refined further. The skills required are both analytical and instinctual and are not confined to strategic communicators; with the right support, policy-makers are potentially excellent insight generators.

For communicators, insight can make the difference between success and failure. A good example is furnished by how the Department for Transport responded to the widespread disregard among 15–30-year-olds of legislation that made wearing rear seat-belts in cars compulsory.

Research revealed an alarming ignorance of the threat posed by unbelted back-seat passengers to others in an accident. Catapulted forward, they can kill the driver. Faced with the fact that their own behaviour could make victims of their best friends, an audience hitherto hard to impress was 111 profoundly shocked. When translated into an integrated media campaign, this insight (summed up as ‘no one wants to live with the guilt of killing someone else’) delivered an actual increase in rear seat-belt usage of 23 per cent in just one year.

Work on generating insights will also reveal the influences on audiences of factors such as pricing, legislation and peer pressure: information useful for policy-makers as well as for people on the front line delivering services. Insights into smokers show that, somewhat counter-intuitively, routine and manual workers are less susceptible to price changes than professional and managerial workers. The reason is the prevalence of smuggled goods in these communities.

When government needs to address a new issue, early insights can play a key role in helping prepare an overall response: for instance, insight teams at the Department of Health have been involved early in working out how to address the problem of childhood obesity. Their findings can be distilled into four overarching insights which are revealing and suggest some of the key parental perceptions that need to be overcome:

• while parents acknowledge that obesity is a problem, they do not think of it as their problem (only 17 per cent of parents with obese children can diagnose their child’s weight status);
  
• parents underestimate the amount they and their children eat and overestimate the amount of activity the family does;
  
• parents believe their children are healthy as long as they are happy; and
  
• parents do not perceive as risky a host of unhealthy behaviours (such as sedentary lifestyle, eating large portion sizes and snacking).

To give another example, insights recognising the public’s need for a simple online channel through which they could access all public services in one place led to the creation of Directgov. Today, this channel has moved beyond information to transactions: 7 million motorists now apply for car tax online every year, saving both public and government considerable time and expense.

The private sector has recognised the power of insight to transform corporate thinking and shift audience behaviour. One successful UK retailer has a customer insight unit of over 300 staff. Government is also more formally recognising its potential impact, and a number of departments have already set up dedicated insight units.

The process of generating insight can be used to interrogate an issue quickly or to lay the foundations for a long-term programme. Insights generated may be confined to a single segment of a population or be universally applicable. Wherever there are people, there is insight to be gained.

2. Segmenting audiences

In the modern communications environment, one size no longer fits all. People require activities and messages to be tailored to their own unique needs. Breaking audiences down into smaller, more homogeneous groups gives government a far better chance of reaching them with the right policies and propositions.

Segmentation is therefore another important principle of strategic communication. It involves categorising audiences according to who they are (socio-demographics), what they do (their behaviour), and how they think and feel (their attitudes) in relation to a specific issue.

Tackling climate change provides a good recent example. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and others have undertaken a large-scale exercise to identify the differences within the UK public in individuals’ willingness and ability to take personal actions to reduce their carbon footprint.

Seven clusters have been identified, ranging from the most positively engaged and able – labelled as ‘positive greens’, who will do everything they can to limit their carbon footprint and constitute 18 per cent of the population – to the most negative and resistant – the ‘honestly disengaged’, whose attitude can be summed up as: ‘Maybe there’ll be an environmental disaster, maybe not. Makes no difference to me, I’m just living life the way I want to.’ Unfortunately, they also represent 18 per cent of the population.

This disaggregation enables far more specific objectives to be set against each of these sub-groups, while the research underlying it yields rich detail of the approaches and communication techniques that are most likely to work, estimates of the degrees of success to be expected, and an idea of the investment needed to be balanced against the likely return in terms of ‘pro-social’ behaviour.

3. Developing propositions

The combination of insight and segmentation can then lead to the development of targeted propositions. These ensure a policy is expressed in a way that makes sense to a particular set of people and gives them a clear understanding of ‘what’s in it for them’ or for society as whole. Equally important is that these propositions are expressed in compelling, appropriate language that not only resonates with audiences but also motivates them to take action.

A powerful recent example was a police recruitment campaign that aimed to increase the quality of applicants, enhance the reputation of the police and increase morale within the police service. The proposition centred on the bold objective of ‘making 999 people out of every 1,000 realise they couldn’t be a police officer, but respect like hell the one who could’.

It was conveyed in advertising in which role models such as the boxer Lennox Lewis and the campaigner Bob Geldof admitted to viewers that they couldn’t do some of the incredibly hard things police officers have to do, such as going round to someone’s house to tell a man that his wife and child had been killed in a car crash; this was summed up in the phrase: ‘I couldn’t do that. Could you?’

This polarising strategy and powerful proposition paid off. Applications to join the service increased by 52 per cent, with a substantial increase in quality. The campaign represented a 10 per cent better return on investment than previous police recruitment campaigns. Internal police morale increased, as evidenced by a noticeable drop in resignations. And 70 per cent of police forces claimed their recruitment activity was more effective as a result of the campaign.

Propositions can also help to reframe policies and issues for the public. For example, one strand of a strategy developed by the FCO to facilitate a more mature debate on the EU was to concentrate on issues where people felt the EU had a natural role to play, such as the environment.

A particularly powerful way of illustrating this was used by David Miliband in a speech made in Berlin in October 2006 entitled ‘Building an Environmental Union’, in which he stated: ‘Europe has a strong environmental record on which to build. From air pollution and water quality to recycling. But in future, we should go further. Its raison d’être in the twenty-first century must be to prevent the exploitation of the planet. The European Union must become the Environmental Union.’¹

4. Stakeholders and credible voices

Government’s relationship with its stakeholders is critical to successful policymaking and delivery. However, to involve them constructively, one needs to be clear who they are and what their level of interest and influence is. This process of stakeholder identification, mapping and prioritisation is an 115 essential strategic communication skill.²

In campaigns aimed at changing behaviour, effective stakeholder management can yield high dividends. Positive stakeholders endorse and support policies, often using their own communication efforts and channels to magnify the communication effort of government (as they can, conversely, to negate it if they are not on board). Stakeholders can also be valuable as powerful voices more credible to audiences than the government, as illustrated by the role of Muslim community leaders in the UK in preventing radicalisation.

In working with stakeholders ranging from supermarkets advocating the merits of eating ‘five fruit and veg’ a day to the British Heart Foundation running ‘no smoking’ advertising, the government has realised that its role in changing behaviour can be as effective when it acts as a conductor orchestrating the collective efforts of other organisations as when it intervenes directly.

5. Making the right connection

An approach that puts people first has another benefit: namely, the generation of a more media-neutral perspective in planning a communications campaign. Armed with the knowledge that a press announcement, TV and national newspaper campaigns and some leaflets no longer constitute effective communication, strategic planners will set out to identify the most influential ways of engaging with audiences and then work out the most powerful combination of elements to achieve measurable success.

These elements will invariably include a variety of stakeholders, potential partners and other credible voices, peer influences, and a range of nontraditional (and often overlooked) channels such as front-line staff, local events and social networking sites. Traditional channels such as TV may still be used, but in a far more integrated, interactive way – perhaps including, for example, advertiser-funded broadcasting.

This ‘media-neutral’ planning perspective encourages the greater flexibility and innovation that are required when attempting to reach audiences in a world cluttered with messages and media. For example, campaigns now regularly use social networking sites such as Bebo to connect with younger audiences, or to encourage online audiences to calculate their personal carbon emissions. Away from the internet, outreach activities, events and town hall meetings are all part of the communication mix.

An interesting new media development in the UK is the use of advertiserfunded programming. For instance, instead of relying on traditional TV advertising to recruit Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), the Home Office has worked with ITV to produce a series of 45-minute episodes called Beat, Life on the Street, featuring the daily lives of a group of PCSOs. The series has attracted weekly audiences of between 2 million and 3 million viewers and is playing a part in the Home Office’s policy of helping people feel safer in their homes and local communities as well as supporting visible, responsive and accountable policing.

Awareness of and confidence in neighbourhood policing teams have soared among regular viewers, with research showing that 80 per cent think they are a good idea and 70 per cent believing they provide a good service. If the airtime had been bought as advertising, it would have cost £3.5 million; the series cost a fraction of this.

6. Collaboration, participation and co-creation

The more interactive, collaborative and experiential a communication is, the more successful it will be. Government needs to look beyond one-way ‘announcement-style’ communication and start the process of engagement, participation and collaboration in pursuit of joint outcomes.

While this may present challenges for government – and indeed for any institution that operates a command and control structure – the pay-offs from ceding control and sharing problems with citizens can be immense. Fuelled by Web 2.0, communities are beginning to solve problems themselves – whether in the form of all the inhabitants in a street setting up a web-based community in order to tackle issues ranging from rubbish collection to crime, or scientists collaborating worldwide to crack the genome sequence of the C. elegans worm.

Government needs to facilitate and catalyse the efforts both of its citizens and of those who work for government. Much work in the field of employee engagement has proved that a more open approach that invites staff to help solve problems faced by management can result in greater innovation and better performance – as well as reduced absenteeism, increased personal motivation and a genuine willingness to go the extra mile. This insight is especially applicable in the public sector, which so many people have joined in order to make a difference to society.

A recent example from the Department for Transport’s ‘Think’ campaign demonstrates the potential for gearing impact through collaboration. Instead of producing communications for teenagers, the department worked with teenagers to create a campaign that illustrated the dangers of not paying attention when crossing the road. One TV advertisement was recorded on mobile phones in a reportage style and also posted on YouTube. Within five days of appearing, it had been seen by 29 per cent of all teenagers in the UK – at no extra cost.

This graphically demonstrates that authentic propositions, created with the audience and using channels that connect with their lives, can cut through the thousands of messages we receive every day and move us to action.

Conclusion

Strategic communication has a key role to play in securing behaviour change. Although the examples used above are from the UK domestic policy context, the principles that underlie strategic communication can be applied universally. Where there are people, there is insight to be generated – all the more so if we are working with peoples of differing cultures, ethnicities and religions. And we will always need to work out how to segment our audiences so that we can craft and tailor compelling propositions.

Stakeholder management, making the right connections and identification of opportunities for closer collaboration are not just the discipline of a strategic communicator: they are principles relevant to all policy-makers who want to secure change.

The tools and techniques that can enable you to apply these principles are now readily available, regardless of your discipline or where you work: simply visit http://www.comms.gov.uk.

Notes

1. Speech by the Rt Hon. David Miliband MP, ‘Building an Environmental Union’, Berlin, 19 October 2006, http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/ministers/speeches/david-miliband/dm061019.htm.

2. Definitions of stakeholders vary, but the most useful is Freeman’s: ‘any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organisation’s objectives’ (R. Edward Freeman, Strategic management: a stakeholder approach, London: Financial Times/Prentice-Hall, 1983). In the present context, stakeholders may be distinguished from the audience on whom we are directly acting (in the police service example, potential recruits), and also from any very closely involved group: in the same example, we would probably call the police service a delivery partner, which is a more involved subset of stakeholder.