The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
OPINION | AGGREY MUGANGA | In marketing, communication and advertising, we are in the business of behavior. We want people to try something, switch from one brand to another, use a service more often, recommend it to someone else or remain loyal to it. We invest heavily in understanding audiences and finding the right message to influence those decisions. Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) takes a slightly different approach. Instead of starting with what we should tell people, it first asks what is stopping them from acting.
SBCC is most associated with public health and development programs like getting families to sleep under mosquito nets, encouraging mothers to attend antenatal care and improving nutrition practices. While these may seem far from selling a product or service, the mutual challenge is that giving people information does not always change what they do. People do not make decisions simply because they have been given good information.
One can know that sleeping under a mosquito net reduces the risk of malaria and still not use one every night, with good reason; the room may be too hot, the net may be uncomfortable, there may be nowhere convenient to hang it, and other reasons that more information about the dangers of malaria will not necessarily solve.
So, the problem is not the message. It could be price, access, convenience, habit or trust. SBCC helps identify the real barrier before deciding how communication can help.
Maad McCann’s experience with SBCC stretches back to malaria prevention work in 2013 and later the Obulamu campaign from 2014. One of the important disciplines this work reinforced then was that understanding an audience means going much further than describing them. Age, income, location, occupation and media consumption are useful, but they do not necessarily explain behavior.
SBCC pushes further. What does this person currently do, and why? What makes the existing behavior easier or more rewarding? What would make the alternative difficult? Whose opinion matters to them? What do people around them consider normal? What would have to change for the desired behavior to become realistic? These questions produce a very different kind of consumer insight.
Consider the familiar commercial question: Why aren’t people buying our product? The easiest answer might be awareness, so we advertise harder. But suppose people already know the product. Perhaps they do not trust it. Perhaps the pack size does not suit their daily spending pattern. Perhaps retailers rarely recommend it. Perhaps another brand has become the accepted choice within their peer group. Suddenly, the answer is no longer simply a better advert.
Another important lesson from SBCC is that behavior rarely happens in isolation. A health program seeking to change maternal health behavior, for example, may discover that speaking only to pregnant women is insufficient. Partners may control household expenditure, mothers-in- law may influence decisions about pregnancy and childcare, health workers may shape trust, while religious and community leaders can reinforce existing social norms. Changing one’s behavior can therefore require engaging several people around them. Brands can learn from this too.
SBCC also challenges the comfortable habit of developing the answer in the boardroom and taking it to the audience when it is almost finished. Our work has exposed us to the value of co- creation and testing communication with the people it is meant for. A great campaign is one that helps move people towards the desired action.
The same thinking should shape how we measure success. Reach, views and engagement matter, but what did people do? If the goal is trial, purchase or adoption, that is what we should ultimately measure.
Ultimately, SBCC offers marketers a deeper understanding of how and why people make choices. Effective communication comes from identifying the influences and barriers behind those choices and using that understanding to shape action.
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The writer is a Social and Behavior Change Communication Specialist MAAD McCANN
