Why you need more than just information to change behaviour

In my first go-round of working in marketing and communications agencies – from the late 1980s til the dawn on the new millennium – my North Star was very much the storytelling smarts of the ancients. As a Classics graduate, I was naturally drawn to the story structure handed down from Aristotle onwards. From the three-act story structure (Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis) from his Poetics to the Ethos (authority) – Pathos (emotion) – Logos (rationality) from his Art of Rhetoric, I found my formal education unexpectedly helpful as a corporate and brand communicator.

But what always surprised me when working for some of the world’s biggest brands was that neither agency- nor client-side was there much interest in or attention paid to the psychology of communication. After all, through cognitive and behavioural psychology we have a pretty good understanding – and certainly many effective working models – of how the mind works and how we make decisions. Trouble was, few practitioners ever sought to apply these principles to effective communication. And this despite the fact that Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays – “the grandfather of public relations” – had published his seminal work Propaganda as long ago as 1928.

Why are we here?

My starting point has always been to determine first what the purpose of any communication campaign may be; there’s certainly little point in communicating for communication’s sake. There has to be a “Why?”, whether that’s to introduce a market to a new product, to launch a different (rather than better) competitive offer, to encourage people to start doing something (like exercise), stop doing something (like smoking), or do less of something (like drinking).

For me, there’s a higher order “Why?” underpinning all communications activity that links all of the “Why?”s in the paragraph above: to change behaviour. In part that’s intuitive and driven by my experience working for clients, asking about their motivations for activity and building programmes to deliver against them. In part it’s driven by my dissatisfaction with incurious former colleagues. And in part it’s driven by what I did for four years when I got sufficiently fed up with communications agencies to go back to school.

From 2000-2004, I studied for a Master’s and then a Doctorate in Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex . Not only did I satisfy my thirst for knowledge and unearth a deeply-practical quiver of tools and techniques from behavioural psychology to apply in communication from Kahneman, Tversky, and Damasio. I also met, fell in love with, and dug deep into the world of statistics. That Doctorate is the source of the “data” part of my self-definition as a “data storyteller”, the storytelling smarts learned earlier at the hands of Aristotle, Homer, and the rest.

Nudge, nudge – wink, wink – say no more!

When I came back out into the world of communications agencies in the mid-twenty-tweens, behavioural science was very definitely becoming fashionable. More importantly, it was starting to be used by agencies and clients – and Governments, too, in time, in the form of the Nudge Unit. Suddenly, it seemed, marketing was moving away from being the colouring-in department and was embracing the principles of the psychology of decision-making to building more effective campaigns. It was entirely coincidental that this had happened in my time spent out of agency life. But it certainly made my re-entry into that world a whole lot easier, evidence-based, and impactful.

These days, you’re not seen as a psychology wonk if you ask about the purpose of the communications campaign being planned. Nor are you deemed nerdy if you introduce models of behaviour change, from the COM-B model to Motivational Behaviour Change. In fact, campaigns that don’t take an evidence-based approach tend to be the exception that proves the rule.

Information is not enough

As a deeply practical simplifier, my starting point is that, whatever the goal of the campaign, it’s never enough to simply create communication. If you’re looking to convince an audience to change their behaviour, they need Information (rational “Why?”s – smoking is bad for you), Motivation (emotional “Why?”s – smoking makes you dance like your dad at a wedding), and Behavioural Skills (practical tools to effect change – a count-up app to calculate daily / weekly / monthly savings effected by not smoking).

This Information – Motivation – Behavioural Skills trifecta balances the emotional and the rational. And it works whether you’re looking to introduce handwashing or toothbrushing to a newly urbanised population in the developing world, whether you’re looking to accelerate the adoption of smart energy meters, or whether you’re looking to reduce the proportion of ultra-processed foods from a time- and cash-strapped young family.

Data has a big role to play in effective communication that follows the Information – Motivation – Behavioural Skills approach, too. Like that enduring definition of great strategy (that it’s as much about what you choose not to do as what you choose to do), great data storytelling is as much about empathy and humanity and respect for the data tolerance of the audience you seek to move to action as it is about the small amount of truly relevant data you choose to include in your narratives.

These principles are baked into the training we Agents of Insight deliver, both in-person (see next section) and online. To find out more about our self-serve, on-demand, any-device training course “Using Data Smarter”, click on the image below or follow this link.

Using Data Smarter – LIVE!

Until now, access to my in-person training has been limited to either my open access training courses – delivered via professional association partners, from the APG (Account Planning Group) to the MRG ( Media Research Group (MRG) ), from the MRS ( Market Research Society (MRS) ) to the PRCA ( Public Relations and Communications Association) – or to the courses booked by specific clients, with current favourites including 阿斯利康 , 诺和诺德 , and Publicis Groupe .

But in response to requests and popular demand, we’ve now decided to hold a series of open access, in-person Data Storytelling Masterclasses ourselves, the first of which takes place in Central London on Thursday 3 April. You are very definitely not alone if you and your team feel weighed?down by data, if you struggle to extract actionable insights, or if you find it challenging to connect functions in meaningful ways.?

Click on this link or the image below to find out more and to book your place at the Masterclass. Data storytelling isn’t a “nice to have” anymore. It’s essential for any organisation looking to thrive in today’s knowledge economy.?

The Data Malarkey podcast

Data Malarkey – the podcast about using data, smarter – was launched in March 2023 and we’ve published more than 40 episodes so far. The most recent episode – which dropped on Apple, Spotify, and our YouTube Channel @Data Malarkey – was the Greatest Hits of Season Six, which we titled “A Hard Day’s Data”.?

Guests from Season Six were from the usual potpourri of different domains, including: Ylann Schemm , VP of Corporate Responsibility at 爱思唯尔 and the Executive Director of the The Elsevier Foundation ; Mike Ellicock , Founder & CEO of Plain Numbers ; Cristina de Balanzo, Ph.D. , Founder and Board Director of Walnut Unlimited ; the political pollster of his generation, Professor Sir John Curtice from the 英国斯特拉斯克莱德大学 ; data privacy pathfinder Alice Wallbank from leading law firm Shoosmiths ; BrandAD founder Bill Wallsgrove ; and, Natalia Talkowska ?? from Natalka Design .

We’ll be back with a cracking opening episode of Season Seven, when I talk to Professor Sylvie Delacroix from 英国伦敦大学 - 伦敦国王学院 , where she runs the Centre for Data Futures. Other guests scheduled for the season come from the worlds of advertising, analytics, software, football, cricket, and psychology. Quite the regular mouse-mix-up.

As ever, any suggestions for guests – if you think you’d make a good guest or you know or work with someone who’d tell a great story about how they make smarter use of data – drop us an email at [email protected] or complete the simple application form at https://www.usingdatasmarter.com/guest

You can get straight there by clicking the image below.

We’d love to hear what you think

Do let us know what you think of the Data Malarkey Newsletter at [email protected]

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We’ll be back with a culture change special on 21 February, with the lead article titled “How to bridge the chasm between leaders and data scientists”. See you back here then.

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