Behavior Change: Decoding Comprehension — Part 2/3

This is Part 2/3 about my series on an elaboration of behavior change framework that have been most useful in my work. For Part 1, please refer to this article.

Credit: Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

Let’s understand understanding

This part of my series on behavior change is focused on decoding the Comprehension aspect of the chain/cycle of events that get people to change their behaviors.

Just to revise, we know from Part 1 that Yale Persuasion Theory explains the various facets that you would need to consider if you aim for behavior change. And that these facets are non-linear and often cyclical.

Comprehension is is primarily about everything that you do to get through to the person whom you wish you influence.

Elaboration likelihood model aims to explain various ways of processing stimuli, why they are used, and their outcomes on attitude change. This model talks about two different ways, or routes of triggering an attitude change:

1. Central Route: Under this route, the person will base their attitude after careful consideration, thought and evaluation. Because this route requires high amounts of conviction, investment and resource, this is by far the best route for affecting behavior change. Eg. I attend a day long event filled with activities and sessions around investing for retirement.
2. Peripheral Route: The peripheral route is when the person bases their attitude or behavior using proxies of real indicators, often within a shorter span of time than using the central route. Eg. Me coming across a short Facebook advertisement on investing for retirement.

While central route is the most preferred to affect behavior change, it cannot be done without both routes being actively leveraged, in varying degrees throughout the life cycle of your activity. But, I want to dig deeper into Peripheral route for one primary reason: Steadily declining attention spans of our audiences. This phenomenon has pushed advertisers, campaigners and communications professionals to do more and convert in a very short duration of time. Let’s break down the components of enabling effective comprehension using the Peripheral Route.

The Peripheral Route: 6 Delivery Strategies

There are 6 delivery delivery strategies that help us get the most out of the peripheral routes. A good behavior change program would incorporate almost all of these delivery strategies in it to ensure effectiveness.

Content Strategy: Your program and it’s content suite must do a great job of laying out a clear, concise and understandable argument while consistently repeating it to your audience in different, engaging ways across multiple media. The theme of your argument becomes critical and hence, it must be persuasive. Muddled lines, over complicated language, jargon must avoided at all costs while beginning design.

Source Strategy: While the content must be clear and concise, it matters even more for us to control and curate the source from where our audiences get these messages from. A good source is someone with the perception of credibility and demonstrated expertise in the subject matter. I use perception, simply because critical thinking is by default low in the peripheral route, and decisions get taken in seconds and are often done through proxies and heuristics. Another reason why relatability and attractiveness also rank high when it comes to a ‘good’ source.

Huawei used the credibility and trustworthiness of WSJ to change business leaders’ attitudes towards itself. Credit: WSJ.

Appeal Strategy: Human beings are driven by many things in their day to day life. Your appeal strategy includes having a very keen understanding of your audience and knowing what makes them tick. What part of their consciousness are you going to leverage to affect a change in behavior or attitude? Appeals could be of many kinds:

• Functional: You need to shave, Gillette makes amazing shaving equipment. Gillette: The best a man can get(be)
• Social: You like connecting with friends, Facebook enables you to do that. Sign up for Facebook, you’re missing out.
• Sensory: You are a straight man in a (faux)hetero-normative world, you enjoy the idea of women being attracted to you by your scent. Axe deodorant for attractive men.
• Fear: You like this offer because it’s 40% cheaper than it’s regular price. Buy now, or you miss out on this spot offer forever.
• Guilt: There are children dying in Africa. You just checked out of Whole Foods with a 30$ bill and a bucket of Kombucha. Surely you can donate a dollar for hungry kids.
• Altrusitic: Together we can be a better, more humane world. With your monthly contribution of just a dollar, we can send an underprivileged child to school. #TogetherWeCan

Channel Strategy: The simplest of them all: What distribution channel are you going to use to make sure that you get the best chance for your message to be absorbed by your user? Print? Television? Social media? Search Engine? Know your user, know their habits, know their preferences and target them at a time when they would receive — nay — almost anticipate your message.

Storytelling and narrative: Technically would be included within the content strategy, but this one is more about presentation. So much of behavior change is the narrative or the story people end up telling themselves, their peers et. al. It adds that extra conviction and commitment to people’s action. It provides a clear cause for that certain action. And that becomes an extra something that gets people going and not dropping out of the program.

Novel Relevance: What makes this program or activity or strategy more unique than others? What makes it legendary? What makes this unforgettable. Novel relevance is the hardest to enable and also the most fickle minded of them all. There is no formula to this. Enabling this could mean lightening in a bottle. Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? Ended up raising about $115 million for the ALS foundation, with about 17 million participants.

Summary:

• Elaboration likelihood model aims to explain various ways of processing stimuli, why they are used, and their outcomes on attitude change.
• Two different ways of processing stimuli for people: Central and Peripheral route.
• There are six delivery strategies for the peripheral route: Content, Source, Appeal, Channel, Novelty and Narrative.

Hey! If you enjoyed this, you would also love some other essays I have written. Check out ‘What does a moat look like?’, ‘Hypothesis Creation: A consulting super-skill’ and ‘How to start playing with Agile’. Follow me on @Slim_Snail for everything Marketing, Brand Strategy, Consulting and Strategy. Also, request you all to like and share it with your friends and colleagues. Thanks! :)