Resource

7. Guidance on Effective Outreach Messaging

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1.1 Developing your messaging strategy
1.2 Psychological and societal drivers your messaging strategy needs to consider
1.3 How to design and deliver effective messages

Effective outreach messaging is key to delivering sustainable changes to improve animal welfare. This resource will outline how to develop your messaging strategy; the psychological and societal drivers to consider that will influence the content and design of the messaging; and how to design and deliver messaging in the most effective way to be heard, accepted, and ultimately change behaviour. Follow the steps outlined in the Community Development, Community Engagement, and Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approaches to gather the information you need to generate a greater understanding of your target audience, including barriers that might prevent behaviour change, and what messaging and communication mediums may work best for the specific audience you aim to target.

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Initiation Phase, Planning Phase, Implementation Phase

Approaches for Working With Communities:
Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach

Behavioural Drivers (COM-B):
Capability, Motivation

Stages of Change:
Pre-Contemplation Stage, Contemplation Stage

Project Support:
Facilitator Resources, Training

Specific Topics:
Outreach and Communication,Community Change Agents

ATTENTION!

Communication is a two-way process; it is as important to listen as it is to speak. Listen to feedback given by your target audience, ask for their guidance and then actively listen to their response, and avoid imposing your own ideas without giving full credence to theirs. Your target audience will teach you about their community, so listen and observe carefully.

1.1 Developing your messaging strategy

No community is homogenous, so it is critical to consider the following as you develop ideas (adapted from [32]):

Who do you want to communicate with?
Are there potential supporters or barriers to communication? You need to ascertain who the allies and gatekeepers are to the information you want to communicate i.e. those who may support or regulate the way messaging can be designed and disseminated? You will need to need to anticipate reactions when developing/framing the messages so ensure you work with these allies and gatekeepers to facilitate the effectiveness of the communication.
Do you need to tailor messages for different target audiences? Are you trying to change the behaviour of animal owners, or perhaps people who offer resource provision for animal owners, or those at a higher level of leadership within a community?
Why should your message matter to your audience?
What are the differences within your target audience you need to consider, such as values, social norms, beliefs, religions, traditions, power dynamics and varied experiences because of intersecting issues in their lives?
Does everyone in your target audience have a similar capacity and motivation for change? For example, are there differences in literacy levels, knowledge, and access to resources or wide socio-economic divides? Does everyone have the same need or want to change?
What is the main overarching narrative any messaging needs to convey?
What are your communication goals? Key messages need to support these goals. Try to keep specific goals to only one or two; distribution of resources over too many goals will dilute messaging and reduce the likelihood of behaviour change.
What are your messaging needs - are they needed to support a long term or short-term subject?
How does your messaging create a sustainable vision for the future – do you know what that might look like?
How widely do you want to disseminate information? (this may also depend on your organisation’s targets, which will influence how accessible it needs to be to a wider audience) A small, more personalised approach can be more effective but is more resource heavy, than a larger scale approach, which is less resource intensive, reaches a greater audience but may cause less degree of change [88].
How do the audience share information between themselves, and how do they most readily receive information?

Your message is the core information you wish to communicate, through whichever media you have decided will be most effective within your target audience (refer to Societal and Campaigns Approach for more information about types of communication media). Your messaging needs to persuade people that they need to change, though of course behaviour change is not as simple as telling someone they need to change. People need to be supported and given opportunities to explore the problems and generate ideas for possible solutions - giving them ownership of the changes they need to create ( [89]). Bear in mind you will never attain 100% uptake of any behaviour change target, people are individuals with differing priorities and pressures.

1.2 Psychological and societal drivers your messaging
strategy needs to consider

Behaviour is incredibly complex so effective messaging to create sustainable behaviour change needs to consider how all the following drivers’ interplay and influence each other, for example, knowledge can influence attitudes but then changing attitudes can lead to a person seeking out more knowledge; internal and external drivers can be interdependent [90]. Also refer to the facilitator resource 2. Essential communication skills for promoting behaviour change.

1.2.1 Internal and External Drivers

Internal and external drivers must be considered when designing messaging for human behaviour change.
The following section outlines different internal and external drivers influencing people’s behaviours.

Social norms

Social norms are the informal rules and understandings everyone abides by [91] and are an important driver in behaviour change; what people see others doing may be more likely to encourage them to adopt the behaviour [90]. However, social norms can also create barriers to positive behaviours by the persistence of negative behaviours that are perceived as acceptable within that community [91]. Social norms as drivers of behaviour make perfect sense; if we see others performing a behaviour, we can see that it works, and we can also observe the method. People are drawn towards those who behave the same way and avoid those who deviate (generally!). Using messaging that harnesses social and descriptive norms may increase the effectiveness of the information you are trying to convey, particularly when the information is included as part of guided group discussion [90]. For example, highlighting how a target behaviour has benefitted or been adopted by a proportion of people already within their community, is more likely to influence uptake, than communicating about social responsibility towards animal welfare improvement. Be careful when developing messaging, as highlighting the frequency people engage in undesirable behaviours can also increase the likelihood of other people adopting these behaviours for the same reasons as previously mentioned. People are highly social, so if they believe an undesirable behaviour is common within their community your message could have the opposite impact to the one you are expecting [90, 89].

Values

Introducing this concept in your messaging is important to overcome barriers such as those mentioned previously, in the maintenance of negative behaviours due to social norms. Introducing shared values, a value-based approach, or thinking about the values needed to grow within the community to move towards positive behaviour change, can create useful dialogue about the similarities we share with the audience and enables diverging behaviour to be reframed within a more acceptable vision [91]. Values determine a person’s willingness to change, their openness to new information and their concern for ‘others’. Although changing people’s values is incredibly difficult, targeting these values when developing messaging can be a very effective method to encourage behaviour change [90].

Attitude

Attitudes are strong predictors of behaviour when “based on personal experience, specific to the behaviour, and salient”. The most effective messaging considers the credibility of its source (your key influencers), the format your messaging takes and its content. Make messaging applicable and salient for your target audience, something the audience can believe is replicable and beneficial to them in their current environment [90].

Beliefs

In addition, an individual’s beliefs will influence their interpretation and processing of messaging; beliefs are an individual’s assertion that something exists or is true developed from their direct personal exposure to information. People are more likely to accept messaging that is framed in a way that is consistent with their beliefs; if messaging does not challenge their world view, they are less likely to reject it. When people are exposed to messaging that is inconsistent with their beliefs, they are likely to show resistance to the new information and more firmly fix onto their original view; this also has implications when developing messaging as people will most strongly believe the first messaging that is delivered so ensuring it is accurate is essential. Be aware of your own beliefs when developing messaging, incorrect assumptions may cause offence and alienate your audience.

Personal norms

Personal norms will play a part in how willing someone is to take responsibility and change their behaviour. It is difficult to increase someone’s sense of personal responsibility but asking for a level of commitment through your communications can increase the likelihood a person will try to act. This is even more effective when people verbalise or write their commitments publicly rather than in private, but these commitments should always be a voluntary action [90]. When an agreed commitment is written and displayed publicly within a community, those who have joined in with the agreement will have a greater feeling that the behaviour change is being internally driven by their own choices. For behaviour change to be truly sustainable, a person needs to be able to attribute that change to themselves, rather than some external forces. However, there will be differences on how much value is placed on individuals expressing their own individual behaviour, depending on whether communities have interdependent or independent cultures [90].

Emotions

Emotions are a useful route to encourage sustainable behaviour [90]. Increasing empathy, such as encouraging your target audience to ‘imagine how an animal feels’ or by appreciating some elements of shared experiences with their animals, may promote willingness to try methods of husbandry that are known to be more humane.

Self Efficacy

Self efficacy or a person’s belief in their ability to perform an action, increases motivation to perform a behaviour [90]. Some members of your target audience, such as those more marginalised or discriminated against, may have less confidence in their ability to create change or make a difference [92, 93]. Using messaging that increases knowledge about the behavioural options available to improve animal welfare, particularly when broken down into smaller manageable steps with regular positive feedback, can support peoples’ perceptions of their ability to change their practices [90]. Messaging may need to be developed that helps support the challenging or broadening of perceptions within the wider public e.g. promoting women as key decision makers in seeking services when this is not typical within their community or how an individual woman perceives themselves.

Social Capital

Encouraging the collaboration of groups of individuals, either as formed memberships or peer to peer, can increase the effectiveness of messaging. Groups of individuals working together may provide a link between individual action attempts and a wider societal reach; working together provides social support and encourages sustaining behaviour change to form habitual patterns. Social capital or the shared bonds, reciprocity and trust encouraged by working together increases obligations and cooperation and is a useful concept to embrace. However, it will not work in isolation if a community does not have the capacity for change (such as a lack of resources, knowledge, power and so on) but embedding messages within social groups is known to increase their effectiveness. Ensuring messaging and communications are participatory in their development increases the chances the behaviour change will be adopted by heightening the sense of group or social identity and empowerment within the target audience [90].

Cognitive dissonance

Correct framing will influence how well received and understood your messaging is, and ultimately influence whether people are likely to change their behaviour and/ or attitudes. Incorrectly framed messages may move people into cognitive dissonance and denial, creating a barrier towards any further change [94]; but harnessing dissonance may also motivate behaviour change in a direction more consistent with a person’s attitudes and as the behaviour changes the attitude may change to be more consistent with the behaviour [90].

1.3 How to design and deliver effective messages

Messaging as a journey (adapted from [124])

To provide a good, solid foundation, messaging needs to capture attention and be relevant to your audience:

Vivid

visually eye–catching, vividly descriptive and/or audibly attention grabbing
- Where possible, use media or communications that utilise all the senses – people learn and remember in different ways so try to capture the imagination of as many of your audience as possible. Embed messages within the physical environment your target audience frequent and the media sources they tend to utilise [125].

Applicable

Applicable: to real life - tangible, believable, achievable
- Make the idea you are trying to convey tangible to that audience – if a concept is tricky to understand make it clearer by relating it to something where they do have experience.

Personalised

Personalised: to your target audience – beliefs, social norms, attitudes etc.,
- Use images as close to the target audiences’ experience as possible – it needs to be believable, and people need to feel they too could achieve what is being shown. Use local landmarks, recognisable clothing, types of building, and so on.

(Adapted from [32])

1.3.1 Development of messaging

An effective communication strategy must include well-conceived content, but the delivery, dissemination and execution of the information is key to drawing the audience in whilst also motivating and empowering them to change [97].

Empower

Messaging needs to support a person’s feeling of empowerment, be inclusive, non-discriminatory and avoid gender-blindness/ gender exploitation.

Use understandable language

Keep messaging simple, avoid jargon or the use of unfamiliar terminology as this will turn a receptive audience into an ambivalent one very quickly.

Use audience guidance to develop messages

Target audiences may adhere to very different values and behaviours in terms of communication styles. Develop relationships and be creative, respect, listen and respond to these differences. It is important to generate messaging that is meaningful to your audience and allow them to be instrumental in supporting that process of change. Prescriptive communications and provision of solutions can create reliance and disempower your audience, and this process can encourage psychological reactance, which creates barriers to change [91, 98]. See Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach for the practical ways to encourage target audience discussion.

Frame your message

Evaluation of ways that make the behaviour easy or difficult, and whether solutions are simple or require more involved interventions, all impact how messaging is framed and how it will be received. People cannot change their behaviour if the resource required to support that change is not available within their environment or is inaccessible due to its cost or complexity of use [90]. Most messages highlight positive outcomes but sometimes highlighting the losses that may be incurred if a behaviour change is not adopted can be more effective. Emphasising the local and immediate impacts of the issue can encourage your audience to relate to the issue and increase effectiveness of communications [32, 97].

Debunking

Correcting misinformation or myths can backfire, so it is recommended to avoid using this technique in your messaging. Mentioning misinformation can serve to increase familiarity and reinforce the maintenance or adoption of negative undesirable behaviours. If you have no option and this technique must be used, any misinformation debunking should always follow clear evidence containing the correct information [97].

Make messaging specific

Describe actions clearly, in easy steps to improve clarity and comprehension and increase a person’s self-efficacy (see section 1.2.1).

Avoid fear based, threatening or authoritarian/ prescriptive messaging

People react to these types of messages with either problem-focused coping or emotion-focused coping, and responses are heavily reliant on the degree of self-efficacy (see section 1.2.1) and the control people have of their situation. Reactions are likely to lead to avoidance, particularly when dealing with marginalised communities, so this method of messaging should be avoided [32].

Encourage commitment

By getting people to sign up to the project, perhaps those who have signed up or pledged to work at targeted changes get some visible marker that they have joined – such as a badge or other signal that increases the chance of them sticking to the project (people do not like to be inconsistent), which can then encourage peers to want to sign up. Refer to personal norms and social norms in section 1.2.1. for more information. Public commitment to change tends to be effective at sustained behaviour change by transferring motivation from an external source (pleasing others) to an internal one (self-fulfilment) [90, 89].

Provide goals

Encouraging the target audience either individually or together to work towards certain target behaviours can increase the perception of social norms (see section 1.2.1.) and encourage peer-to peer pressure to engage in them.

Make messages memorable

Develop specific prompts to help people remember the behaviour changes when you are clear which behaviour you are targeting, these prompts can also be linked to parts of an established routine to increase the chances of habit formation [91]. If there are barriers to people adopting some behaviours, for instance being unsure about how to treat certain wounds, you could create a card that your audience can use that takes them through the steps (either visually or written depending on literacy) or create a vivid reminder to water their animals that they can attach to somewhere prominent [32, 89].

1.3.2 Delivery of messages

Use a credible source

Pick your spokesperson/s carefully; trust and rapport is an important element of behaviour change [97]. To disseminate some of your messaging you may want to use existing social networks and so enlisting people considered influential within their community is key – refer to Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach for guidance on how to identify these key influencers. Do not immediately assume the key influencers to be the official leaders within a community. Do your research; key influencers are those who the target audience look up to as valuable sources of credible information and are also those who encounter the greatest number of people [90]. Avoid the use of groups or channels that could increase social divisions, such as strongly political or those from a very different socio-economic background [90].

Avoid solely providing information

This is known to be less effective at promoting behaviour change, although knowledge does matter. Giving people information to enable them to understand their behavioural options and the impact of these options on welfare is important, particularly at low levels of knowledge [90].

Narratives

The use of narratives with compelling storylines and characters that relate to the target audiences’ beliefs and values can emotionally engage audiences and motivate change with greater effectiveness than arguments and information [97].

Behaviour change is dynamic

Not all information will be relevant or most effective at the same time or in the same way [96] – adapt your messaging, accordingly, listen to feedback and for change talk, different messaging will work effectively depending on the Stage of Change of your target audience.

Showcase

Use early adopters of the targeted behaviour change to showcase the benefits in your messaging. Showcasing examples from early adopters serves two purposes, it not only shows the target audience that behaviour change is achievable, which creates social norms and overcomes barriers, but also it increases the commitment the adopter has and in doing so increases the chance the behaviour change will be sustained [89]. These early adopters could also assist by disseminating messaging; encouraging peer to peer or community contact is a major influence on adoption of behaviour changes via social diffusion [32].

Feedback

Effective messaging involves receiving feedback from your target audience, which can help guide and adapt your messaging to make it more effective, but you also have a responsibility to feedback to your target audience. Where target behaviours have been adopted feeding back to your community about, for instance, how many people have reduced the wounds in their animals, or have adopted free access to water provision, can serve to increase the likelihood of the behaviour change being sustained in the longer term.

Monitor and evaluate

Do this throughout your communications and adapt your strategy where needed using the tools outlined in Community Development, Community Engagement and Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approaches.

Link to References Cited