Why Most Government Awareness Campaigns Don't Change Behaviour

Government awareness campaigns are one of the most common forms of public communication, and one of the most reliably ineffective at producing the outcome they were commissioned for. Understanding why is most of the way to fixing it.

The awareness trap

Awareness is easy to measure. You can count impressions, reach, recall. You can prove people saw the thing. What you usually can't prove is that anything changed because of it.

The assumption underneath most awareness campaigns is that if people know about something, they'll act on it. Decades of behavioural research says that's wrong, almost across the board. Awareness is rarely the thing standing between people and the behaviour. People already know floods cause damage. They know smoking causes cancer. They know recycling matters. They still don't always do it.

Run an information campaign that doesn't touch the actual drivers of behaviour and you get a great-looking report and nothing else. Reach, recall, impressions — all there. Behaviour change — not there.

What drives behaviour instead

People do what they think the people around them are doing. If the social norm in someone's community already runs against the behaviour you're after, telling them about the issue changes nothing. The norm wins.

People also act in ways that match how they see themselves. Behaviour that fits someone's identity sticks. Behaviour that doesn't requires real motivation and rarely lasts. Ask people to act against their self-image and the campaign will fail no matter how far it reaches.

People take the easy option. If the behaviour you want is harder than the one they're already doing, most people won't switch, regardless of how important you tell them it is. Removing friction often does more than any amount of messaging.

And people feel before they think. A campaign that makes someone feel something — recognised, amused, gently called out — sticks harder than one that just lays out the facts. The feeling opens the door. The information walks through it.

What good behaviour change campaigns do differently

They start with research into what's actually driving the behaviour, not assumptions about what the audience needs to hear. They set a specific behaviour objective, not a communication message. They build the creative around the real psychological and social barriers in the way. And they measure what people actually did, not just who saw it.

Let's Get It Sorted, a recycling campaign we made, hit 18.5 million impressions in six weeks and 37% brand recall against a 25% target. The number that actually matters is the next one: 67% of viewers said they'd taken action after seeing it, and 71% felt more confident about recycling properly. It worked because it was built around what was stopping people, not because more people happened to see it.

Welcome to the Fold

One of our directors has a PhD in psychology and more than twenty years of applied behavioural science experience, and it shows up in how every brief gets approached from the first conversation. We're appointed to the Queensland All-of-Government Creative Services Panel (GGS0120-25) and six other government panels. If you want to talk about what behaviour change thinking would do for your next campaign, get in touch.