Men – particularly young men – do a lot of stupid stuff. Sometimes really dangerous stupid stuff. They drive too fast, get too drunk, get stoned, get high, get fat, fight, fornicate, often all at once. People get hurt, people die, and so governments have to do something about it.
One of the things governments do is turn to advertising agencies because we’re expert at selling stuff. But selling behaviour change is not like selling a tin of Milo. It’s about a thousand times more difficult, and quite possibly a task beyond advertising alone. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on advertising in Australia trying to get men to change, and for the most part it’s been a complete waste of money. Men don’t change much, and when they do it’s mostly in order to get laid. (In fairness to blokes, people don’t change much. One only has to watch The Seven Sins of England to see how the social problems that plague the UK today have been plaguing it for centuries, regardless of government interventions.)
We don’t pretend to have the answer. However, while chatting with some clinical psychologists about Aussie blokes we heard something that might help. They said the worst way to get a man who was behaving badly – drinking, cheating, shouting at the kids – to change was to hold a mirror up to his behaviour. Men respond poorly to criticism, so confronting them about it – “Look at what you’re doing” – usually backfires. They shut down, don’t listen, and keep doing what they were doing before.
Could this be why so many government campaigns fail? We think it might. Most of these “social marketing” campaigns – like the recent binge drinking one from NSW Health – show the bad behaviour. They hold up a mirror. Our psychologists would argue that’s the least effective thing to do. What would be better? In a counselling environment, it would be three things in combination:
1) show the impact of his behaviour not on himself, but on someone whose opinion he cares about (particularly his kids, his mum, or a woman he’d like to screw)
2) deliver a credible threat of losing something he values (this will be of no surprise to Nudge readers)
3) provide actions – men are doers, not thinkers, so give him new things to do
We recognise it’s nearly impossible to do all that in an ad. But an advertising campaign working in tandem with new government policy could! Imagine if the RTA’s fantastic “Pinkie” campaign (which showed the impact of speeding behaviour on women and mates) was accompanied by a law which impounded the vehicles of young speeders (a threat of loss), as well as an “arsehole zone” sticker sent to everyone under 25 to stick (something they can do) on their speedo at 80km – when the needle goes above it, you’re in the arsehole zone (reinforcing the new/better behaviour).
How do these three things – impact on others, loss aversion, and new behaviours – apply to your business? (They have application far beyond government campaigns alone…)
