Public Relations - PR Research helps professionals determine what drives people's behavior

One of the most difficult challenges for public relations campaigns is to identify the factors that actually cause people to change their behavior.

Very PR and advertising is focused on awareness - making people aware of the dangers of a behavior and / or aware of the benefits of change.

But awareness is far to affect people's behavior. Otherwise, nobody would smoke, overeat, drink and drive, or drive while talking on the phone. We all know the dangers of these behaviors, yet persist. The answer to behavior change is to understand the "drivers" of behavior.

For example, when my PR company started working with the local teen safe driving campaign, we wanted the boys and told them: "When you drive safely, what motivates you to do?" Teens may say they feared the death in an accident, or feared to hurt others. But the vast majority of teens said that "the fear of a ticket" motivated them to drive safely. It 'nice to have information, rather than trying to scare teen drivers with fate and death, focusing on the most immediate consequences of getting a ticket. The elderly may be more motivated by security concerns, but for teenagers, who see themselves as immortal, safety messages fall on deaf ears. But many kids have got a ticket, or know someone who has, and that the consequence is a more effective motivational drivers. A little additional research has shown that the financial consequences for a single ticket you can add up to $ 3,000 in fines and, in particular, the increase in insurance premiums.

So the key to influencing the behavior of people with PR is not so much creative fulfillment of a campaign, but the front-end research to identify the true drivers of behavioral change. Better research, better results .......