Jeff Jordon on removing barriers to create behaviour change

In February, the Drug Foundation helped plan the Agents of Change Summit in San Diego. Check out this video of our friend Jeff Jordon from Rescue Agency opening the conference on the topic of lowering the burdens of change when doing behaviour change marketing.

Presenting to 550 participants, Jeff explained that the key to lowering psychological barriers to change, such as lack of knowledge, skill, relevance, confidence, and unhealthy norms, is creating new associations between identities and behaviours.

In traditional marketing, some campaigns augment existing behaviours or norms in a specific segment, while others aim to drive new behaviour in a population or segment. Behaviour change marketing aims for the latter – taking a health behaviour that looks and feels weird to a target segment and making it feel authentic and relevant - even if it still feels weird because people are not use to seeing them associated with one another.

Jeff Jordon carried out the Peer Crowd Discovery Study in New Zealand in 2016, which is now shaping a number of major alcohol behaviour change initiatives being overseen by an interagency committee.

Read more about the Peer Crowd Discovery Study