Individuality
We are all different and because of that, we all see the world in our own unique way as we delete, distort and generalise what we take in based on our cognitive biases. Yet in many ways we are predictable and because of this we can break down people and groups of people into types. This can be very useful when we are looking to market or communicate an idea or we are looking to bring about change.
There are many psychometric, biopsychosocial, psychographic and neurolinguistic categorisation systems out in the world and they can be confusing. But they can all have their merits and be useful when we are designing behavioural communication and marketing strategies to have the most impact.
Over the coming weeks, we will be looking at variations of these with the aim of, towards the end of this series of articles, distilling them down into useful, usable tools for profiling and developing personas within your strategic communications plan.
But do people want to change?
Of course as the old saying goes “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink” and its true that you may manage to get your message in front of your target audience but if they do not want to change it is going to be an uphill battle. This is why we are encouraging you to design detailed and integrated personas for your target audience. This way we can then show you how you use this information to create compelling arguments that are more likely to persuade them or trigger them to make or affect behavioural personal or social change.
Value the change you make
Peoples value maps are different. In order to affect change, we need to understand the value systems that people are working to and not assume that their values are the same as ours.
Our values are tied into and are a driving force of, our beliefs and our values and beliefs will affect our behaviours.
If we want to affect behavioural change on an individual or social level we need to understand and affect change within a persons or social groups values and beliefs. As these are core foundations of their identity we need to tread carefully. But over time we can learn to skilfully address social and behavioural change by understanding a persons world view, their maps of reality and linguistic structure of limiting or negative belief and appeal to their value systems.
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Interested in finding out more about Behavioral Insights, Behavioural Economics, Persuasion and Communications Science?
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