Of Noise and Change

In the marketing of ideas the product is intangible. It only gains value through an individual’s acceptance, or rejection, of those ideas and concepts. The degree of perceived value established is proportional to the subject’s degree of acceptance, or rejection, of that concept.

Behavioral modification is accomplished through a single impact, rarely the first. When the target perceives an idea as important and requiring their personnel action. All behavior modifying communications should solicit an active value judgment on the part of the target. (I agree, I disagree). This is the point at which the target begins to internalize, or personalize, the massage content as something having meaning to themselves that requires action.

I never cease to be amazed at the number of people with messages who forget this one simple fact. You have a lot better chance of getting people to do what you want them to do if you simply ask them to do it that way.

I stopped counting the number of advertisements and public service messages which impart vast amounts of very convincing information to their targets then forget to solicit an action based on that information from the target. Stop for a moment and consider what happens inside your targets head. They hear the information, agree or disagree with it, then say “So” or “that was interesting”. People are lazy. If your messages do not solicit an action, then no action will be taken.

Until the point where the message is consciously assimilated by personal value judgment, it remains abstract, with only potential value. Only when your target consciously, or unconsciously, applies a personal value judgment will your message have an valid impact. A target may be exposed to the same message or it’s variations many times with out assimilating its content or making a personal value judgment. Such lost impacts are said to be lost in the “communication noise” of daily life.

Value judgments may occur on various levels of perception. These levels of perception may be divided into two main categories, each of which operates differently and has a different end result. Conscious decisions are those that are made after reflecting on an idea's pros and cons in order to derive a predetermined operational guideline that the subject will then apply to all similar circumstances. This is a conscious cognitive process. The subject decides what is best for them and acts upon that decision accordingly.

The second is a judgment made on the unconscious level. It is an automatic response based upon past judgments or learning. If you say to a Muslim that Allah is not God then they will not even think about your idea, they will reject it out of hand. If you ask a farmer to try and grow crops without water you wont get very far.

The reason is simple and complicated at the same time. As we grow and develop from babies through child hood we are constantly being taught “ basic truths” as our parents, community, and society see them. Later as we mature we began to add our own basic truths from personal experience. Those truths we automatically accept as universal and so there is no need to question them. When something, say your message, disagrees with one of those established truths no thought is needed; it is flatly rejected because the appropriate response was decided upon years ago.

A few paragraphs back I mentioned communication background noise and the importance it plays in getting effective impacts from your messages. Back ground noise is when many messages are all competing for the targets attention at the same time. It’s like a market full of hawkers all touting their wares, all contributing to the general noise level, and all trying to get the targets attention. What happens? The target shuts down, filters out the background noise, and goes on about their life. The effect is to make your job of getting through those filters, and making an effective impact, that much harder.

The rapid increase in communications platforms and advertising media in developing countries, above all the reach of those media into areas, which were traditionally, ignored, means that resistance to message impacts is increasing logarithmically among target groups. People that classically were the most receptive and least complex to reach.

Few development communications experts take the existing levels of “ background noise” into account when planning their strategies. The result is a decline in communication efficiency along with a sharp rise in cost per effective impact. Notice I said effective impact? It is simply not enough that your targets walk down the street whistling your jingle. You want them walking down the street whistling your jingle and behaving the way you want them to.

As background noise increases it becomes harder and harder to attract and keep the targets attention long enough to solicit a positive reaction.

Back Ground Noise and Behavioral Change