This is how our most recent Comms Café with Jake Reynolds from The Behavioural Insights Team began. Answers came up like less purchasing of single-use plastics and more reliance on local resources helping to reduce waste, household retrofit, EV uptake, less reliance on cars, reducing wood burning and a better understanding of the impact of unsustainable behaviours.

Now identifying these desired behaviour changes is one thing, actually creating impactful messaging to bring about these changes is another.

So to dive deeper into the influence we, as communications professionals, can have on green behaviour change, Jake shared with us the 11 Principles of Climate Change Communications for Behaviour Changes along with real campaign examples and the results they achieved. It was a fascinating look behind-the-scenes of some campaigns that we even recognised from our day-to-day lives.

If you weren’t able to join us, we’ve got you covered.

Here are 5 of the principles Jake shared for you to consider when building out your next Comms Campaign:

1. Keep messaging simple, short and punchy. Your reader should be able to digest what you are trying to say in a matter of seconds. Relatable and familiar analogies is one such strategy to achieve this.
2. Make your message action oriented - give your reader a clear directive, followed by a ‘how to’ (Jake showed us a highly effective example of this with picture of painted footsteps on the ground leading to a city centre recycling bin).
3. Add novelty - create the unexpected
4. Think about already existing values of the local community, instead of defaulting to standard climate identities.
5. Consider the timing of your prompts - make sure you understand your user journey first, before adding your messaging throughout.

Jake really impressed upon us how crucial effective communications campaigns are on the road to Net Zero and how important public engagement, education and encouragement is to influence this change we hope for in sustainability.  

It was a highly thought-provoking hour and we all walked away with some new ideas to implement into our own campaigns.

Comms Café is a free, monthly event hosted by Westco Academy to showcase incredible Communications work happening throughout the UK and beyond. Our guest speakers come with real case studies, unique insights and expertise that is guaranteed to help you in your own work. 

Our next Comms Café will be in September, so stay tuned for the details. If learning and development is a priority for you and your team, we encourage you to have a look at Westco Academy’s courses that run year-round.