Stories from the Forefront: Interviews with Social and Behaviour Change Communications Media Professionals

"SBCC media producers ought to know...[that] their edutainment narratives work where billboards, manuals, books and PSAs [public service announcements] often do not succeed."

Social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) is a label for interventions that rely on the strategic use of communication activities and multiple channels in different socio-ecological levels of influence. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)'s Feed the Future EatSafe - Evidence and Action Toward Safe, Nutritious Food (EatSafe) use a variety of media-based SBCC interventions to reach market vendors and consumers to help change attitudes and behaviours around food safety. This report from USAID and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) presents interviews with practitioners in the field of SBCC media worldwide, drawing out common threads and key themes to guide more effective EatSafe SBCC media productions. It also sheds light on potential barriers - and offers recommendations - for those using storytelling and entertainment-education (EE) to bring about health and social change via SBCC media.

During the summer of 2020, Pierce Mill Entertainment & Education and Weinreich Communications conducted interviews with six professionals working worldwide in the field of media-based SBCC to gather insights into their craft. The report shares details of the conversations, which took place with: a freelance SBCC film producer based in Cape Town, South Africa; the executive director of the Centre for Communication and Social Impact (CCSI) in Abuja, Nigeria; a marketer who co-founded Wise Entertainment in the United States (US); the president of the US-based Impact(Ed); a senior economist at the World Bank; and the country director of Population Media Center's Kathmandu, Nepal office.

Some of the themes that emerged include:

1. Human connection is an essential component of successful media-based interventions and should form the backbone of the process. Suggestions:
   • Learn the audience. When creating a media product, do not assume you know what they want.
   • Provide hands-on technical assistance to the local crew throughout the production process. Media programmes designed for behaviour change have specific production needs and use techniques that can differ from typical media productions.
   • Don't shortchange the need for iteration in the programme design process. Testing of scripts with the audience, and re-writing scripts when needed, is key to making an effective and useful programme.
2. Storytelling works and should be used to help motivate behaviour change, particularly for a topic that ties in deeply with attitudes, values, and mores of a culture, such as food. Suggestions:
   • Have expert storytellers work in tandem with behavioural experts when crafting stories for SBCC.
   • Work with the audience in advance to discover the kinds of characters that will resonate with them, and connect them to the action in the story.
   • Make use of positive and negative characters to initially attract attention to the story, but then use "transitional characters" who share the audience's struggles to illustrate ways to move along the path of behaviour change.
   • Use story immersion ("transportation" into the world of the story) to allow the audience to become emotionally engaged and consequently more open to the core messaging of the programme.
   • Demonstrate self-efficacy. The audience must feel they are able to change their behaviour.
   • Combine formative research and focus groups with randomised controlled trials of pilots to see what may be worth scaling up.
3. Distribution is key and should be considered at the beginning of the process, not at the end. Suggestions:
   • Make distribution an integral piece of the project from the design phase on.
   • Engage early and collaborate often with local groups, associations, and leaders.
   • Carefully consider the cultural context when determining where the audience is to hear/watch/see the SBCC media. For example, some programmes might need to be viewed in a private setting to reach the intended audience.