Spots - Roll Back Malaria

STEP 2: DEVELOP THE CREATIVE BRIEFUse your research findings from Step 1 and the following discussion on segmentingyour audience to help you evaluate potential audience segments and select the onesto focus on.Understanding your audience’s behavioral stage 4Research shows that people make changes in behavior in stages. One way todetermine what your spot should focus on is to see where your audience falls in itsreadiness to adopt a behavior. This table shows four broad categories whereaudiences can fall in their attitudes toward a behavior, along with specificcommunication approaches for each level.Stage of readinessNot aware of behavior or of itsimportanceIs aware of but has not tried thebehaviorHas tried the behavior onceHas adopted the behaviorCommunication approachIncrease awareness of the importance of doing thebehavior (or that a product or service exists).Reduce the barrier that is keeping them from trying thebehavior.Reinforce the importance/positive outcome of continuingthis behavior when the same situation occurs again.Reinforce the benefits of continuing the new behavior anddemonstrate that they can help others by advocating thatthey try the behavior.If most of your audience falls into one readiness stage, then it is clear which approachto take. If your audience segments are equally represented in two or more stages, youmay need to more narrowly segment your audience.For example, if half of the area’s rural mothers with children under five are notaware of home treatment of malaria with a locally available medicine and half areaware but are not using the treatment, then you have two segments: aware andnot aware. You will need to select one of these as your key segment andadapt/develop radio spots for that segment. You can also develop separate spotstargeted to the other segment.Selecting an audience segmentOnce you have listed all your potential audience segments, you will need to choosewhich one(s) you want to address in your spots, based on your available resources.One way of doing this is to rank them by scoring them according to a few criteria.Some sample criteria are in this table. You may wish to add more or change these,according to your program priorities.4For more on the theory of stages of change, see The Communication Initiative’s theories page:www.comminit.com/changetheories/ctheories/changetheories-56.html28 Spot On Malaria: Guide