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Blog 5: Create Something Good

28 Nov 2014
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Young girl sitting in a trolley at the supermarket
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Healthy persuasion
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Why we should accentuate the positives when we talk about eliminating the negatives.

If there’s one thing health promotion practitioners are good at, it’s telling people what they need less off. Less salt in their food. Less sugary drinks. Less misleading food labels. Less marketing to children. Less cheap alcohol. You name it, we want to stop, ban, restrict or reduce it.

The reality is, a big part of our jobs in health promotion is to reduce or eliminate unhealthy products and influences from people’s lives. With these drivers of poor health removed, people can get on with living healthier, happier lives.

The problem is, it’s hard to sell our solutions to the public when they think of us as the fun police.

That’s why the way we frame our solutions is so important. Instead of talking endlessly about the bad things we want to get rid of, we need to talk much more about the positive things we want to create.

Three people are sitting at a campsite. Tip number four: Create something good. Don't focus on the negatives, frame and accentuate positive solutions.
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For example, instead of framing the removal of sugary drinks from schools as “eliminating soft drinks from schools”, we should talk about “giving kids 100% healthy drink options at school”. The meaning is the same, but the way people interpret it is very different.

In message research VicHealth conducted with Common Cause Australia in 2019, we found framing solutions in terms of the positives we were creating, instead of the negatives we were removing, significantly boosted public support for those solutions.

In one study we conducted with a nationally representative sample of just under 1,500 people, we split the participants into two equal groups and presented them with different versions of the same solution. One group was asked whether they supported “preventing school canteens from serving unhealthy food”, while the other was asked if they supported “requiring school canteens to serve healthy food”. While 58% of people supported the policy when it was framed as preventing unhealthy food, that support rose to 72% when framed in terms of requiring healthy food.

In fact, across our research, we found whenever we used the phrases ‘ban’, ‘restrict’, ‘limit’ or ‘less of’ support dropped from people we’d identified as persuadable audiences. However, when we instead spoke of ‘creating’, ‘ensuring’, and ‘more of’ these same audiences responded positively.

That’s why we recommend health promotion practitioners always frame the solutions you’re advocating for in terms of the good things you’d like see more of, rather than the bad things you’d like to see less of.

Here’s some examples of what this shift in messaging looks like in practice:

FROM: “We need to ban junk food marketing at children’s sports grounds.”

TO: “We want our kids to enjoy healthy sports free from the influence of junk food marketing.”

 

FROM: “Our government must put an end to misleading food labelling.”

TO: “Our government must ensure more honest food labelling.”

 

FROM: “That’s why we’re calling for further restrictions to how alcohol companies market and sell their products.”

TO: “That’s why we’re calling for higher standards for how alcohol companies market and sell their products.”


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Want more information?

Visit www.commoncause.com.au to learn more about Common Cause Australia’s work and the concept behind values-based messaging.

Contact Mark Chenery on [email protected] if you have further questions about this work.

Artwork by Dexx (Gunditjmara/Boon Wurrung) ‘Mobs Coming Together’ 2022
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Artwork Credit: Dexx (Gunditjmara/Boon Wurrung) ‘Mobs Coming Together’ 2022, acrylic on canvas. Learn more about this artwork.