I have worked in behaviour change since 1996. My first career was in healthcare, dental, in clinic most days providing treatment. I am still in contact with some of my patients some 11 years since I stopped clinical practice and remain registered in my profession.
I had a very successful career, a thriving practice, lecturing across the world on my work, on my full mouth disruption model, and even achieved an outstanding award as recognition for my commitment to improving oral health outcomes.
And yet I knew that my own physical actions, the bit people paid for, were less than 10% of the solution.
I succeeded, and my patients improved, by tapping in to what motivated the person to change, and then working to utilise motivational interviewing to gain a commitment to change.
Helping people see the world differently and therefore behaving differently. Hence a different outcome. I was marketing on a one to one basis a solution that they desired that was within their control. The outcomes of improved health was the same for all. The reason they wanted it differed.
Applying behaviour change and motivational interviewing to mass marketing
Fast forward to 2026, 30 years on and 15 years of large scale marketing and driving consumer or professional behaviour change under my belt. I have been fortunate to be asked to speak on my insight driven marketing models and case studies across the globe, and have talked and written about emotional benefit attached to a product or service being one of our most powerful drivers.
Nicorette case study
While heading up the Healthcare and Prescribing business across Northern Europe for Nicorette, we unlocked a deep human insight that drove us in a different direction and grew our market share, already cateogry leading, by a further 26%.
As is often the case with healthcare, you have two audiences you need to influence behaviour change in to achieve uptake. The healthcare professionals and the patients.
And, as is also often the case in healthcare, the differentiation of products or services is little.
For this audience their emotional blockers, their beliefs were different but there was a common feeling. Shame. Shame of failure. For the healthcare professionals it was shame at not being able to change the patients behaviour, for the patient it was the shame of the failed attempt to quit.
So we invested time in normalising failure on the path to quit, added in more emotional messaging about the why for the patient, and supported the clinicians in seeing that their actions and support were part of the quit journey.
While doing this repositioning, we uncovered another deep insight that was able to drive a significant change. 1in 3 smokers had a mental health condition. And that grew to 1 in 2 for those medicated for that condition. Quit rates were lower in these groups. But here is the thing. Utilising insight studies we could see that these folks wanted to quit just as much, if not more, than the smokers living without a mental health condition.
By helping healthcare professionals and their patients look at their addiction differently, by easing the shame and normalising the upward cycle of failure that comes before success, we were able to get more people back in to quit programms than before. Driving accelerated growth for our product yes, alongside impacting patient outcomes, and peoples lives in a meaningful way.
We also set up a partnership, with Mental Health UK, that still runs to this day.
How to build insight in to your marketing
1️⃣ Be curious
Look deeper and ask why. Use big data mining to find actionable insight. Know your audience.
2️⃣ Map the customer journey.
Not with the steps to purchase or uptake of service, but with what they are feeling and thinking at key moments they are making decisions and evaluating. What are they currently thinking and what would you like them to be thinking? How will that help them?
3️⃣ Keep a focus.
Don’t spread too wide in trying to drive the changes. Choose a few key moments that matter and focus on these. Tap in to the emotional motivation and clearly share the problem you empathise with and how you are part of that solution.
4️⃣ Be consistent.
Find creative ways to show the same messaging and keep a familiarity to the look and feel. It is vanity to think that those who don’t work in marketing notice your work and admire it. But they do notice something that links to their emotion, shows an understanding and helps them see a solution to something they desire.
5️⃣ Test and learn.
Try out many different ways to show the benefit through emotion. Researching ahead of sharing is almost gone now in our fast paced market. So test out in the market. Test safely, fail fast and scale when you gain traction.
Remember, the product or service is the same for all. The reason they want it is different.
Happy marketing.
Leave a comment