I wasn’t aware

I’m in a meeting. We’re discussing various problems involving ignorance on the part of our customers, partners, and/or coworkers. Maybe they don’t know how to work together. Maybe they’re unaware of rules and guidance. Maybe they’re unfamiliar with existing solutions. Inevitably, someone in the meeting suggests an awareness campaign with posters, training, and trinkets. It’s like the opening act of a horror film.

Awareness campaigns can be effective, but often they’re colossal wastes of time, money, and effort. Why? Because they are primarily concerned with name recognition. Name recognition is great for political campaigns and building brands, but for everything else, you need people to engage and act. How do you achieve this? Keep reading.

Keep it simple

A typical awareness poster has a name, image, and tagline to help the audience make an association. Maybe it’s associating a name with a new service. Maybe it’s associating misusing drugs with a fried egg. Either way, the audience is only learning the association. They aren’t learning how to use the new service or how to resist the peer pressure to misuse drugs (when saying no isn’t enough).

Effective campaigns engage the audience in taking action, not just making associations. People learn best by doing. Acting generates learning and real change in behavior. You can promote actions using posters, training, and trinkets that cost the same as typical awareness campaigns. The difference is focusing on simple and personal steps your audience can take.

• Thinking of printing posters about valuing people with disabilities in the workforce? Many diversity awareness posters present examples of successful disabled people, but those examples don’t help your audience welcome their disabled peers. Like everyone else, disabled people want to be treated fairly and with respect. So instead of featuring pictures of “heroic” disabled people, print posters that remind people of how co-workers with disabilities prefer to be treated (“This chair is part of my body,” “I’m the one talking, not my interpreter.”).
• Thinking of creating an online training to raise awareness of new compliance rules? Many such curriculums list the rules and what’s required but don’t provide specific steps to guide people in how to follow the new rules. So, instead of focusing on rules awareness, use the training to provide specific examples and practice quizzes that teach people when and how to comply and who to ask if the situation is unclear.
• Thinking of giving away trinkets that promote the name of your new service? Even if your trinket is cute or clever, people will soon forget what its name and logo mean. Instead, hand out a cube that illustrates a common use of your service on each face or a laminated cheat sheet that makes using your service easy.

By engaging in simple actions, people will remember the what, the how, and the why of your cause. They’ll remember because you got them involved in a way that was easy and compelling.

It’s personal

Perhaps you’re unsure of what step you’d like people to take and how to make that step simple and compelling. Start with making the problem or opportunity personal. If you were a person who cared, what would you do? If you were a person impacted, what would you say?

Talk to people who care and people who are impacted. What small, simple step would they recommend people do? Of those recommendations, which are the easiest to comprehend, most straightforward to execute, and most impactful? Those actions should be your focus.

To make your message engaging and compelling, keep it personal. For visuals or audio, use the actual people who care or are impacted—people your audience will identify as authentic and relatable. For job aids like cheat sheets, templates, or examples, use streamlined, recognizable versions of the real thing. You want folks to recognize a situation and know what to do.

Join the club

To build upon the impact of your suggested simple actions, you can invite people to get more involved. Ask them to become an ally, a champion, or an expert. Create communities that bring allies, champions, and experts together to learn more, share experience, and network. Give them posters for their workspaces. Have them train others. Hand them job aids they can share.

When you deeply engage fans of your objective, your message spreads faster and wider. If you keep your message and steps simple, your audience is more likely to retain your intention. And remember, communities don’t replace the broad outreach of simple actions—they enhance it.

The world can be a better place

Ignorance abounds, but the solution isn’t just to create awareness; you also need to encourage action. Determine simple steps people can take by talking to those who care and those impacted. Keep your message personal and compelling by using those same people to spread your message and using real-life examples in your visuals, cheat sheets, and templates. Instead of posters and ads that only give your cause a name and face, provide actions people can take. Instead of awareness training that only tells people about your cause, focus the curriculum on how to recognize and respond to situations. Instead of trinkets decorated with names and logos, give away job aids that help people work more effectively. Finally, build upon your broad outreach with communities for allies, champions, and experts to share what they’ve learned and spread your message.

It’s not enough to tell people about how their lives, teams, and products can be better. You must show them and invite them to try for themselves in easy and memorable ways. Once people have a little success, they’ll seek more. That’s how our world gets better, one step at a time.