A practitioner reference and planning template for designing communication that changes behaviour — not just awareness
Companion resource to the flagship course “Media for Development: Communicating Impact”
Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) is the systematic use of communication to promote and sustain positive behaviours, shift social norms, and create an environment where change is possible. It draws on behavioural science, marketing, and community engagement to move an audience from knowing to doing — and to keeping the behaviour going.
IEC (Information, Education, Communication) is a useful component — but SBCC is broader: it treats information as necessary but rarely sufficient, and designs deliberately for the emotional, social, and structural drivers of behaviour.
Behaviour is shaped at several levels at once. A campaign that only speaks to individuals will stall if the surrounding norms and systems push the other way. Map your behaviour across all four levels and plan an activity for each.
| Level | What operates here | Example SBCC response (immunisation) |
|---|---|---|
| Individual | Knowledge, beliefs, perceived risk, self-efficacy, attitudes | Counselling card that answers a caregiver's specific fears about side-effects |
| Interpersonal | Family, peers, partners, spouse, mother-in-law, front-line worker | Engaging influential family members; ASHA/ANM home visits and reminders |
| Community | Social norms, leaders, faith networks, collective expectations | Local leaders and religious figures publicly endorsing routine immunisation |
| Structural / enabling | Services, policy, access, cost, media environment | Reliable session timing, functioning cold chain, so acting on the message is possible |
Before you write a single message, diagnose why the behaviour isn't happening. The COM-B model is a simple, widely used lens: a behaviour (B) occurs only when Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation are all sufficiently present.
| COM-B component | Ask | If this is the barrier, communication should… |
|---|---|---|
| Capability (physical & psychological) |
Do people know how, and are they able to do it? Skills, knowledge, confidence? | Demonstrate the “how”, model the steps, build self-efficacy — not just tell them “why” |
| Opportunity (physical & social) |
Do their surroundings and social norms allow it? Time, money, access, permission? | Shift norms, engage gatekeepers, cue the behaviour at the right moment; flag when the real fix is service-side, not message-side |
| Motivation (reflective & automatic) |
Do they want to, and do habits/emotions support it? Beliefs, intentions, feelings, habits? | Frame benefits, use emotion and social proof, build habit and commitment |
COM-B sits at the hub of the Behaviour Change Wheel, which links each deficit to intervention functions (education, persuasion, modelling, environmental restructuring, enablement, and so on). For a communication planner, the key discipline is: identify which of the three is actually missing before choosing a tactic.
For your priority behaviour, list both sides:
Design to remove a barrier or amplify an enabler — be specific about which.
People often do what they believe others like them do (descriptive norm) and what they believe others approve of (injunctive norm). Much resistance is norm-based, not knowledge-based.
Example: Open defecation persists in places where latrine use is not yet the visible community norm — so sanitation SBCC works on collective commitment and pride, not only on health facts.
“The general public” is not an audience. Segment, then prioritise. Well-defined audiences let you choose channels, tone, and messengers that actually land.
| Audience type | Definition | Example (infant & young child feeding / IYCF) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary | The people whose behaviour you most want to change | Mothers of children under two |
| Secondary / influencing | People who shape, permit, or model the primary audience's behaviour | Grandmothers/mothers-in-law, fathers, ASHAs, Anganwadi workers |
| Tertiary / enabling | Decision-makers and gatekeepers who shape the environment | Health officials, local leaders, service providers |
A practical segmentation trick: within your primary audience, compare people who already practise the behaviour (doers) with those who don't (non-doers). What do doers believe, feel, or have access to that non-doers don't? Those differences are your highest-value message and design targets.
Turn a segment into one vivid, representative person so the team designs for a human, not a demographic. A useful persona names:
A good SBCC message is specific, actionable, benefit-led, and tuned to the audience's real motivations. Frame it around what the audience values — a healthier, thriving child; respect; belonging — not around abstract statistics.
Never scale a message you haven't tested with real members of the audience. Pre-testing (small-group or individual, before launch) checks whether the message is:
Fix and re-test before spending on production and airtime. Cheap now, or expensive later.
No single channel does everything. Mass media build reach and reframe norms; interpersonal channels change and sustain individual behaviour. Combine them, and repeat — a coherent mix reinforcing the same behaviour outperforms any one channel alone.
| Channel type | Examples | Best for | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mass media | Radio, TV, print, outdoor/hoardings | Broad reach, awareness, agenda-setting, normalising | Weak for complex or sensitive behaviour change on its own |
| Mid-media / folk | Street theatre (nukkad natak), folk song, puppetry, wall art, community radio, video vans | Local relevance, emotional engagement, low-literacy audiences | Bounded reach; needs good performers and scripting |
| Interpersonal / community | Front-line workers (ASHA/ANM/AWW), self-help & mothers' groups, home visits, counselling | Deep persuasion, skills, addressing individual barriers, sustaining behaviour | Labour-intensive; quality depends on the worker |
| Digital / mobile | SMS/IVR/voice, WhatsApp, social media, apps | Reminders, cues to action, two-way dialogue, reaching youth | Access & digital-divide gaps; gendered device access |
Work through these steps in order — each one feeds the next. Skipping the early diagnostic steps is the most common cause of campaigns that produce activity but not change.
| # | Step | What you produce | Key question |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Situation analysis | A clear problem statement; the priority behaviour; barriers & enablers; who's affected | What is the behavioural problem, and for whom? |
| 2 | Communication objectives | SMART objectives tied to a determinant (knowledge, attitude, norm, intention, practice) | What change, in whom, by how much, by when? |
| 3 | Audience segmentation | Primary / secondary / enabling audiences; personas; doer–non-doer insight | Exactly whose behaviour, and who influences them? |
| 4 | Behavioural objectives | The single, specific, doable action you're asking of each audience | What one action do we want them to take? |
| 5 | Strategy & approach | Determinant to target (COM-B), positioning, tone, socio-ecological levels covered | Which barrier are we removing, and how? |
| 6 | Message development | Core message, framing, call to action, creative concept — then pre-test | What do we say, and has the audience validated it? |
| 7 | Channel plan | Channel mix mapped to each audience and objective; messengers | Where and through whom does the message travel? |
| 8 | Workplan & budget | Activities, timeline, roles, budget, partners | Who does what, when, with what resources? |
| 9 | Monitoring & learning | Indicators, data sources, feedback loops, review points | How will we know it's working, and adjust? |
Distinguish three levels of results. Reach and engagement are means; behaviour and outcomes are the point. Reporting only reach (“we reached X people”) tells you nothing about whether anything changed.
| Level | Measures | Example indicators |
|---|---|---|
| Reach / output | Did the message get out and get seen? | # people exposed; # sessions/broadcasts held; # materials distributed; spot recall |
| Engagement | Did the audience interact and respond? | Attendance and participation; calls/messages to a helpline; questions asked; shares/comments; discussion in groups |
| Behavioural / outcome | Did knowledge, norms, intention, and practice shift? | % who can state the key action; % intending to act; % reporting the new behaviour; norm perception change; (ultimately) service-uptake data |
Print this page and fill it in with your team. One worksheet per primary audience.
The strongest SBCC campaigns do five things well:
This handout is part of the ImpactMojo 101 Knowledge Series
Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 • Free to use with attribution • www.impactmojo.in
