You all raise some good points that I’d like to build on. Too often, these campaigns try to solve the wrong problem. Let’s take Heather’s veggie example: if awareness is rising and consumption is falling, then clearly something else is the obstacle. To be effective, we would need to do some research to identify the real constraints.

* Is expense the problem? Then we need to help people have access to less expensive sources of veggies.

* Is time a problem? Then rather than focusing on the importance of eating enough fruit and veg, it would make more sense to have a campaign of quick recipes and/or helping people figure out how to work fruit and veg into their daily constraints (for example, eating lunch in sandwich shops every work day).

Once you know what is really the problem, then you can apply a more effective solution.

I remember reading a case study where a university conducted an awareness campaign to incite students to get booster shots for their childhood vaccines. Nothing happened. After doing a bit of research, they modified the brochures to include a map showing the campus health clinic and the opening hours; many more students went to get their shots. Interestingly, the students already knew where the clinic was, but the reminder and the practical information about opening hours provided the extra trigger to transform awareness into action. (I think that example is from Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point).

And Toni, communicators are not the only ones who resist measurement and evaluation for fear of what they might discover. I’ve had a non-communications boss who resisted including numerical objectives in a strategic plan because he viewed failure to reach them as a threat rather than as an opportunity for making improvements. I think there are probably personality and cultural issues that influence how such targets are perceived and experienced.

On this basis, there are many studies from different countries demonstrating that often social communication initiatives, based both on advertising and/or public relations, have counterproductive consequences on individual behaviours.
This, for example, is likely to happen when the behaviour or issue has reached a very high level of awareness/familiarity as drug abuse, smoking, breast cancer etc…. and/or when the source is hardly credible (as with many public or even private institutions or foundations) and/or when the contents are hardly credible.

So, the three principal indicators of an effective communication, in my opinion, are source credibility, content credibility and content familiarity.
These indicators are fairly easy to test before rolling out a communication initiative and I often wonder why this happens so rarely..maybe for the usual reason which discourages communicators from evaluation and measurement because they are so unsure of their own selves that they fear negative results?
May I say that this is irrational behaviour?

Public relations specifically and much more than advertising, if professionally practiced, has incredible power to modify both opinions and behaviours, which -as we have often argued in this blog- are two quite different animals and increasingly separated one from the other.

Often a lack of awareness is not the actual issue. For example, we are all aware of various health messages – stop smoking, do more exercise, eat five portions of fruit and veg… but do not follow through. As a result, we just get more awareness campaigns – often involving the wrong medium (advertising) which tell us the same message in a different way – yet still doesn’t help address whatever is stopping us from the behavioural change.

If a cognitive goal is required (and that may be the case rather than a behavioural one) – why not consider understanding, knowledge of, or something that focuses on the psychological issue to be addressed rather than the vague mental state of “awareness”.

Of course, in some cases, publics may not be aware of an issue – but even then, as you say, this is just a first step. So the PR campaign needs to go beyond that initial awareness and into emotionally engaging, gaining support or whatever is the outcome required.

One of my students recently told me that the UK governments’s “Five a Day” campaign had increased levels of awareness whilst at the same time, the reported level of eating five fruit/veg portions a day decreased!