Hitch Marketing

It’s great to see our campaign with The PaSH Partnership continue to make a positive difference in Greater Manchester. This week is #GMHIVTestingWeek and we’re raising awareness of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and encouraging people to get tested. #SortHIV LGBT Foundation BHA for Equality George House Trust Ben Page

This week we facilitated the second of two master class days in #socialmarketing and #behaviourchange with colleagues from Wigan Public Health. It offered an enriching opportunity to explore theory and practice, and apply it to some of Wigan’s key public health areas of focus. Thank you Dr Shanara A. for the opportunity to share our knowledge and experience, and continue to journey with your wider team on this action packed day. Exciting plans ahead!

It’s the final day of #ESMC24 taking place in Ljubljana in Slovenia! It’s been an honour to discuss the breadth of our work with fellow social marketing professionals. We’ve been sharing our projects on increasing uptake of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), consumer attitudes towards reusable/ refillable product packaging, counterfeit football shirt prevention, and gender-based violence reduction. If you would like to know more information about these projects or any of our work, please get in touch. 🙂 #socmar #behaviourchange #socialmarketing

Super excited to have part of the Hitch team at the #ESMC24. Come find us!

We are excited for tonight’s Prolific North awards! 👻🎃 Our #feedyourway breastfeeding campaign with Small Steps Big Changes is up for the Best Social Purpose Campaign award. Wishing the best of luck to those attending. #CelebrateTheNorth #PNMarketingAwards

Why behaviour change is a powerful tool for your smoking cessation marketing interventions 🚭 As #Stoptober comes to an end, we’ve been reflecting on the impact of applying behaviour change to smoking cessation interventions. Encouraging people to quit smoking requires more than raising awareness of the health risks: it’s about shifting mindsets and fostering long-term habit changes. Behaviour change marketing draws on insights from psychology, sociology, and behavioural science to influence and shift people's attitudes, actions, and habits. Through this approach, we can achieve the above goals by gaining an in-depth understanding of individual’s unique challenges and motivations for quitting and present them with tailored solutions that drive sustainable, positive change. In our smoking cessation work, it starts with pulling relevant insights through thorough periods of primary and secondary research to help us: ✅ Gain a comprehensive understanding of smoking habits and behaviours – This can be around the awareness of the health risks and benefits that smokers have, how common and often quit attempts may have been made, or understanding whether particular groups are more likely to start or least likely to attempt to quit. ✅ Understand how we can address these behaviours – By acknowledging existing barriers. We might focus on building self-efficacy and address motivation levels for example, by developing gain-framed health messaging and giving audiences a clear action by redirecting them to specific cessation services or support. ✅ Segment audiences to help break down barriers to quitting - Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach, we segment our audience based on their stage in the quitting journey. Is it that interventions could target audiences that have never smoked, focusing on shifting social norms and discouraging them to start in the first place? Or maybe looking at audiences that have already quit and how we can support them to sustain this new habit? ✅ Develop effective strategies using research findings and appropriate theory to help individuals quit – In previous work such as our ‘Breathe’ campaign, the goal of increasing local quit attempts was achieved through research and focus groups to better understand audience segments and their needs. Using exchange theory, we identified common barriers like limited access to support. A new 3-tier service, ‘Breathe: It’s about living,’ offered flexible support options. By aligning campaigns with each individual’s stage in their quitting journey, we can deliver tailored guidance, making the process more manageable and sustainable. You can explore our work on smoking cessation projects and get in touch with us at https://lnkd.in/eqsiqr7r #BehaviourChange #Stoptober #SmokingCessation #PublicHealthMarketing 

It was a pleasure for the team to be able to deliver the first part of our two-day masterclass. We are excited to continue the conversation in part two!   #socialmarketing #behaviourchange #greatermanchester

With summer holidays over and students returning to school and college, discussions around our work with Surrey Police on the ‘Ok To Ask?’ campaign are particularly relevant. The campaign addresses youth produced sexual imagery (YPSI), an issue common among 13–17-year-olds in Surrey. Through a lengthy period of primary and secondary research, the development of the ‘OkToAsk?' campaign has provided us with some key insights around behaviours associated with YPSI. 💡 Key Focus: Asking for and responding to being asked for indecent images were identified by both parents and young people as the most important behaviour to address within this campaign to empower them to say no. 💡 Pressure in Relationships: YPSI typically occurs in closed groups and relationships. Young people feel confident refusing requests from strangers but feel pressured when asked by friends or partners, where sending images seems more acceptable. 💡 Target Audience: 15 is the peak age for sending nudes, so it was crucial to reach the audience younger than 15 to challenge perceptions around asking for and sending indecent images. 💡 Not Everyone Engages: While YPSI is common, many young people don’t participate or encourage it. This allowed us to focus on these perspectives and frame not asking and not sending as aspirational. 💡 Normalisation of YPSI: Despite strong digital engagement, our evaluation showed many still downplay the consequences of sharing indecent images, based on the social media comments left by young people. 💡 Avoiding Shame and Blame: It was essential to avoid shaming or blaming those involved - whether they ask, send, or receive images. This could prevent young people from opening up, therefore we focused on creating a supportive environment to encourage honest conversations. 💡 Peer Influence: Peer pressure and the desire for popularity significantly influence decision-making. We saw an opportunity to reframe these values, reinforcing that not asking for or sending images is a positive, aspirational choice. 💡 Parental Understanding: Many parents and carers lack a full understanding of YPSI and often confuse it with child exploitation. They wanted more guidance to support their children, so we focused on educating them and providing helpful resources. The social norms theory was used to develop our behaviour change interventions. Social norms refer to acceptable behaviours within a group or context. This campaign focused primarily on subjective norms which cover people’s individual beliefs of what those important to them might consider to be normal or appropriate behaviour. This approach felt most relevant as we recognised the range of opinions, expectations and behaviours around that could influence young people’s perceptions of what is appropriate to send online. Watch the ‘Ok To Ask?’ master campaign video below. If you have any questions about the campaign, please get in touch. #behaviourchange #safeguarding #onlinesafety

This #worldbreastfeedingweek, and ahead of its relaunch, feels like the perfect time to reflect on our award-nominated #feedyourway breastfeeding campaign with Small Steps Big Changes.     Feed Your Way was created to lift stigma, empower more families to give breastfeeding a go, and encourage honest conversations around the topic in Nottingham. Our primary audience for this campaign has been parents who could consider breastfeeding now or in the future, recognizing how the right support and tools could help them achieve their feeding goals. The campaign also spotlights feeding allies, from wider family members, to employers and businesses across Nottingham.     Self-determination theory has been instrumental in understanding certain barriers to change, helping to refine our audiences and strategic approach. Indeed, this theory seems the best fit as it helped us identify clear barriers and obstacles that our audiences face when looking at both intrinsic extrinsic motivation. This then allowed us to find relevant interventions to overcome those.     Following over six months of data collection, including an extended period of primary research, we were able to develop a strategy that we were confident would help families, providing them with the support they had shared they wanted.     The resulting campaign aims to make breastfeeding something that everyone in Nottingham cares about and plays an important part in making a positive experience for local families. Feed Your Way acts as a platform where all of those actors can find the information and support they might need, now or in the future.     This week let's support all parents in their feeding choices. Visit www.feedyourway.co.uk to find out more.    #behaviourchange #breastfeeding #breastfeedingawareness #worldbreastfeedingweek #breastfeedingsupport #feedyourway

We are thrilled that our work with Small Steps Big Changes on the Feed Your Way breastfeeding campaign has been shortlisted for two awards at the Prolific North Creative Awards 2024 taking place tonight. Visit www.feedyourway.co.uk to find out more. #PNCreativeAwards #CelebrateTheNorth.