Small Steps to a Healthier You Challenge: A New Approach to Social Marketing Campaigns Grounded in Behavioral Science

Background: Every year, millions of people make resolutions to lose weight, eat healthier, or be happier. Unfortunately, the majority of resolutions fail. Behavior change is hard. But much of the science suggests that the key to setting resolutions that stick is to start small. Focus on making simple micro-changes that can be built upon over time.

Program background: The Small Steps to a Healthier You Challenge (www.guardyourhealth.com/smallsteps) was designed as the anti-behavior change campaign. Rather than setting lofty goals for individuals (e.g., quit smoking, stop binge drinking), and for the campaign itself, we set small, easily achievable goals. As a short-term pilot, the 28-day challenge was framed “just the beginning.” It was a way to get people over the first, and biggest hurdle, to behavior change: getting started. The challenge was meant to give individuals a crash course in the types of meaningful micro-changes they could make on a daily basis in order to eventually achieve lasting results. It was also designed to socialize the idea of how to make changes that stick (e.g., start with baby steps that easily fit into your daily routine, and expand progressively). The program was executed using an integrated digital strategy that spanned across social media channels, SMS, email, and a responsive website. (Guard Your Health just launched its digital presence in summer 2013.) Finally, it was intended to determine the viability of the concept for long-term future programs and to determine which behaviors individuals would be interested in targeting.

Evaluation Methods and Results: The challenge is in progress through March 2014 with initial data suggesting the concept has been well received. In less than 20 days, more than 1500 visitors had accepted (agreed to participate in) the challenge. One out of five participants signed up to receive SMS text messages and email reminders. We plan to evaluate and report on the success using tools such as Google Analytics and Sprout Social.

Conclusions: Although the challenge is still in progress, initial data is promising. We have garnered support from 35 out of 54 National Guard States/Territories. Social media users from across the U.S. have been regularly posting about their daily steps and sharing the steps on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The campaign has received an influx of positive feedback through social media and email. Such anecdotal evidence lends credibility to the idea of a small steps approach to behavior change. It also suggests that a combination of SMS, email, social media, and web/mobile functionality could help to drive sustained adoption and participation.

Implications for research and/or practice: Future behavior change campaigns could benefit from taking a small steps approach, and structuring their campaigns as long-term programs that support individuals in achieving successive approximations of the larger, desired end behavior. In addition, these behavior change campaigns could benefit from taking the multi-channel approach adopted by the Small Steps to a Healthier You challenge, which utilized a combination of SMS, email, social media, and interactive web capabilities, which served to keep individuals engaged.