How Behaviour Change Campaigns Work in Queensland Government

Most government communication campaigns start with the right intention and the wrong assumption.

The assumption is that if you tell people something clearly enough, they'll act on it. Update the website. Send the newsletter. Run the ads. Put the message out there and wait for behaviour to follow.

It rarely works that way. And when it doesn't, the usual response is to say the same thing louder.

Behaviour change is a different discipline. It starts not with what the agency wants to say, but with what's actually stopping people doing the thing the campaign needs them to do. Those are often very different problems.

Why information isn't enough

People don't recycle incorrectly because nobody's told them how. They do it because the system feels confusing, the effort outweighs the reward, or they've settled into a habit that's easier to keep than to break. Saying it again doesn't fix any of that.

The same goes for most government behaviour change briefs — flood preparedness, road safety, health screening, financial assistance uptake, biosecurity compliance. In nearly every case, the audience already has the information. What's missing is the motivation, the confidence, or the conditions that would make the behaviour feel doable.

Effective campaigns are built around that gap, not around the message the department wants to send.

What the research actually says

Behavioural science has been shaping public sector communication for more than two decades, and the core principles hold up consistently. People respond to social norms — what they think others are doing matters more than being told what to do. They respond to identity — behaviour that fits how someone sees themselves sticks, behaviour that doesn't won't. They respond to friction — making the desired behaviour easier often beats making it sound more important.

And they respond to emotion before logic. A campaign that makes someone feel something — recognised, understood, slightly amused, gently challenged — will outperform one that just informs them. Every time.

What this looks like in practice

We made Don't Be a Shih Tzu for a local council dog ownership campaign, and it hit 45,000 unsponsored views on a budget that wouldn't normally get near that number. A storm preparedness animation we produced reached 48,000 views in its first week. Neither of those happened because the information was clearly laid out. They happened because people felt something before they read anything.

The pattern repeats: cast real characters the audience recognises, use humour to lower the guard before the practical content lands, and frame the behaviour as something achievable rather than something people are already failing at. That's the difference between a campaign that gets seen and one that gets acted on.

What Queensland Government agencies should ask their creative partners

A creative agency that gets behaviour change will ask different questions at the brief stage. What does the audience currently believe, not just what do they need to know. What makes the behaviour feel hard or irrelevant. What's been tried before, and why did it land or not.

If a creative partner only asks about deliverables, formats, and timelines, the behaviour change thinking probably isn't there.

Who does this well

The best behaviour change work comes from teams that combine real creative capability with evidence-based strategy. Creative without strategy looks good and changes nothing. Strategy without creative is correct and invisible. You need both in the same room.

Welcome to the Fold has been making behaviour change campaigns for Queensland Government departments for more than twenty years. One of our directors has a PhD in psychology and two decades of applied behavioural science experience, and it's in the brief from the first conversation, not bolted on afterwards.