Crafting Impact: Strategic Approaches to Social and Behaviour Change Communication

Not every public health or development campaign succeeds simply by broadcasting the right message. History is full of well-intentioned campaigns that flooded communities with information but produced little to no change in behaviour. What separates effective programmes from ineffective ones is not the message alone – it is the strategy behind it. Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) is a structured, evidence-based discipline that selects from a toolkit of distinct strategic approaches – social marketing, health promotion, entertainment education, advocacy, social mobilisation, and institutional capacity building – to drive meaningful, sustainable change. Choosing the right approach for the right context is the defining challenge of any SBCC programme.

What strategic approaches mean in SBCC 🔗

SBCC is not a single technique – it is a framework that houses multiple strategies, each suited to different problems, audiences, and levels of social change. An SBCC strategy establishes the communication objectives, identifies target audiences, and maps out a consistent set of messages and interventions to encourage positive behaviours. Strategic approaches are the “how” of this roadmap. As the Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3) explains, a communication strategy typically includes several approaches simultaneously – especially when addressing multiple audiences at different levels of the social-ecological model. No single approach is sufficient on its own; the approaches chosen must reinforce each other and align with the programme’s specific objectives and the realities of the target population.

Understanding each approach – what it does, how it works, and when to use it – is essential for any communication professional or development practitioner working in this field.

Social marketing: selling behaviour, not products 🔗

Social marketing was developed to apply the principles of commercial marketing to promote behaviours that benefit individuals and society rather than sell consumer goods. At its core, it treats behaviour change as a “product” that must be made desirable, accessible, and well-promoted. The classic social marketing framework applies the four Ps – Product, Price, Place, and Promotion – to understand what motivates target audiences and remove barriers to adopting a new behaviour.

In SBCC, social marketing refers to the application of commercial marketing principles to influence the behaviours of an intended audience for improved personal and/or social welfare. The goal is not simply to raise awareness, but to actually shift behaviour. This requires deep audience research – understanding what people value, what they fear, what social norms govern their choices, and what practical barriers prevent them from acting. A well-known example is anti-tobacco campaigns that frame quitting as a lifestyle choice associated with vitality and freedom, rather than a sacrifice. Social marketing has been described as a particularly effective tool for sustainable behaviour change, because it keeps the audience’s needs and motivations – not the programme’s agenda – at the centre of every decision.

Health promotion: empowering people to act 🔗

Health promotion operates from a different premise. Rather than persuading people to adopt specific behaviours, it focuses on giving individuals and communities the knowledge, skills, and enabling environments they need to make healthier choices consistently. It is a foundational component of SBCC precisely because information alone rarely leads to change – people also need the capacity and the conditions to act on what they know.

Effective health promotion campaigns do more than distribute information. They advocate for policy changes that make healthier choices easier – such as cleaner water access, smoke-free public spaces, or subsidised nutritious food. They also use trusted community voices, visual materials, and accessible formats to ensure messages reach those who need them most. A practical illustration is widespread handwashing campaigns: a good health promotion programme does not just tell people to wash their hands. It addresses why they might not – lack of soap, water scarcity, or social norms around hygiene – and designs solutions at both the individual and structural levels. SBCC uses a variety of communication channels to drive and sustain positive behaviour among individuals, communities, and societies, and health promotion is the approach most focused on building that long-term capacity for self-directed change.

Entertainment education: learning through stories 🔗

Entertainment education (EE) is one of the most creative and culturally resonant approaches in SBCC. It weaves carefully designed health or social messages into entertainment formats – radio dramas, television serials, films, street theatre, or digital storytelling – so that audiences absorb the message while genuinely enjoying the content. The power of EE lies in its ability to bypass defensive attitudes. When a viewer identifies with a fictional character navigating a real dilemma – whether to seek HIV testing, whether to delay marriage, or how to handle domestic pressure – they are more open to reflecting on their own choices than when receiving a direct instructional message.

UNICEF’s SBC Guidance identifies entertainment education as a key tactic for leveraging popular edutainment for a cause. Programmes like the long-running radio serial drama Tinka Tinka Sukh in India or the Kenyan television series Makutano Junction have used this format to shift attitudes on issues from reproductive health to civic participation. What distinguishes EE from conventional entertainment is its impact-first orientation: the story exists to serve the behaviour change objective, not the other way around. This differentiates SBCC-driven entertainment education from broader social impact entertainment. When executed well, EE can reach mass audiences, challenge harmful social norms, and make sensitive topics discussable in ways that more formal approaches cannot.

Advocacy: creating the conditions for change 🔗

Advocacy in SBCC operates at political, social, and community levels. Its purpose is to mobilise resources, generate political commitment, and remove structural barriers that prevent individuals from adopting positive behaviours. A person may want to access family planning services, for instance, but if those services are not funded, geographically available, or socially sanctioned, individual-level communication will fall short. Advocacy addresses these upstream barriers.

As defined by the HC3 Implementation Kit, advocacy aims to create an enabling environment – from traditional or religious community endorsement to national policy reform – by mobilising greater resources and commitment for social change. Advocacy campaigns work through multiple channels: lobbying decision-makers, generating media attention, building coalitions, and amplifying community voices. The global movement against child labour, which produced landmark policy changes and international conventions, is a clear example of advocacy shifting the structural conditions that shape behaviour. In SBCC, advocacy is most effective when it is aligned with grassroots mobilisation and supported by credible evidence – giving both policymakers and the public reason to act.

Social mobilisation: rallying communities from within 🔗

Where advocacy targets policymakers and power structures, social mobilisation engages communities directly. It is a participatory process that encourages individuals, groups, and local organisations to collectively identify problems, plan responses, and evaluate outcomes – building community ownership of the change process rather than imposing solutions from outside.

According to the HC3 SBCC Implementation Kit, community mobilisation not only works to solve problems at the community level but also aims to increase a community’s capacity to identify and address its own needs on a sustained basis. A practical example is an immunisation drive where local religious leaders, mothers’ groups, school teachers, and community health workers collaborate to reach every household – not because a government directive told them to, but because they understand and believe in the goal. Social mobilisation is particularly effective in contexts where trust in external institutions is low, or where deeply embedded social norms need to be challenged from within. It creates a sense of collective agency that external communication campaigns, on their own, cannot replicate.

ICT and new media: reaching audiences in real time 🔗

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become one of the most rapidly expanding and evolving approaches in the SBCC toolkit. According to the HC3, ICT is unique among strategic approaches in its ability to disseminate highly tailored messages to specific audience segments while simultaneously receiving real-time feedback – effectively combining mass communication with interpersonal interaction in a single channel.

This includes websites, SMS campaigns, e-learning platforms, mobile health (mHealth) applications, and social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and TikTok. Each of these channels allows SBCC programmes to segment audiences with precision, adapt messaging based on feedback, and create interactive experiences that static mass media cannot offer. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, governments and health organisations worldwide relied heavily on digital and social media to disseminate protective behaviour messages, counter misinformation, and engage citizens in real time. SBCC uses a range of communication approaches, including mass media, social media, digital communication, community-level activities, interpersonal communication, and advocacy to influence social norms and behaviours. ICT amplifies all of these – but it is most effective when it complements, rather than replaces, community-level engagement.

Institutional capacity building: making SBCC sustainable 🔗

No strategy survives without the institutional infrastructure to plan, implement, monitor, and sustain it. Institutional capacity building is the approach that ensures organisations – governments, NGOs, health agencies, and community bodies – have the trained personnel, systems, and resources to deliver SBCC programmes effectively over time.

Research on SBCC during public health emergencies has consistently found that SBCC programmes are among the least resourced and most understaffed components of emergency response, with critical specialities underrepresented and single practitioners often spread across multiple technical functions. This fragility undermines programme quality precisely when it matters most. Capacity building addresses this vulnerability through training programmes, mentorship, knowledge management systems, and institutional frameworks that distribute expertise across teams and levels. UNICEF India’s Communication for Development (C4D) programme, for instance, focuses on strengthening institutional and individual capacities on gender-responsive SBCC across government, civil society, media organisations, and academic bodies – from national to block levels. Without this layer, even the most well-designed social marketing campaign or community mobilisation effort will struggle to outlast its initial funding cycle.

How to select the right approach 🔗

The selection of strategic approaches is not arbitrary. It must be driven by a careful reading of the problem, the target audience’s characteristics, the social and structural barriers in place, and the resources available. UNICEF’s SBC Guidance makes clear that demographics, literacy levels, digital access, media consumption habits, and community trust levels all determine which combination of approaches will be most effective. A community with low digital access and high trust in local religious leaders will respond differently to an ICT-heavy campaign than to one built around community mobilisation and entertainment education through local theatre.

Effective SBCC strategy design almost always combines multiple approaches. A mass media campaign (social marketing) may create broad awareness; entertainment education makes the issue relatable; community mobilisation translates awareness into local action; advocacy ensures the policy environment supports that action; ICT sustains engagement between face-to-face touchpoints; and institutional capacity building keeps the whole system running. A good SBCC strategy ensures that activities and products work together to achieve the programme goal and objectives – with each approach reinforcing the others rather than operating in isolation.

Why no single approach is ever enough 🔗

One of the most important lessons from decades of SBCC practice is that on its own, SBCC communication is rarely enough to achieve social and behaviour change results. It is too often reduced to messaging – used to share information and encourage compliance without addressing the structural and social barriers that stand in the way. Deeply entrenched norms around gender, caste, religion, or economic dependency cannot be shifted by a poster campaign or a radio drama alone. They require the combined pressure of advocacy that changes policies, social mobilisation that shifts community norms from within, health promotion that builds real capacity, and ICT that sustains engagement at scale – all underpinned by institutions strong enough to hold it together.

This is why the strategic selection and combination of SBCC approaches is not a technical formality. It is the core intellectual work of any effective SBCC programme. Get the combination wrong, and even well-funded campaigns produce little change. Get it right, and communication becomes the connective tissue that holds together an entire ecosystem of behaviour change – from the individual to the policy level.

What do you think? Given how deeply social norms shape behaviour, which strategic approach – advocacy, social mobilisation, or entertainment education – do you think is most effective at challenging entrenched community beliefs, and why? And as digital access continues to expand across the Global South, how should SBCC practitioners balance ICT-driven campaigns with the irreplaceable value of face-to-face community engagement?

References

1. https://www.sbcguidance.org/understand/social-and-behaviour-change-communication
2. https://sbccimplementationkits.org/urban-youth/urban-youth/part-1-context-and-justification/social-and-behavior-change-communication-and-theory/
3. https://healthcommcapacity.org/i-kits/sbcc-strategy/
4. https://sbccimplementationkits.org/lessons/step-4-strategic-approaches/
5. https://global.comminit.com/content/defining-social-and-behavior-change-communication-sbcc-and-other-essential-health
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_and_behavior_change_communication
7. https://www.centreforsbcc.org/what-is-sbcc/
8. https://academic.oup.com/heapro/article/37/1/daab068/6282519
9. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11505028/
10. https://www.unicef.org/india/what-we-do/communication-for-development