Strategy to the rescue

‍Mo Dhaliwal

[00:00:03] Welcome to High Agency, igniting conversations with inspiring people, leading transformative change. Telling people what not to do has always been a risky proposition. Yet, marketing people have employed communications and advertising strategies to try and get people to stop hurting themselves. This job is way tougher than you might imagine. The Australia National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign learned that the hard way when their efforts to curb youth drug use accidentally made marijuana appear, well, kind of awesome. And it's a reminder that the road to influencing behavior, especially among rebellious teens, is paved with traps, and sometimes a little bit of irony. But public health experts didn't quit. They got sharper. The CDC's Tips from Former Smokers campaign shifted to, And across the pond, England's Time to Change campaign took on mental health stigma, proving that celebrity-backed, stigma-smashing stories could create a real shift in attitudes. And then there's the decades-old Truth campaign, a masterclass in flipping the script. They plastered anti-smoking messages on the very billboards that were once owned by Big Tobacco, turning rebellion into a reality. And then there's the decades-old Truth campaign, a masterclass in flipping the script. Turning rebellion into a reality. Turning rebellion into a call for healthier choices. Marketing can be powerful when it taps into cultural relevance, emotional depth, and sometimes pure audacity. Our guest today, Penny Norman, knows this territory very well. With deep expertise in behavior change, Penny is at the forefront of crafting campaigns that cut through noise and resonate in a meaningful way. Penny is the VP of Strategy and Communications at Rescue, the behavior change agency. Penny is a powerhouse strategist, driven by purpose and impact. And with a focus on substance use and mental health, Penny merges marketing prowess with data-driven insights to tackle some of society's toughest health issues. Her campaigns blend innovation with empathy, like the interactive digital platforms she's used to capture real-time insights on youth drug use, or her culturally-tailored COVID-19 outreach to underserved communities. She's been recognized with industry awards and trusted to lead a team of strategists. Penny's work is proof that real change happens. When creativity meets conviction. Penny, thanks for joining us today.

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Penny Norman 

[00:02:31] Thanks, Mo. That was quite the introduction.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:02:34] Well, you're quite the person, quite the background. So tell me, why did you decide to spend your life telling people what to do?

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Penny Norman 

[00:02:42] That's a great question. Great question. I mean, I think it all started really back when I sort of bumbled my way into advertising in London, fresh out of university, not really knowing. I didn't know anything about the world, but within a few years, I saw, you know, I'd been doing campaigns for big multinational companies, Procter & Gamble, Nestle. And I had the opportunity to work with an amazing strategist called Brigid Agnir at Abbott Mead Vickers, and we created a campaign for the organ donor register for the NHS. And that one campaign caused a million people to sign up for the organ donor register in three months, which is amazing. And that was the moment I realized, wow, communications goes beyond selling stuff. Communications can have such an amazing impact on creating positive societal change. And that sort of lit the fire in the beginning of my quest to sort of specialize in that area. Took a few more years, but then really that was the beginning of me deciding I wanted to really use communications for good. Take all the stuff I learned in corporate and bring it to social. So, I think that was the first step for me, and then I started to begin to see the next step as well. And then I started to really go into the field of communications and then start to go into the field of social impact and public health.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:03:58] Yeah. I mean, we've seen the campaigns, right? Like the, you know, the cliched say-no to drugs, and everything since then. And we, I think, sometimes forget, even myself, that there's people, a campaign, an advertising agency, perhaps a marketing agency, some people behind this that we're trying to figure out how to shape the message and motivate people. And the interesting thing for me has always been, you know, and I talk about this with clients at Skyrocket is, you know, we need to have a message. Is we know that 5% of decision-making is maybe rational, and 95% is emotional. Yet, we all kind of pat ourselves on the back for being fairly rational, logical beings, but the human animal was really complicated. In the intro, I talked about convincing people to stop hurting themselves, which you think would you know not be too hard, but it's actually quite challenging. So, like what have you learned works and what doesn't? I mean, I'm sure it's always changing, but between the successes and failures, what have you seen that that actually works?

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Penny Norman 

[00:05:02] I think for me, the big thing I keep coming back to is that, we've done a lot of research, I think public health intuition is to be just tell them it's dangerous, just tell them to do it this way, and that sort of lecture. As you quite rightly call out, very rarely works. For instance, you know teens can have all the information they need to be able to do it, and they can't do it without the information in the world about fentanyl-laced pills, and they'll still walk into a room, be offered by a good friend a pill, and take it, and because it's a-it's a they call it hot cold empathy gap-their elevated emotions. from a behavioral perspective means that they make different decision making and actually in the moment they might just make a different decision even if they have all the rational reason not to it's the same behavioral pattern that happens if you go into a shop go shopping food shopping and you're hungry you'll make different health decisions of food decisions around you know healthy Horologist you're food versus unhealthy food if you're not hungry it's exactly the same um and so we know that that that battle you can't just tell them um one of my favorite um pieces that I kind of always come back to is there's A very famous behavioral thinker called Kurt Lewin, and he talks about two forces that drive behavior: restraining forces and driving forces. Driving forces are sort of motivation to do something, and restraining forces are things that will push against that that motivation to define your end behavior. What I think is really interesting about that is we always focus in marketing, almost you know even in you know corporate change, we always focus on driving forces-how can I motivate the team to do this? How can I, how can we sell uh this behavior to people? And that means we lead to like from a public health perspective we lead to communications that sort of demonize certain behaviors, that leads to stigma. It also paints a really rosy picture, which often, you know, people who are really struggling can't identify with um, and we ignore the restraining forces, and that's where we need to start saying instead of how can I motivate these people, we need to flip that and talk about what is stopping them doing that behavior now. And we talk a lot more about those restraining forces because sometimes if you can remove one small thing suddenly it's a lot easier for them to make the healthy decision, and that sort of led us to a sort of framework which You can definitely find out more about on the rescue website called Decision Blocks, where we really see a lot of people who are really struggling and they're really struggling and they're really struggling and they're really struggling and they're really struggling and they're really what's the thing that's stopping that person doing the right decision? Because most people want to do the right decision, most people want to do the right thing and want to live happy healthy lives. But sometimes it's impossible. And when we start to focus on those restraining forces, whether that's access to healthy food whether That's understanding how to feed your very picky children something slightly more healthy, whether that's giving people access to naloxone that's easy to carry.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:07:48] Um, understanding those restraining forces um really allows us to much more proactively shape behavior so I think for our conversation, I'm gonna kind of key in on the you know from tobacco to drug use like those campaigns just because we know that in Canada, BC like I mean Vancouver especially how pertinent that is right, yeah 100 between overdoses and this thing that was called an emergency like almost a decade ago um and I think that's a really important Thing to think about, um, a crisis almost a decade ago yet even from a policy perspective I don't, I'm not sure if we've necessarily tackled it as a society with the level of urgency that it deserved. But even when a mandate comes in to say, 'Okay, we need to do something to shape uh behavior to help people, um, you know stay safe make sure they're not overdosing, make sure they're not hurting themselves, so what you describe as restraining behavior that's the thing in the moment that prevents somebody from making the right decision is that right?

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Penny Norman 

[00:08:45] Um, yes its different factors it can be systemic um factors as well. For instance if we move into sort of specific substance use and recovery, I mean very often recovery is recovery. Substance use disorder is a symptom of a systemic issue; it's not an issue in its own right. Um, and so we have to look at the systems around substance use and what has led that person there. We have to fix those systems before we can expect recovery. Um, so I think we're often too simple, simplistic with being like oh we just need to force them to recover, we have to force them to recover, we have to put them into a hospital and force them to recover um without fixing all the systems, what we often will do is that. causes people to isolate connection is the is vital in recovery connection to your community when we disassociate people to their community it's really hard to recover and they lost all their friends they're also carrying around the stigma of having once used substances and that lasts for a long time and integrating into you know another society making other friends can be harder so understanding like how does community fit into that understanding you know even you know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs how you know in recovery how can I have housing consistent housing how can I get food consistently um all these aren't even covered in some of the systems that are being put in place it's just too single-minded in to get them to stop using substances and then and then off you go and we see that again and again and it's one of the reasons why you know people will be you know arrested for say carrying substance use they'll go through full um withdrawal which is incredibly painful and I mean really awful they'll be then released and with nothing they'll be released with you know potentially no money no there's no like um system of integration back into society and they very often will go and use substances And overdose because they are coming back from a lower tolerance, and um it's incredibly tragic; the handling of it so it's, it's a complex issue is what I would say, and I don't even think I've covered all the elements but um restraining forces um can often be much broader than just oh that one person doesn't have this, it can be a system they're in and they have no control over; so I mean behavior change is still I think respecting the individual and their humanity and still giving them a fair amount of agency in their lives is there some amount of abdication going on provincially right now because there was um you know we just

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:11:14] Went through an election, and in the headlines, there was this, you know, policy decision around um, uh, bringing back involuntary admission to facilities for people that have mental health or addiction issues. And, you know, it's a really complicated one because on the one hand, you know, it was lauded by so many people saying, 'Well, some people are just so far gone that they just need an intervention. And this is the intervention we just need to, uh, quote unquote, scoop them up and involuntarily, uh, admit them to these facilities. Then there's people on the other side that say, well, you know, we just need to actually Any sort of you know, like fairly oppressive sort of systems like that tend to disproportionately affect people that are already marginalized, uh, you know, disproportionately affect racialized people and that's just going to create more harm than good. But the thing that was interesting to me was, you know, if we're talking about communication and behavior change it seemed to kind of sidestep all of that to say, well actually we're just going to intervene directly rather than try to do any sort of policy and communications... um, but what was your take on that when, yeah, yeah...

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Penny Norman 

[00:12:19] I mean, I've yet to see any data that supports forced Effectively, incarceration of people to get them to go clean, other than uh, other than um, you know actually just you know just putting them into jail or into the um corrections um system um, and we know vast majority of people will come out corrections and immediately you know from the trauma of that have to use substances again just to get over that, from a mental health perspective. And I've also not seen any discussion around the system around that forced um recovery system so I haven't seen like what is that program that's beyond just getting them to stop using substances, how do we you know, what, what's the continuation? What's the integration back into life, how do you create community around that? So I've yet to see the data that supports that policy, and I think for me it just talks of us wanting to control a situation we don't understand very well or people haven't spent the time understanding um because it's an ugly site in the city and not actually being like, oh hang on a minute. I mean when I when I see you know watch the downtown east side and one of the reasons I got into this area was um being inspired by the downtown east side and wanting to understand more; I was actually on maternity leave and I wanted to put my brain to something, and I so I took my little newborn Iris to a conference on something that sounds so awful, but on substance use disorder and the fentanyl crisis. And I just tuned in inside this little newborn, and I was taking notes, and that was the beginning of my sort of fascination with what we could do better. Then even then there were calls, and that was, uh, six years ago. Even then there were sorts of calls from you know the police, from um specialists talking about um safe supply, talking about um you know uh decriminalization of your own personal amount. And its taken years to even get a tiny bit of that happening, so and even then you know, COVID put us back a lot. Um, but overall on that specific policy, I'm just not seeing the data and we shouldn't be making policies on things that haven't been proven out. Um, the strongest, uh, the most effective um, policies we've seen is actually decriminalization of drugs in Portugal and massively reducing substance use disorder so like it's a counterintuitive a lot of these policies but we've got to look at the data and be led by data and not be doing an emotional response because we don't like an issue and we don't want to grapple with the systemic issues that caused it and that's what we need to look at. Housing the generational trauma that exists, that's driving substance use, mental health challenges, and the lack of mental health resources all of that is a challenge. Um, and so we need to look at the systems before and the data before we make these decisions.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:15:14] that’s my personal view, no I mean look that makes a lot of sense. I mean, one thing that I love doing on this podcast is uh butchering quotes and never remembering who I'm quoting uh, so I'm going to do that again. But I think it was something like: no action without data, and no data without action. Uh, basically the idea being that if we're doing something, it should be based on some evidence, and if we have the evidence for it, then we should be we should be acting on it. But you're at an agency, yeah, and an agency that gets made I'm assuming government agencies and institutions to try to do things right. Um, and I could be wrong but I feel that often uh a lot of that is kind of driven by public will, right? Like so much of the conversation especially around um harm reduction and drug usage uh seems to be kind of at the whim of just this you know uh public mob that we have called democracy that just decides that hey we need to do things this way and we need to do things that way. And it might seem intuitive It might seem you know, quote-unquote logical, but how do you, how do you balance when it's not actually lining up with the data right? When the public will says that a certain thing should happen and a government comes in and says, Hey, we need you to help, uh, shape communications around this so that you know, we can be you know seen to, and hopefully have a desired change, uh, affect a desired change in in our community? Um, how do you kind of balance the ethics of that right? If if you get asked to do something and it's like, well, the data doesn't back it up, and we are going to be shaping behavior around something that doesn't actually make

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Penny Norman 

[00:16:55] Sense, yeah, well, it's a really great question, and I would say what's been really refreshing is the vast majority of the clients I work with, um, want to be followed, want to follow the data. Now, that of course is a political overlay, and there's sometimes people you know do want to talk about, say, the risk of fentanyl drugs which really leads to kind of a 'we would call it prevention message' so say no to drugs, um, and, um, what we do in those situations is really focus on like there is always a role to a degree of prevention messaging, but you have to do it in a way that doesn't add to the stigma of the situation, so we, um, talk about, um, those you. Know the facts, what's going on in a very level way, and we use that, and we focus that communication on people who genuinely don't know, so that can be teens for instance young teens who are falling into social situations for the first time being exposed to substances for the first time. They still they do need to know that this isn't just that this might not be your friend's Adderall like they need to know the situation going on um and so there is always a role there, and then also making parents aware of the situation, and that just opens them up to being you know aware and getting them to talk to their teens, so if someone does Come to us with you know, need wanting a prevention message; we'll often start to focus them on the communities that need that piece most um, but we I would say the vast majority of our clients really do want to reach those at most risk of overdose and so when you get into the data of that, and people do come to Rescue because we really do understand those high-risk teens and young adults very well; we work with them across a number of different behaviors, whether that's meth usage or pill usage; we even do campaigns to try and promote medication-assisted recovery for those who've been using heroin for a number of years. um so we do really deeply we research with these groups quite often um so we have a good understanding of them and so often people do come to us being you know we really want to be promoting the right thing for them and then then the conversation becomes a lot easier um the other thing we found which was really interesting is um in the journey of communicating around fentanyl laced drugs um is that we really started and it was really a learning curve for me um we started with you know they just need to know the risk um they know anything to know about the risk they need to know they are at risk it's a very behave you know standard Behavioral journey and, then they need to take um actions to keep themselves safer, so you know those that was the focus but the more we dug into it the more we realized that actually behaviorally um that didn't work for them because every time we talked to someone and they'd be using pills or cocaine quite regularly they would always have a reason why they were safe oh but my plug like he's, I have been working you know he's my cousin he would never give me something uh laced and the reality is no one knows what's in the drugs you know seven and ten pills in the U. S test positive for a fatal dose of fentanyl right now um of all the pills seized by the DEA right now um and it's really dangerous we're seeing cocaine people um taking powder that they think believe is cocaine and it's straight fentanyl powder and that's a new stimulant um integration of the supply so we know this is really dangerous but every time we talk to someone even if we gave them the absolute facts they would find a kind of cloak of invincibility to put around them and say you know actually no this is the reasons I I I'm safe um and we but we what we found was really interesting is they would also always reference a friend who did more than them so they had this sort of person and we saw this in cannabis as well, where someone would be like, 'they'd be using cannabis every day but they'd be like, 'oh yeah, but I don't wake and bake so I'm good you know.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:20:38] they have this sort of outlier of and that that's a point to somebody and offset their own behavior exactly; I'm offset from that person, therefore yes, it's called downward social comparison if you want to geek out behaviorally, yeah, um.

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Penny Norman 

[00:20:52] and so that actually gave us a really interesting insight: I was like, 'oh hang on a minute if they always have someone that's like doing high-risk things, they probably worry about them when they learn about this. Information they probably worry about their friends, and so we tested a new angle which was instead of asking them to kind of believe they were at risk, we actually said, 'You know could your friends be at risk? Could you do these actions to protect a friend?' And suddenly the conversation changed. It was suddenly it turned from super scary, make them really, you know, terrified, to here are some really positive things you can do about this niggle that you have and there's concerns you have about kind of some of the extreme behaviors you believe your friends are doing um and you know that suddenly like in the research it was Really amazing to see the quotes we came back, people being like, 'Yeah, I actually do care about my friends more than myself if I'm honest,' and people being like, 'Yeah, my friends do use it would just be handy to have it like suddenly, you know really understanding like why naloxone might be super useful for them.' And so I think we need to instead of focusing on like, 'Yeah, that demonization making people really scared but seeing for reframing in this sort of sense of like being part of a community and having you know harm reduction integrated with that and proactive actions that they can do, is just really revolutionary. So, that has been we. We moved the campaign over to that new messaging and we saw sort of a 41% increase in websites and clicks to get naloxone. Like vastly different from the two as soon as you stuck reframe it to sort of positive 'uh' that more positive message of help, so yeah, really interesting.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:22:26] You know, that is incredible because if you kind of look at the trajectory, um, you know we went from moralizing-right, you were a moral person if you did certain things and immoral if you didn't-to then demonizing the behavior as just being sort of antisocial, um, another one of them has really been that effective, right? Uh, like again in the Introduction, I mentioned some of these campaigns that were trying to kind of like you know on these behaviors but had the opposite effect, right? Yeah, like the Stone Sloth campaign out of Australia. Yeah, and the video-I mean, I just saw it yesterday as a result of um, you know, uh getting some research in for our conversation. I even forgot the title of the video because I was just like enamored by this sloth that is just kind of like lollygagging around and rolling around and falling off things-it's kind of hilarious and awesome, right? Like, for all intents and purposes, the sloth is having a great time. Yeah, but that was meant to be a campaign to you know uh discourage uh shame teens yeah not using substances yeah and instead it went viral for all the wrong reasons yeah they're t-shirts

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Penny Norman 

[00:23:29] yeah um yeah and um it proved to be a kind of cult it became a kind of cult classic and a that stone sloth became like part of a like a movement behind you know substance use um and what was really um Sona sloth was really demonizing those kids who are really struggling mental health-wise instead of and just and like yeah just it was really sad the whole the whole premise behind it was sad and then it was amazing to see the community kind of almost adopt it in a way um but we have seen you know work have unintended we call them unintended consequences but like the faces of meth is a really great example where um uh one jurisdiction put out these you'll probably remember it these pictures of before and after of someone who'd been using meth uh for a number of years um and what we found so that was then researched extensively and what they found is actually drove meth usage because the vast majority of people don't have lesions on their face and a lot of people are using kind of low levels so they for many years they will use meth and they won't have any it'll be you know once a month or something Like that, and they saw that work and were like, oh well, that's not my friends, so we must be fine, so they just disregarded the risk that was happening to their own bodies because they were doing it at a different level, and it actually drove um meth usage because they felt safe because they didn't look like that. So we do know that you know that shaming can really backfire either be adopted by a community or um actually drive usage um as well and that's really important that we have to be mindful of and um be mitigating against yeah, the extreme reference point is interesting because as you were talking it just kind of

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:25:10] occurred to me that you know, like we see um anti-drunk driving messaging still um, and yeah it would be kind of problematic if all they were depicting was some very late stage alcoholic, right? Because you know the vast majority of society drinks you know socially, Etc. And of course they would look at that person and say totally not me, you know, not anything I need to worry about um, but then similarly on tobacco, you know we've had all sorts of you know warning labels, packaging actually depicting people that have like lesions and gum disease and lung disease and all sorts of things that are the outcomes of this, the average person. Will look at that and say, 'Well, that's so far gone, that's yeah, that's not a problem.

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Penny Norman 

[00:25:51] I have, yeah, we are chronically short-term thinkers as humans, so long-term consequences are really hard to grapple with, that's even more extreme for teens like, teens really don't ever think about their future. When we research with teens, we'll ask what your plans for the future and they only ever respond for the next week. And then when you talk to young adults it's like a few months out, and like as you talk and then as you talk to older people it's it's like a year out or five years out. They'll talk about their five-year plans, but with teens it's' so in the now they can't really comprehend the future in the same way and so long-term impacts are worse what's interesting is so we work a lot in the vaping space um and um we've done various things about brain development again it's pretty intangible like vaping impacting your brain development how can that be and like obviously that feels like you we often get feedback around like oh yeah but the smartest guy I know vapes you are interesting one of the the facts that really resonated recently was um I just had a I threw in a fact that said sort of um your skin hates vaping because vape the smoke actually clogs your pores And the teens immediately, absolutely, oh my goodness! It affects my skin; that's it, I'm never touching it because for them, that short-term impact on on their skin was a massive deal. And which was so interesting um, and obviously you have to handle that fact quite carefully because you can't shame people with you know skin, you know, skin issues is a big issue with teens. But you can talk about the very straight facts show what it does in the skin um, but do it in a non-shaming way. And just giving that information was powerful so it can be interesting what how you frame stuff in the short term yeah um, and just give people the Facts in a straight way without having to layer on that, therefore this will happen to you or this is what you could look like, you have to rein it back a bit because it gets that to it to a point of being shamey very quickly and yeah that's it, the balance that you always have to do and that's why we do extensive testing of our creative work to make sure we don't end up going too far.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:27:50] Vaping is an interesting one, um, because I feel societally that product category kind of snuck in in a really interesting way, um, like I was in Pakistan last year and in urban environments in Pakistan, smoking is so prevalent that vaping is essentially Looked upon as like a health food, like it is like it's that far apart and there's ongoing campaigns, like I remember um a couple years ago seeing, I think it was like the Phyllis Philip Morris website or um some big tobacco company, I think it was Philip Morris though, but on their home page they had kind of presented their 'big' vision, their um sort of Outlook on the future and it seemed compelling at first because it said, um you know we want to end smoking by 2030. Right, incredible like wow what a what a you know statement, but their way of doing it was by marketing vapes, right? To say, we want cigarettes to fall by the wayside because here's this health food that you can inhale. So super problematic, right? But these are, you know, massive companies, huge campaigns. And I do feel like as a, what we now understand to be a harmful product, it was really interesting how it kind of snuck in as this category, right? Because it was again, offsetting of like, if smoking is the extreme thing, here's the easy, healthier way of existing.

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Penny Norman 

[00:29:16] Yeah, I mean, what was really tragic about vaping was that we had started to see this downtrend of smoking happening already with some of the campaigns and great works that went on. And then we see this rise in vaping, which, you know, in chronic smoke use is a step towards slightly better to then come off hopefully reduced your nicotine intake to the point where you can quit. So it can be used as a cessation tool. But the sad thing was is that then you had jewel's literally going into schools and giving teens vapes, like literally doing events, promoting it as this safe kind of buzz. We're seeing the same with Zyn now, which is the pouch tobacco. It's coming in, it's being positioned as this, you know, almost safe thing to get a buzz at school, and, you know, and all. And that then resulted in a huge rise in teens vaping. And it was dramatic and aggressive. And then we've been slowly doing the battle to try and bring that down. And we've been able to turn the curve to a degree. A lot of teens now understand it's dangerous and don't want to start it. But even the marketing, like the flavors, like 'try this flavor.' You know, vaping is so addictive that like just try a vape a few times and your brain will start to crave it. It's really, really dangerous. And the flavors are all there to try and get you to be like, 'oh, try the blackberry one,' try the raspberry one,' try the bubblegum one.' You know, and teens are just intrigued by that. They're all brightly colored. It is just playing to that like experimentation stage of a teen's life. And in such a neat way, that's really scary. And there's been no holding back. And I know there's legislation they're trying to put in place around flavors and trying to prevent this happening. But it's going to be a long slog to try and get that to reduce.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:31:14] You referenced teens quite a bit, is that is that cohort kind of looked upon as like the sweet spot for creating sort of societal behavior change? Or is it just that these campaigns happen to be in that age group?

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Penny Norman 

[00:31:27] Well, we know there's certain behaviors that establish at teens. So basically, your brain develops at different stages. But in the teen stage, your brain starts really hardening up certain connections to the point where it starts to trim away interests parts of the brain that are that are no longer of interest is where you start to form your likes and interests. So if you're really into anime, it will really establish in your teen years. If you're really into the certain sports, it will really establish. And so it's a really defining moment of defining who you are. And that happens between sort of 13 and 25-ish, where you really shape your kind of identity. And so it definitely is. It's a time where if you established a certain behavior, it would be concerning. We also know that's when a lot of mental health issues start. If you know, it's it starts in in teenage years. And so, again, that can be an issue as far as like negative coping. So, for instance, vaping is often tied with mental health. Cannabis use is often tied to mental health. So and teens are just doing that because they don't have positive coping options, opting for. Like. Oh, well, what made me feel better now? Same as like scrolling on TikTok for hours, gaming through the night. All of that reduces your sleep and makes your mental health worse. But it's a Band-Aid that teens have access to if they don't have access to therapy or other positive coping options or they don't know enough to do positive coping. Then, then obviously they're going to opt for something that makes them feel better in the moment, even though in the long term it's actually damaging their mental health.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:33:07] So, the campaigns do tend to focus more and more on teens than. And because, I mean, I would also think that for your clients, that's a pretty long window to measure the impact and the change that you might have created. Oh, yeah. Or I mean, what are you seeing? These are assumptions I'm making because I feel like if you're trying to create some sort of societal change or change in a country or community, that if you're intervening kind of at that, you know, at that age group, you know, what is the length of time it takes to see if you actually made an impact?

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Penny Norman 

[00:33:37] Yeah. So that's a really good question. So we do campaigns for a lot of people. A lot of different groups, depending on what the data is leading us to. Vaping in particular, we focus on teens because that often establishes a lifetime behavior. Substance use will often focus on more like young adults because we don't see that really up ticking until a bit later on in, like 18, 17, 18. And we're seeing the fatality rates increase from there. And in fact, actually, the fentanyl fatality rates are aging up now. So we're actually aging up our campaigns. And so it really depends where the risk data is showing us. Where is it? Where's the negative impact? But we do like older adult communications around it can be anything around, you know, healthy eating. We do adult cessation work. So it really depends on what the topic is. As far as like seeing the impact, what we there's a couple of places we look. So there's the YRBS data, which is a school survey where we monitor like percentage rates. And it's a it's a it's a mass survey across a vast majority of states in the US and we and it's been going it's been going on for 10 years. Or over 10 years. And so you can see the trends of vape usage, cocaine usage, meth usage amongst teenagers over time. And so you can start to see what's happening where you can see mental health trends as well. And so we use that kind of type of data source to understand like trends overall and seeing if we're making an impact in the state. But we also do evaluations. So we'll pair a campaign with understanding like intent to vape. Those who intend to vape. Those who. You know, risk perceptions around something. And so we'll be monitoring that year after year with the state as well, which should be specifically tied to our work and the audience groups and targeting that we've done. So that's a really helpful way of being able to directly tie our campaigns to an impact and whether that's a knowledge, attitudes, beliefs kind of impact or actual behavior as well. So that's the kind of two ways we kind of typically monitor what's going on.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:35:37] So, I mean, your work is pretty data-driven, so I think I know the answer to this one. But is there a time that or a campaign where you guys got it really wrong?

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Penny Norman 

[00:35:46] Oh, good question. That's a really good question. I'm trying to think. I think there, I think in the evolution of our fentanyl work, when the fentanyl risk was new and we had to do risk information. Um. Um, we did it, we did it well, but there's a point where that aged out, where we saw knowledge grew immediately, you know, grew a lot. And so it was really important to course correct that. So once we establish like most people know about fentanyl now, we don't need to be continuing to talk about risk and make communities scared. We need to switch this to positive action. And so being really nuanced about when that is and making that that that turn that work. I couldn't run some of that. Work now because people know, and you're just now perpetuating the fear within the community. So I'd say there's times like that where you're like, 'You've got to make sure your work wouldn't work well, you know, four years later.' But it was the right thing at the moment, and knowing when to take a call on that and not just rely on the first set of work you did and repeating it. So and I think that's some of the problems with people who are just looking at let's just make people scared-that's going to be when people are too simplistic. There's a there is an ad. Recently, it's a really sad example of this where they put a lady in a box in Times Square and put her through recovery, like withdrawal, in it. So she was a I believe she used opioids. She was an opioid use disorder.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:37:26] And this is real, like not like an actor or something.

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Penny Norman 

[00:37:28] No, this was a real person. They put her in a box in Times Square and filmed it as an ad. And I can't tell you the damage that that does to just even people who know. They've got to go through withdrawal. It's an awful thing. Like they're already you know, they're already using substances to stay well. Like, that's it. They're not getting high. They're not feeling great. You know, they're using them to stay well and deal with trauma, like to then have an ad be widely broadcast showing someone go through withdrawal. And then I think the line was like, you know, it only takes three uses of heroin to use to get some opioid use disorder or something like that. But even. That fact isn't helpful because people aren't just being like, oh, I'm using heroin because big because, you know, it's just fun. They're using it because of access. And for a whole lot of systemic reasons, they know it's you know, that fact everyone knows how addictive it is. They all know that. And so it just felt like a really like an ego play of an agency who didn't understand what they were doing and people being like, 'wow', this is so cutting edge. And it really wasn't. I think it won awards. And that's what like the unintended consequences of that ad to win a creative award, just yeah, hurts my soul. So I just you know, if you're ever taking a brief like that, really look at the data, really understand, really talk to people who are in this situation versus just going from a 'you know', I'm a corporate person in a corporate, you know, you know, I don't have lived experience. I'm just going to make an ad that I think is good. Yeah. So, just I would just really talk to the people who are most involved.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:39:11] What do you think people still continue to get wrong about how to shape behavior? I mean, to some extent, anybody in marketing communications, you're trying to affect behavior in some way, right? Oh, yeah. You have to be, you know, on some level a bit of a cognitive behavioral person in order to develop compelling campaigns or any sort of messaging applications. But what do you think people continue to get wrong when you look out in the world and see campaigns?

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Penny Norman 

[00:39:36] I kind of come back to what I said at the beginning about. I think we need to stop saying how can I motivate them to do it, which is a projection of your own values and belief systems on someone else and be like, why, why aren't they able to do that change? And that for me is really profound. It's a very different way of thinking about it. You truly have to understand the people you want to impact and who they are to really understand, like, what would restrict them from doing that behavior versus because the more we do this, like. You know, projection and motivation focus, the more we end up with, like, demonizing something or just selling something that isn't even doable. So, and it's completely ineffective. So I really encourage people to really understand that the audience that their audience and really be asking those that deep question around what is stopping them.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:40:32] Yeah, it's a it's a fascinating topic for me because like my dad actually passed away. You know, largely because of alcoholism.

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Penny Norman 

[00:40:41] I'm sorry.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:40:41] And it was a situation where, you know, I carry a lot of guilt around this because early in life, like we did the moralizing, we did the demonizing and it was all very accusational. Right. Of why would you do this to yourself? Thereby, why would you do this to us? And, you know, there were good periods and bad periods and all of that and a lot of ebbs and flows in his life. And, you know, this is decades ago now. But like, I think at that period in life, not having the tools and understanding. Frankly, even on a basic level of what, you know, is going on and what the root causes and symptoms might be, you know, it's for me, it was actually really kind of telling later in life, learning about, you know, addiction as a disease, learning about substance use as being kind of a self-medication for some underlying pain, coping. Right. There's something going on, and just never actually being able to address the root causes of it. And so I've always kind of paid attention. To some extent to, you know, campaigns that are going on, how our messaging and communications, how our understanding of addiction and substance use is kind of, you know, moving and changing over time. And it's been interesting because it has moved a field to a far more human and empathetic place. Where do you think it goes from here? Like, what do you think the next more human, more empathetic way is? Is there is there something you're working on that you can talk about that would give us like the next sort of era of helping people that are in trouble and need something.

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Penny Norman 

[00:42:13] So, for me and the election aside, well, somewhat inspired by the election, the big next challenge for me globally is we're seeing a mass fracture, a fracturing of society, of people gathering into groups and instead of gathering into groups, just tolerating others, gathering into groups hostility. And so, for me, the next big challenge is to bring people together to show that most people actually have more commonalities than differences. It doesn't matter which way you vote. It doesn't matter what you choose to do in your spare time. Actually, most people are good people. Most people want to do the right thing for society. And then, you know, biologically we are wired that way. You know, we wouldn't exist as a society if we weren't good at being a community and a community is being eroded. We're seeing a reduction. In volunteer hours, we're seeing a rise in mental health issues with men who feel like they haven’t got value anymore. We’re seeing, you know, across the board issues arising. And fundamentally, that comes back to our inability to kind of connect and be together. And that, in fact, you know, communities who have, you know, who are struggling with substance use, if we as a as groups outside of that community all understood that a bit more and could embrace that community more. With connection, with love, with understanding, with reduced stigma, that group can integrate back into the community, can feel less judged, less and helpfully hopefully solve that. So for me, it really comes down to bringing people together and creating closer ties within groups and finding interesting ways to do that.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:44:02] I mean, that's a gargantuan challenge.

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Penny Norman 

[00:44:06] I've got some examples. Yeah. Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:44:07] I'd love to hear them. Yeah. Yeah.

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Penny Norman 

[00:44:09] There was a really cool example in which I just thought was great. In Australia, they were seeing a large spike in suicide rates after men retired in Australia. And it was because they just lost their value. Their kids had left. Their wife had loads of friends and was busy. They had no job to go to. And so this mental health organization created the Shed Club. And it was just. Yeah. It was a network of men in their sheds building stuff together. And their line is brilliant. Its men don't talk face to face. They talk shoulder to shoulder. So beautiful. And I just think it's so powerful when you can bring. I know.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:44:50] I like that a lot.

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Penny Norman 

[00:44:51] So true. Right. They just went, let's build community. And it's a huge network across Australia, bringing men together in a way where they can get connections that they can build stuff together, they can have value and they can talk about things. They can talk about things. And they've seen off the back of that a significant shift in suicide rates for that specific group and those impacted. And so I think that's just a great example of an initiative that they don't even talk about mental health on their website. But that's what that's why they did it. And it's so powerful, getting those older men and addressing that issue. And so I think the more ways we can be smart and think about those initiatives, the better.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:45:33] That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that shows me an incredibly profound understanding of the psyche of the audience that they're speaking to. Right.

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Penny Norman 

[00:45:40] Oh, yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:45:42] Well, but the reason I was saying it's a, you know, gargantuan task is it's getting harder. Right. Like the groups, the fragmentation that you're referring to in many ways. I'm sure there's a model that exists somewhere that can correlate that amount of fragmentation and splintering to changes in media. Right.

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Penny Norman 

[00:46:02] Like 100 percent.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:46:03] There was a time when, you know, it was. You had families gathering around a radio. Right. And then a TV. And then now, you know, we have devices, we have a thousand, you know, infinite number of ways to consume content. And as a result, you have, you know, pockets forming right now in crowds that might have some shared perspective. But I was reading something recently about how, you know, Gen Z, as an example of the challenges that they have with actually like shaping, embracing. Their own identity and actually being able to work from a place of values because they haven't, you know, they've been bombarded with content. Right. And so as a result, they haven't really been able to, like, let something take root and build around it. It's just been a lot of competing, fragmented, and really ephemeral messages that they've been getting from a thousand different places. So what's the value system? It's hard to. It's nebulous. Right. It's hard to kind of latch on to something. So, you know, even for the group that you described in Australia. Like a powerful, incredible campaign. But again, societal change. Right. How do you how do you today come up with a campaign, a message, some sort of movement when you have so much fragmentation in media and that's actually reinforcing fragmentation in people?

Penny Norman 

[00:47:19] Oh, 100 percent. The impact of screens, phones, and social media is extreme. And we're seeing it even, you know, just the YouTube algorithm immediately causes division. Division. Because what it does is it promotes, it sort of preys on the stuff in our brains that, like, are most interested. So you're looking at trains and then it goes, 'oh, do you want to see a train crash?' And so you click train crash and suddenly you're in really violent content and it just spirals you down this tunnel that's more extreme. And that's just one example. But these algorithms are moving us to seeing much more extreme content. The worst stories of, you know, those who use substances. The worst stories. Instead of the stories of actually communities coming together and people helping each other out. There's just not that information there. And so there's a number of things we have to be really careful of, like whether, you know, reading up on the anxious generation book that, you know, it talks about it a lot about the erosion of, you know, teens just not hanging out and socializing in the same way because they're all on their screens. And how we need to be really, really careful with one. Making sure we're not robbing our youth of the ability to make friends and build connections and understand other people because of screens. So, check that book out and fully support restricting screens and social media usage until much, much older, especially with brain development. But also, we need to be looking at how we can, you know, almost, you know, be communicating the importance of balancing screen time and the newsreels and the 24-hour newsletters. And how we can, you know, do that in our time and space. I think that's a really important part of the process, because you know, we need to be in this cycle with real human connection, with volunteering, with knowing your neighbors, with positively doing civic duties, because that is actually one that gives us value. And we know that's incredibly powerful for your mental health. And to it starts to rebuild the communities that are being eroded right now. But you're right. It is absolutely being impacted by screen time. And we have no there's no study studies that were done before we gave everyone a phone. There was. This was, we are an experiment, and we are what we are seeing the outcome of that experimentation, which is erosion of community and erosion of mental health. And so the more we can do to course correct that and work with the big companies that are putting algorithms together, as well as bringing in legislation, as well as individuals understanding. Oh, hang on a minute. I've been I spent four hours tonight scrolling on pretty dark, pretty dark topics, and I'm feeling pretty rubbish. I should probably not do that again. I had this realization the other day and I Googled like I need to dumb down my phone. I've been scrolling late and I was like, oh, my goodness.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:50:10] I've had the same instinct. I haven't quite got it there yet because it's well, it's crack, right? Yeah.

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Penny Norman 

[00:50:16] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:50:17] I haven't quite got there yet, but I've had the same instinct for at least half a year.

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Penny Norman 

[00:50:20] So, I got really sick of it. I started dumbing down. I managed to remove some; I removed all my social media apps. I removed my Safari app from my phone, so it only has like maps and like my email and a couple of other things, and I dropped my usage by 50 percent in a week, so it can be done. But look it up. Highly recommend just being aware that it's so easy that once you're on your phone or just Google that thing. Oh, hang on a minute. I'll just look that thing up. Oh, there's a video here; I should watch, like, just got to get that stuff, like, just add more grit and friction into accessing the stuff that, you. Know that you know, kind of leads to that ongoing behavior. Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:51:03] I mean, I do and I don't want to sound cynical here. Actually, I'm going to go for it. Good. It's fine.

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Penny Norman 

[00:51:09] I'll do the pep talk afterwards.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:51:12] But, you know, a lot of the. A lot of the change management does feel sometimes like you're, you know, you're in a tsunami with an umbrella, right, because you mentioned algorithms and there's, you know, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, he's doing some advocacy right now, like open protocols for content and communication where he's kind of envisioning a future where we are able to select and there's more consumer choice and control. You're kind of picking the algorithms rather than them just kind of preying on you. But it does feel like we're kind of being preyed on and have been for years by these algorithms. But they shape so much of our understanding, our perceptions, everything else and aren't responsible for ethics. Aren't responsible for, frankly, anything like they're black boxes that have been shaping human behavior now for the better part of a decade. You know, do you see any advocacy or effort on the policy side to say, well, you know, public campaigns are great, but can we do anything upstream to actually corral these algorithms? Because we might see a campaign message if it's done well, you know, a few hundred times and it starts to take some hold. But then we have these in-between moments that, frankly, are mostly governed by algorithms these days, right? Are mostly. Moods, what we're what we're consuming, we're being force-fed this content. So are you seeing anything on behavior change that's going to address algorithms?

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Penny Norman 

[00:52:36] Well, we've seen a number of states and counties bring class lawsuits to Meta, for instance, because of the mental health impact on youth and being able to draw the line there. And so there is an ongoing, you know, struggle to do that. I mean. It's ongoing. Like, we have campaigns that we can't run on platforms that are promoting healthy behaviors because we mentioned, say, you know, we're trying to we're talking about meth usage. They're like, oh, you mentioned meth. We're going to ban your ads and we're going to completely remove them. So even like the good stuff, like the algorithm, it's so simplistic, the algorithm in the sense of like, oh, this campaign must be driving meth use, you know, like it must be selling meth. And it's like their systems, you know, we have to have a whole. There's a whole stage system that we have to go through to make sure our campaigns are ring-fenced. And then, on top of that, you know, quite rightly so, you know, you can't target teens on many of these platforms from an ad perspective. So we are limited in in actually reaching teens. You know, you have to do it pretty loosely. We do know we get there, but it's like you can't tick a button, say a box now and say, you know, I want to target 13 to 17 with a useful message around mental public health message. So their own restrictions, and them trying to fix things, also hampers positive behavior change as well. So it's very complicated. And, you know, we're at the beginning of the journey for that. But what I do know is there are a lot of very smart people coming together on this, these issues, working on them, and it is becoming a priority every step. And it's a bipartisan priority in the US. Like, it's not one that, you know, one party is not going to do something compared to another party. It absolutely is a concern on both sides. And we're seeing that as well. So it'll be interesting to see what happens over the next few years. But it's a growing movement of, you know, people wanting to ban certain social media channels within whole states. So, we are seeing that, and yeah, watch this space. I don't have all the answers, unfortunately, yet. I'll come back, though, when I do. Absolutely.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:54:47] I mean, you don't have the answers. I'm just I'm glad somebody's working on it. Penny, if somebody wants to learn more about your work and what you do, where should where should they go?

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Penny Norman

[00:54:55] Yeah, absolutely. I recommend you go to rescueagency.com. We have an amazing webinar series. So sign up at the website, and you'll get to see, you know, we do a webinar every few months, a couple of months, and we kind of show all our learnings. And so you can kind of cross-learn what we're doing. And that's everything from substance use, mental health, under-fives development, nutrition, sexual health, tobacco, cannabis. So, a huge range of topic areas that we kind of share. Share out on a regular basis or reach out on LinkedIn. Come, come and say hi. Always happy to chat, try and meet up with people who are on a similar mission and share our thinking. So, yeah, awesome.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:55:38] Well, thanks for coming on High Agency.

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Penny Norman

[00:55:39] No worries. Thanks for having me.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:55:42] Well, hopefully we've given you a lot to think about. That was High Agency. Like and subscribe, and we will see you next time.

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