This article was originally published on Marketing Mag.

Behaviour change often addresses serious, sensitive and daunting topics. Whether it’s getting disengaged audiences to vote, encouraging people to get a cervical smear or talking to kids about staying safe online – when faced with sensitive or serious topics, we’re inclined to engage with them seriously. It’s natural. After all, we don’t want to cause offence or get the tone wrong.

But, there’s a problem with this approach. Sometimes this seriousness negatively impacts the very behaviour change intervention we want to address. Solemn communications and bland processes can unintentionally disengage the audiences we want to engage. So, where does this leave us? With an opportunity.

Enter the role of play. Recent research by TRA found that four in 10 Australians and New Zealanders feel that playfulness makes brands seem like they’re not taking themselves too seriously – because playfulness can lighten the tone and make brands more accessible.

In this context, play is an expansive concept – it’s more than just humour alone. When it comes to behaviour change, bringing some light-heartedness into difficult challenges is something to be taken seriously. While there are some examples of this, playfulness is a largely untapped brand opportunity to harness when seeking behaviour change.

Engage with the disengaged

There are many topics people know they ‘should’ care about, but still don’t take action on. This inertia can be caused by many factors. For example, due to out-group biases – one theory suggests when a message comes from an authority or organisation we don’t care about or don’t like, we tend not to take the message on board.

Other examples are if the behavioural ask is too difficult, feels irrelevant or if there are too many options to choose, leading to analysis paralysis.

When we insert playfulness or humour to address these topics, we can open the door to increased engagement.

Take Fire and Emergency NZ. The organisation wanted to encourage people to cook safely when intoxicated, as this increases the risk of stovetop-related fires. People under the influence, however, typically don’t respond well to authority or being told what to do, making them a difficult group to engage.

To address this, Fire and Emergency teamed up with Motion Sickness to create the ‘You’re cooked‘ campaign. With a colloquial, humorous approach, the campaign engages audiences by sharing recipes to make when you come home drunk or high – without using the stove.  

Tackling the taboo

When a topic is taboo, it’s uncomfortable to talk about and hard to address. To open the door to conversation, we need to tackle the taboo head-on. One way to break down perceived barriers is to disarm the topic by being upfront in a playful way.

Queensland Health did just this with their ‘It’s ok to poo at work’ graphic on Instagram. The department took a popular meme, the dolphin symphony, and made it their own.

Even serious brands have permission to play

So, what if your brand or organisation is not playful by nature? What if you’re in a serious industry or work with sensitive topics? In the cases where it isn’t appropriate to be outright playful or funny, consider the opportunity of partnerships, sponsorships or piggybacking off playful events.

Brisbane City Council recently got playful with a Barbie-themed annual bus decorating competition. By tapping into a popular trend and challenging norms around what buses look like, the council created a sense of fun around the everyday activity of riding the bus.

For typically solemn or serious brands, another way to inject play is through partnerships. The UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport recently worked with TV personalities and social media influencers as part of a campaign to tackle loneliness.

The campaign aimed to normalise loneliness and reduce the stigma that prevents people from seeking help, by bringing in familiar faces in a light-hearted environment, the campaign addressed a difficult subject in an engaging way

Play is more than a ‘nice to have’

Play and humour can do more than dial-up engagement and add a light-hearted tone, it can deliver strong tangible benefits. Incorporating play into urban landscapes, for instance, not only adds vibrancy and lightens people’s moods but also has direct safety outcomes. By encouraging people to gather and linger in a space, play can enhance the social use of space and increase the sense of perceived safety.

It can also be incorporated more deliberately into safety features. Just one of many endless examples of this is in Colorado, where safety lighting outside the Federal Central train station is viewed as a beautiful kaleidoscope art installation during daylight hours – and acts as safety lighting when it’s dark.

Ultimately, play is more than an element of engaging content or spaces. It’s an expansive concept that can be incorporated across channels to enhance experiences. Whether it’s using play to engage with disengaged audiences or incorporating challenging subjects for discussion, play can result in stronger outcomes.