How These 4 Words Drove Massive Behavior Change

This is one of the most effective sound bite strategies of all time. In fact, I am a native Texan. I grew up in Texas. I remember as a kid the roads being filled with litter. I mean, it's hard to imagine today, but you would drive down the road in Texas and there would just be trash everywhere. And it was this campaign that stopped that in its tracks. By the end of this video, I'm going to help you understand how to make a message go viral. >> [applause] >> Hey everybody, thanks for joining us for the weekly sound bite video. Each week we break down a real-world messaging strategy that has worked incredibly well. And the idea, of course, is to transform you into a sound bite specialist. Today's video is all about how the Texas Department of Transportation created an iconic campaign that used identity, community, and tribal belonging to reduce litter. By the end of this video, I'm going to help you understand how to make a message go viral. How do you actually get people talking about your message? Show you a three-step process to build a passionate tribe, which was key in the Don't Mess with Texas campaign, build a brand by creating a villain, yet another tip. Before we get there though, there are several ways that you can create your sound bite strategy campaign. You can get the StoryBrand sound bite strategy on-demand course. You can attend the StoryBrand Your Business Live Workshop in Nashville, Tennessee, which is a lot of fun. You can book a StoryBrand private workshop where we send a facilitator to you. Or you can work with one of our StoryBrand certified guides to do your entire campaign for you. Our guides are are certified to do that. I trained them myself and they're at marketingmadesimple.com. Any of that other stuff, just go to storybrand.com and you can find out more. All right, this was the problem. This is what Texas looked like before the campaign. Texas had a major litter problem throughout the early '80s. So, all the way into the late '70s, early '80s, people just threw their trash out the window. Tens of millions were spent annually cleaning highways. Young male drivers, uh-oh, 18 to 35 produced the most litter. I'll confess to nothing on that. But, be polite, please don't litter. That kind of messaging had zero impact. Nobody paid attention to it. And the problem wasn't behavioral, it was cultural. So, then came along a turning point. Something changed. The agency GSD&M proposed the issue wasn't about trash, it was about identity. Texans don't respond to gentle rules. Texans do not respond. And as a native Texan, I'm telling you, it just doesn't work. You got to You got to come out tough. Texans respond to pride, toughness, and community loyalty. The question became, what identity would make not littering feel like being a true Texan? That was the idea that GSD&M came up with. And the breakthrough sound bite was this, Don't Mess with Texas. The controlling idea, Don't Mess with Texas. Not Don't Litter, cuz that sounds condescending. It was Don't Mess with Texas. By the way, this was never a phrase about politeness. It was a declaration of community pride and tribal belonging. It reframed littering as something done by outsiders, people who don't respect Texans. And I remember when this campaign launched, I remember me and my friends were litterers and we literally all of a sudden thought of litterers as somebody who was messing with us and our state. Not littering became a way to protect the tribe. So, just a few words, four words, launched an entire state identity and cleaned up the streets of Texas. Really kind of amazing. So, why did the sound bite work? One, clear, bold, and repeatable. Also, rooted in a shared identity, not trying to change behavior. Trying to enforce, enhance, empower, if you will, an identity. Unified Texans around community pride. Texans are very, very proud people. It's a great state and they they united around that idea. This one is really important. Position litterers as non-Texans. Even though they lived in Texas, they weren't like us. They were people outside the proud, disciplined, uh tough tribe. Turned picking up after yourself into a badge of Texas loyalty. And by the way, it just created a brand. You see Don't Mess with Texas everywhere. That Texas pride. The great thing about this campaign is nobody was confused about it. You read Don't Mess with Texas and you you felt, and this is really important about the sound bite, you felt something. You felt a sense of pride, toughness, togetherness, belonging. And can I just say it? You felt superior. You felt superior to other states. Texans love feeling superior and they would argue it's because they are superior. The confused mind always says no. If people can't figure out what identity you can help them achieve within seconds, word is unlikely to spread about your campaign and people are not going to take it seriously. The problem with most public service campaigns, and most of them fail, they're wastes of money, is the cognitive load of your message is just too high. Most businesses are too vague in their offering. Therefore, the cognitive load involved in understanding why to buy their product is causing customers to look elsewhere. The bottom line is the lower the cognitive load, the more people place orders, the more you change behavior. Don't Mess with Texas equals low cognitive load. All right, your messaging campaign is built on sound bites, but it's got to have three phases, as you know, the curiosity phase, enlightenment, and commitment. That means you need curiosity sound bites. Don't Mess with Texas will be one of those, but there's four more that I want to give you here in a second. And then you need enlightenment collateral, and then you need commitment collateral. You need rewards for actually going through with the behavior. These three things need to be checked off in a messaging campaign. I'm going to show you the entire campaign, or a snapshot of the campaign, here in a second. Your messaging needs to work like a house. There's front steps. These are the introductory ideas that bring attention to your brand. I've got five sound bites I'll share with you. Then the front porch, which is where people stand to do due diligence and find out more about it, get comfortable with the idea. And then there's the front door that you go through, and that is the commitment phase where I'm going to stop littering or I'm going to volunteer, whatever. Those three phases are critical if you want to run a really great messaging campaign. Most messaging campaigns look like this. The house is boarded up. There's no front steps. This is not a warm and inviting house. The foundational, most important part of the campaign are the sound bites that are those front steps. Those sound bites need to be a problem sound bite, and the purpose of the problem sound bite is to attract attention. The empathy sound bite, the purpose of the empathy sound bite is to create an empathetic bond. The answer sound bite, the purpose of the answer sound bite is to elevate the value of the product or idea. The purpose of the change sound bite is to add personal value to the offer. And the end result sound bite is to give them a vision that motivates direction and action. Let's look at an entire StoryBrand sound bite strategy messaging campaign in hindsight, reverse engineering what it is that the Don't Mess with Texas campaign did and why it worked. All right, let's look at those first five sound bites, that foundational front steps. Texas highways are being trashed. That's the problem. And notice, even though it's Texans who are doing this, they are positioned as outsiders, those litterers. They're not like us. Empathy, we know you want to protect and defend Texas. Answer, demonstrate Texas pride. Don't mess with mess with Texas. Stop littering. That's the behavior that we want to change. The change, the transformation of the person who adopts this message, is proud, strong, and litter-free Texan. The end result, clean Texas highways that we can be proud of. This would be the five sound bites that we might use as a foundation as foundational ideas behind this messaging campaign. Now, that's just the beginning. Once you have those five sound bites, and by the way, there are rules on each of these sound bites. Go inside the course and understand the rules on the problem, empathy, answer, change, and end result sound bite if you want to understand the rules behind creating them so you can create your own. Then, once we have those sound bites, we need to use them in an actual campaign. So, you know, there's millions of options here on the front porch. Here's some things that that Texas did. Celebrity involvement. Texas leveraged Texans with influence to boost the campaign. Community clean-up events. The state of Texas got citizens involved and shared ownership of the campaign. This was critical. I remember going out and picking up litter and being a proud Texan and thinking, what are these non-Texans doing throwing these Coke cans and beer cans out on the side of the road? Swag. Stickers, shirts, hats, and posters turned the sound bite into a badge of honor and a tribal flag. I would guess that the Don't Mess with Texas campaign is actually a profitable campaign. And think about that. Instead of spending money to reduce litter, spending money on a public service campaign, you're making money because the tagline is so popular. Why is it so popular? It all goes back to that identity. And then there are incentives to actually agree with the campaign. The campaign attempted to transform the identity of every Texan by getting them to agree with the idea. If you agree with this idea, you are a proud, strong Texan and you defend your home. Join the effort. Opportunities to volunteer gave hundreds of thousands of Texans a sense of ownership and reinforced the tribal identity. Share the message. Wearing the swag and flying the flag rewarded those who shared the message with a sense of pride and a strong, tough, responsible tribal identity. All right, let me go through some of the lessons that you can learn and you can implement in your campaign. First, sell community. Have you thought about that in your campaign? Have you thought about selling a tribal identity? What is the tribal identity? People want to belong to something bigger than themselves. Texas sold membership in a proud community. The price of membership was don't litter and agree with us and defend your state. Here's a very good tip. Now, there's thousands of ways you can create a messaging campaign. I'm going to give you a few tips that the state of Texas used. Define insiders and outsiders. Who are we and who are they? And who are we going to stop and why are we better than them? And why are we uh against what they're doing? There is an an an innate need in human beings, especially men, cuz you know, remember 18 to 35-year-old men were the ones doing the most of the littering. So, there's this need to defend and protect. It's a biological response and they triggered that. They stimulated that in this campaign. This is not divisive. It's a clarifying way of saying, "This is who we are. We are people who don't litter and outsiders who are not like us and are very clear that they litter." Brands must say, "People who aren't like us are a threat to our identity." Who isn't like you and who is a threat to your tribe's identity? Three, a tribe is a shortcut to loyalty. You want to create a tribe around your brand. Seth Godin defines a tribe as, "We are people who believe or do X. We are people who believe or do X." Texas created a tribe of people who don't mess with Texas. Also, tip number four, identity drives behavior. When you tie an action to belonging, people adopt it more quickly. So, the four steps to building a tribal identity around your brand. First, define your tribe's core belief. What is the we are people who believe X statement for you? Just write that down right now. We are people who believe X. What is X for your brand? Example, we are people who protect Texas. Step two, give the tribe a badge of honor, a slogan, behavior, or symbol that says, "I'm one of us." Texas used the phrase on bumper stickers and shirts to great success. It is still these gosh, what, 30, 40 years later, you see don't mess with Texas everywhere. Step three, identify the villain. It's really critical. If you can have a villain, make a villain. These are This is what we are against. Are litterers villains? Yeah, they're villains. Yeah, so it's okay if they're actual villain. It's not a person usually. It's a behavior or threat. Texas made littering the outsider behavior, not like us. Step four, celebrate the members of your community publicly. Feature stories, testimonials, user-generated content, ambassadors, influencers who are like us. When people feel seen, the tribe grows. All right, how can you actually create a messaging campaign of your own? Get the StoryBrand SoundBite Strategy on-demand course. Attend the StoryBrand Your Business Live Workshop in Nashville. We'd love to see you in person. Book a StoryBrand private workshop where we send a facilitator to you. Or just hire one of our certified guides to create your entire messaging campaign for you. You can find them at marketingmadesimple.com. If you want to learn more, go to storybrand.com. Confusion will not grow your brand. A soundbite strategy will work. Let us help you create your entire messaging campaign at storybrand.com. All right, thanks again. We'll see you next week. >> Yeah.