The BrandHook team has started an exciting new journey this month: we all signed up for the challenge ‘Mindful in May’. For those unaware of Mindful in May, it’s about creating a new habit of mindfulness in your daily life. The May challenge is to meditate 10 minutes a day for 31 days. On top of all that, the challenge aims to raise funds for clean water projects across the world (if you are curious to know more, details can be found on their website www.mindfulinmay.org).

Let’s start with an embarrassing confession (just in case you might think we are a well-oiled machine of mindfulness here at BrandHook). I fell asleep during a meditation a couple of days ago and was suddenly (and rudely) awakened by the sound of my own snoring… very relaxing indeed, but I’m not sure it was the intended state of mind required for actual meditation. It turns out the challenge was much harder than expected. Devoting 10 minutes a day to meditation is surprisingly difficult and somehow I always feel ‘too busy’. Quite a scary thought considering it’s only 10 minutes out of the 1,440 minutes that exist in a day, and it also shows just how difficult it is to introduce new habits into your life and keep them.

The Mindful in May program also offers various interviews with global experts. The other day I watched an interesting interview about the ‘secret to create new habits’ with BJ Fogg, the director of the behaviour change lab at Stanford University. His ideas are simple, helpful and can be used by just about anyone. His ideas are even pertinent to brands and businesses that wish to enthuse their target consumer/audience and get them to add a new habit, or even change an old one…

Fogg emphasises the well-known fact that creating new habits is easier said than done. The main obstacle being that people (and brands) most often aim for big, overambitious changes. As a result, “these shoot for the stars…” types are almost always bound for failure, according to Fogg. In order to increase the chance of success, you need to think ‘tiny’ instead.

In summary, Fogg’s model goes like this:

First of all, a habit needs to help people do things they WANT to do. Think ‘save money’, ‘live a healthier life’ or ‘help save the environment’, and so on. He continues by explaining that it’s all about taking that thing that you want to do and:

1. Make it small! Make it a really TINY behaviour (like flossing, because you want to take better care of yourself).
2. ANCHOR it to something that fits naturally in your day (a habit you already have, like brushing your teeth)
3. CELEBRATE it by firing off a positive emotion inside yourself right away (“yes! good on me! – awesome, I did it!” etc.).

It should be a playful design process of trial and error and revision (e.g. trying different anchor points, using other locations, etc.), in order to nurture the small new behaviour into a ‘full-grown’ rooted habit.

Instead of taking giant steps, brands can also opt to focus on these tiny new habits; something that hooks onto what people want to do and something that can be anchored in the habits people already have.

It sounds simple, but in order to pull this off as a brand or company, you need to know the target through and through. This is where research can be such a great support (we cannot emphasise its importance enough).

Make sure you know what’s important to your target, what they want, what motivates them, what they aspire to, etc. From there you can start (co)creating ideas on how your brand can help them achieve these things, and which tiny habits will have the biggest potential to resonate. Subsequently, knowing and understanding their current behaviour will help you to find possible anchor points as well.

I also took the liberty of adding another point to Fogg’s steps: incorporate ways to stimulate repetition (no new habit can begin without repetition).

Some examples of brands that come to mind, doing it ‘the tiny way’:

• Medibank’s recent health campaign (based on the desire of people wanting to live healthier), encouraging small steps for better health; more walking, taking the stairs, buying fresh veggies and fruit. They combined it with a device called fitbit (it tracks every part of your day to help you “find your fit”, stay motivated, and see how small steps can make a big impact), which motivated repetition because it was fun and inspiring to see that taking the stairs actually does make a difference.
• Yakult (also based on the desire of people wanting to live healthier) also comes to mind. Their introduction dates back to the 90’s, but what I like is that they literally translated it into a tiny pack (so it’s just a few quick sips a day), pushed repetition (you buy them in multi-packs) and offered anchor points in their advertising (in the Netherlands it was anchored in the morning, the first thing to do before breakfast).

So should brands embrace ‘tiny’ in order to change their target’s habits? What do you think? If you can’t reach us in May to let us know, you know ‘where’ we are. We’ll be back in 10 minutes…

The Mindful in May Campaign also sets out to help others via ‘Charity Water’. One in nine people don’t have access to clean water, and that’s a disturbing statistic. The donations and sponsorship funds raised through Mindful in May will support Charity Water, a not for profit organisation that donates 100% of funds to the water projects. If you want to donate to this great cause, that would be fabulous. Have a look at our BrandHookMindful in May fundraising page:

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