Write a Behavior-Change Commercial Around What Stops the Action

By pitch.dogFoundation13 min read20 September 2026

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A behavior-change brief usually arrives carrying a diagnosis it hasn't examined. People don't know the return bin is open after hours. People aren't motivated to bring things back on time. Those two sentences produce completely different films, and usually only one of them is true of the audience you actually have. The work between brief and treatment is finding out which sentence the evidence supports, then building a scene that could only have been made in answer to that sentence.

The method is short enough to say in one breath: name the action in terms someone could watch, find the point where it currently fails, decide which single obstacle the evidence supports, and write a scene in which the difference that obstacle requires becomes visible. The tone, the music, the tag line, and the closing shot all come after that decision, and most of them are easier once it's made.

Start at the moment the action fails

"Raise awareness of after-hours returns" is not an action. It's an impression you hope to leave. An action looks like this: a borrower with a cordless drill in its case walks past the staff door, lifts the lid of the gray bin beside it, sets the case inside, and closes the lid. A stranger watching that could tell you whether it happened. That's the test — not whether the action is small, but whether it is observable.

Once the action is concrete, the useful question is where it currently breaks. There are several distinct places a person can fall out of a sequence, and they are not variations on the same failure:

They never noticed the option existed.
They noticed it and don't understand the step.
They understand the step and don't believe it's available to them, or available when they're free.
They can't get there, afford it, or spare the time.
They need someone else's permission or cooperation.
They have a reason not to act that the brief hasn't named.

I write these as a list of possibilities, not a menu to choose from by taste. The evidence you've been given decides, and if it doesn't decide, you're holding a hypothesis rather than a brief. The difference matters, because each of these calls for a different thirty seconds of film.

Two cautions while you work through the list. First, the person who commissioned the film and the person in the film are almost never the same person with the same urgency. The operations lead wants drills back; the borrower standing in the rain with the drill already agrees that returning it is a good idea. Their problem isn't agreement. The commissioner's anxiety tends to leak into the script as pressure on a viewer who may already be trying hard.

Second, a demographic label is not an obstacle. "Busy parents" tells you nothing. It sounds like insight and behaves like a guess, because it doesn't say whether the failure comes at the point of knowing the hours, finding the time, or believing the fee is worth avoiding. If the research you've been handed describes a person instead of a moment, ask for the moment.

Three obstacles that look identical on paper

The framework most treatment writers run into here is Michie, van Stralen, and West's 2011 paper in Implementation Science, "The behaviour change wheel: A new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions." The model's methods section distinguishes capability, opportunity, and motivation as a way of organizing what makes a behavior happen, with opportunity covering external conditions that make the action possible at all. The same paper notes that further research is needed on the effectiveness of intervention design. It does not claim that a commercial changes behavior, and it should not be asked to. What follows is an editorial adaptation of the questions that framework makes available — useful for deciding what your film is for, and not a diagnosis of anybody.

Rendered into production terms, the three categories become four practical jobs:

A procedure problem. The person wants to act and doesn't know the sequence. The remedy is demonstration: show the actual steps, in order, at the actual place. People are good at copying what they can see.

An opportunity problem. The route exists, and the person's picture of it is wrong. Maybe they think the bin only opens during staffed hours. Maybe the environment told them so — an outdated sign, a locked-looking lid, a colleague who was wrong. The remedy is to reveal what's already there, and often to fix the thing that misled them.

A motivation or belief problem. The person knows the step and has the access, and still doesn't act, for a reason the evidence documents: the fee, the perceived consequence, what they expect other people to think. The remedy is to address that specific belief. Notice the condition. If you cannot name the belief from supplied evidence, you don't have a motivation problem; you have a hunch that motivation would make a nicer script.

A resource or access problem. No route exists yet. The person is not confused and not unwilling. They simply cannot get there from here. A stronger appeal does not supply what's missing, and a film that implies otherwise will be wrong in a way the viewer discovers personally, at the door, holding the case.

That last category is the one briefs tend to swallow. When the missing thing is hours, money, distance, or permission, the honest move is to say so in the treatment and propose a different remedy — a policy change, a service change, or a different audience — rather than writing a film that promises to solve it through determination.

One brief, three scenes

Here is an invented setup, small enough to hold in your head. It is a teaching exercise; nobody was surveyed, nothing was tested, and the numbers are made up for the purpose of comparison.

A neighborhood tool library lends a cordless drill in a case on a seven-day loan, with a late fee of $1 a day capped at $15. Returns happen at one address. There is a staffed desk inside, open Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and a gray return bin beside the front door, open every day from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. A sign above the bin, printed before the bin was installed, still reads "Returns: Wed–Sat." The operations lead wants drills coming back on time and has asked for a film.

Now give the same brief three different supported barriers, one at a time.

Version A: the procedure is unclear. The borrower arrives on a Monday at 7:50 a.m. with the drill in its case. She knows it's due and intends to return it. There are two doors — one marked STAFF, one unmarked — and a gray box that could be a bin, a mailbox, or a trash can. She doesn't know whether she's allowed to leave the drill without a person present. She stands there. The sign above the bin is wrong about the days, and that is a second problem — one for the operations lead to fix with a reprinted sign, not for this film to spend its seconds on. What stops her this morning is the sequence.

The film that fits is twenty seconds of demonstration: the lid lifting, the case going in, the lid closing, at that same door, in that same early light. No clock, no time stamp, no reason to think about days of the week. The viewer's whole question — which door, and does anyone need to be here — is answered by watching a hand do it.

Version B: the hours are known wrong. A different borrower knows exactly how the bin works; she's seen people use it. She believes it's unlocked only while the desk is staffed, Wednesday through Saturday, ten to six, because the sign above it says so and a coworker confirmed it. She works Wednesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., and is off Monday and Tuesday — precisely the days the desk is shut. In her model of the world, returning the drill is impossible without taking time off.

The film that fits looks nothing like Version A. It opens on a phone reading 7:42 a.m. on a Thursday, follows someone in work clothes to the bin on the way to a shift, and lands on the sign above it — reprinted to read "Returns: every day, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m." Nobody demonstrates a sequence, because nobody needs one. The work is entirely in correcting a belief about when the door is open — and in reprinting the sign that taught the wrong hours. That reprint has to happen before the last shot is honest, and it is a faster fix than any film.

Version C: there is no route. A third borrower took a six-week contract ninety miles away. The loan is seven days. The library has one location, does not accept returns by mail, and no one else in the household can reach the building during those six weeks. The bin is ninety miles from where he is standing.

Run Version A's script at this barrier and you've taught him a sequence he cannot use. Run Version B's and you've revealed a window he cannot reach. Neither film is dishonest in itself; both are useless here, and either one, played confidently, is worse than useless, because it tells a person his failure is a failure of attention. The real remedies are structural: extend loans on request, accept a mailed return, let another adult hand items over on the cardholder's behalf, or suspend fees for documented absences. Those are decisions for the operations lead. A commercial is the wrong instrument, and a treatment that says so is doing its job.

One thing worth admitting about this comparison: the two working scenes are not sealed off from each other. A shot of somebody dropping a drill into the bin at 7:42 a.m. incidentally demonstrates the sequence too. That's fine. What matters is that you decide which question the film is built to answer, because that decision controls what gets screen time and what gets cut. Version B spends its seconds on clock and day; Version A spends them on the approach and the lid. Build for one, and the other may come along for free. Build for neither, and you'll fill the time with mood.

The scene that misses. The most common alternative here is a drill sitting in a garage, soft piano, a half-built birdhouse, and a line about someone waiting their turn. It's a decent piece of filmmaking, and it addresses an obstacle nobody supplied. It assumes the viewer doesn't care enough, when the borrowers in front of us are already at the door. It also edges toward portraying the viewer as deficient — the careless person who kept the drill too long — which is exactly the framing to avoid when the actual barrier is a sign printed in the wrong year.

The ending has to lead somewhere real

Every one of these films ends with an invitation, and the invitation has to survive contact with the building. Before you commit the line "any day, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.," someone has to confirm with the operations lead that the bin is genuinely unlocked at 6 a.m. and at 9:55 p.m., including holidays, including the week the lot is being repaved. If the film promises a route that fails, the viewer's next move is a wasted trip to a padlocked bin, which is a worse outcome than the confusion you started with. Fictional endings are cheap; a real one requires a real owner of the route to say yes.

The questions to ask are dull and specific. Where does the person physically go? What hours is that true? What do they need with them — the case, the charger, an ID, a card? What happens if a piece is missing? Is there a fee, and when does it start? For Version C, the honest answer is that there is no ending, and the treatment should say that plainly rather than compose a hopeful one.

What a script can claim, and what only a study can

There's a version of confidence that creeps into treatments near the end, when the writing is going well: the film will change behavior. It won't, on its own, and the claim is expensive to make and easy to disprove.

What you can say is narrower and more useful. Viewers should be able to state, after one viewing, where the bin is and when it's open — or, in Version A, what the sequence is. That's a comprehension hypothesis about the film, and it's testable with a handful of people who have never seen the library. It tests the script, not the world.

What you cannot say from the script alone is that returns went up. The framework paper's own authors note that more work is needed on intervention-design effectiveness, and borrowing their vocabulary doesn't upgrade a treatment into evidence. Confirming that returns actually moved would take a separate study with its own design, its own comparison, and its own account of everything else that changed that month. Health-related behavior change brings additional review requirements that sit well outside what a commercial treatment can settle, and this method doesn't reach into them.

So the last pass over the treatment is small and unglamorous. Read the central scene and the closing line together and ask whether the obstacle you named is the obstacle the film addresses, and whether the route the film points at is actually open. If the answer is yes, you have something you can shoot. If the obstacle turns out to be distance, money, or permission, put the film down and go back to the operations lead with a different proposal.

Frequently asked questions

What makes an action concrete enough to build a behavior-change commercial around?

It must be observable: a stranger watching could tell whether it happened, such as a borrower walking past the staff door, lifting the lid of the gray bin, setting a drill case inside, and closing it. Raise awareness is an impression, not an action.

What are the distinct places a behavior can fail?

The body lists never noticing the option; not understanding the step; not believing it is available or available when free; being unable to get there, afford it, or spare the time; needing someone else's permission or cooperation; and having an unnamed reason not to act. Evidence decides which applies.

How do procedure, opportunity, motivation, and resource problems call for different scenes?

Procedure: person wants to act but does not know sequence, so demonstrate steps. Opportunity: route exists but person's picture is wrong, so reveal what is there and fix what misled them. Motivation or belief: person knows and has access but does not act for an evidenced reason, so address that belief. Resource or access: no route exists, and a stronger appeal cannot supply hours, money, distance, or permission.

What can a script claim about behavior change, and what requires a separate study?

A script can support a comprehension hypothesis: after one viewing, viewers should be able to state where the bin is and when it is open, or what the sequence is, testable with people who have not seen the library. It cannot claim returns went up; that would need a separate study with its own design, comparison, and account of everything else that changed.

When is a commercial the wrong instrument for a behavior-change brief?

When the barrier is resource or access and no route exists, such as distance, no mail return, or no other person who can reach the building. A film that implies determination solves it will be wrong when the viewer discovers the missing route; the treatment should say so and propose a structural remedy instead.