Want to get started in behaviour change but don’t know where to begin?
CopyCats Bootcamp is the fastest, easiest way to start using behavioural science in your health comms, marketing and public health work.
In just 2 hours, you’ll learn how social norms shape real-world decisions. It's relevant to ALL decision making but we will focus in on public health especially around smoking, vaping, sexual health and obesity.
Because people don’t act on facts - they follow what feels normal.
This is your shortcut to real insight, real empathy, and real results.
What are Social Norms? Why do I need this?
Using Social Norms is how you generate empathy to then build trust.
Trust is low and misinformation is loud. Understanding your audience is now a non-negotiable. Building trust is an essential part of our roles and social norms will show you how to do this. Messages are too often ignored - not because they lack importance but because they miss the mark. This is where social norms can help you.
Your choices, including your health decisions, are shaped by what others do around you do and so are your audience's.
Social norms are the hidden influencers - the invisible triggers shaping decisions. (Which is why asking your people want they want only gets you so far.)
A 2024 meta-analysis of 297 real-world experiments found that people are nearly twice as likely to change their behaviour when told what others actually do (descriptive norms) and not what they should do.
This isn’t just psychology.
It’s instinct.
And it’s how change actually happens.A common mistake
But if you mention 'social norms' a common mistake is to think it is a case study or something for 'comms' - a sprinkle of glitter.
So many teams still treat social proof as a case study and ta da... the box ticked.
That's missing one of your easiest and most effective ways to influence behaviour.
If you work in public health, behaviour change or service design this is essential learning before you write policy, strategy, design or craft messaging.
No time or budget for research? Then the starter kit is purrfect for you.
The two hour training will teach you social norms and how to use them when you have no time and/or no budget for market research.
We'll show you how they fit in with behavioural science framework such as COM-B and The Theory of Planned Behaviour but most importantly in 2 hours you will learn how to leverage them so you can get going fast.
So when you are committed to understanding your audience but also under pressure you can still take a behaviour change approach.
But we engaged with our audience...isn't that enough?
Talking with your audience is a brilliant start but it is not the answer.
Because people lie.
We lie all the time, to fit in, to look clever, to not feel stupid, to avoid embarrasment and shame.
People do not follow through on their behaviours.
In our full day training - Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp - we dive deep into this because it is our role to bridge the intention action gap.
Because when you don't.
Nothing changes.
That's why learning social norms is so important.
It is your route into applying behaviour change simply and easily.
So to answer the question - "we asked our audience isn't that enough?"
Sorry, but, no.
Not only is it not enough, it is probably the reason your impact is stalling.
But it is a great start. So don't stop.
Learn social norms so when you do engage you can 10x the impact of the engagement.
I'm running ads why aren't they working?
Behavioural science put simply is...understanding decision making.
As a comms pro or marketer in the NHS, charity, voluntary, healthcare org or agency or as a public health pro you can use behavioural science in two stages - Diagnose and Design.
Diagnose - this is where you use it to deeply understand the internal and external factors influencing their decisions.
Design - this is where you apply the learning to activate the change.Where you design the messaging, user pathways, service pathways, policy, strategy... even a clever subject header or too.
Chances are...you are skipped the first part.
Which means your own decision making is running on assumptions. Not audience behaviour.
So if you are asking
Why are my ads aren't working?
Why is no-one accessing our service?
Why do staff never attend our briefings?
Why are vaccinations slipping?
Why is are DNA's up?
Why are STI's up?
Why do are obesity rates increasing?
It's because your decision making has run on assumptions and not understanding the audience.
Plus it is rarely more information people need - but everyone wants a comms plan right?
What you will learn & do
🧠 1. Introduction to behavioural science through the lens of social norms (Why we are all CopyCats!)
Get confident in what taking a behaviour approach actually means.
You'll learn:
- What behavioural science is.
- How and where it impacts health decision making.
- What this means in your own job. (You'll take a fun quiz!)
- What social norms are.
- What negative social proof is.
- Where misinformation fits.
- Where COM-B fits.
- Where Theory of Planned Behaviour fits.
🦩 2. How to Map the Flock to understand health decisions (and where misinformation is seeping in)
Humans don’t just make choices in isolation.
You'll learn
- Map The Flock - Social Mapping Exercise.
This is something you can do across all your work themes so bring a problem with you that you would like to explore.
We'll show real world examples from public health too including sexual health, smoking, vaping and obesity.
🦉 3. How to Use Norms in Strategy, Planning so you can build trust and tackle misinformation.
Social Norms isn't just about clever copy. It’s about building services and systems around what people already believe, expect, and experience.
You’ll learn:
How to spot social norms in your exisiting data and engagement.
How to design for social norms when you have no budget for market research.
Why myth-busting often backfires.
What you’ll take away 🧳
The Social Norms Starter Pack
A downloadable toolkit packed with practical resources to help you embed what you’ve learned.
What’s inside:
✅ The 3 social norm types explained with real-world examples
✅ Behavioural science cheat sheets (with citations for the evidence)
✅ Prompts and templates for insight-gathering and audience mapping
✅ A “Misinformation & Norms” checklist
✅ 3 mini case studies from health, comms, and service design
✅ Your next steps: how to bring this into your team, commissioning process and with stakeholders.
Think of it as your personal behaviour change jump-start.
Everything we cover in the session - organised, distilled, ready to use🐈⬛
"Health messages are too often ignored - not because they lack importance but because they miss the mark.
They lack empathy.
Trust is wavering.
This is where social norms can help you."
Especially if you don't have a market research budget!
The background to 'CopyCats Bootcamp"
Edleman Special Report 2025 Trust & Health
"In an age when trust is fractured and authority is increasingly contested, young people are reshaping the architecture of influence in health. Traditional institutions, once regarded as unassailable sources of truth, are facing steep challenges. Young people in particular no longer rely solely on doctors, media or government to guide their health decisions. Instead, they are cultivating a decentralized ecosystem that is participatory, local, emotionally resonant—and changing the rules of engagement for everyone".
Building trust is essential to reducing health inequalities and tackling misinformation in health.
Health promotion teams, community engagement, public health, health marketing agencies, health charities, voluntary sector, all agree that 'meeting people where they are' and using 'empathy' is key. A non-negotiable.
But how?
Taking a behaviour change approach is one way.
In our work running behavioural insight deep dives we know that using behavioural science will generate a deep understanding of your audience.
And we also know that you don't always have the time (or budget) to do it.
That's why we developed the Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp. To help build our industry's skill set so that deeply understanding your audience and taking an evidenced based approach would be the default norm. A small step towards reducing health inequalities, because the person's voice is at the centre.
Over 500 pros have been through the Bootcamp and Social Norms has proven to be the most popular, impactful and transformational. Because once you get it... you never go back.
Plus it is fun and easy to do when you have a head full of deadlines, stakeholders and are short on time and budget.
So we've taken the learning from the Bootcamp and the learning from our Hidden Voices Heard behavioural insights work andcreated "CopyCat Bootcamp" 🐈⬛
A first step in understanding and using behavioural science.
And we've priced it so low that it's accessible to everyone that wants to deeply understand their audience, wants to build trust, wants to develop empathy and ultimately increase the impact of their words, their designs and their services to help make the world just a little bit better.
It's a first step into behaviour change, a refresher for those who've been here a while and for everyone who knows.
It is a fun, fresh exploration of how Social Norms power the decisions you are trying to influence.
But buyer beware - this is not a passive webinar. It's fun upbeat fast action training.
Our engagement soared!
After attending Ruth’s Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp, we launched the ‘walk from home’ competition, which focused on social norms rather than negative social proof.
The competition posts achieved an engagement rate of 6.1% - over 5% higher than the local authority average.
Throughout the campaign website traffic increased by 268.5%.
—Megan
Communications Wakefield Council
Bootcamp is a must for any PR, Comms & Marketing professional
The Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp is a must for any PR, Comms and Marketing professional looking to harness the power of human thinking and use it to their advantage.
It’s not often that I come away from a training session feeling like I have properly learnt something useful. Not only that, but something that can be so easily applied to my everyday work once you know how.
Ruth Dale’s Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp took my basic understanding of behavioural insights to a whole new level. Delivered in a genuinely fun and engaging way (yes, really!) this workshop has given me the tools to apply behaviour change theory to campaigns with greater confidence.
—Lucy
Media & Communications Officer, Wealden District Council
Lightbulb moments & immense value!
The Behaviour Change Marketing Bootcamp Bootcamp was the most enjoyable and best training I have done in a long time!
Ruth was engaging, the day was full of lightbulb moments and hopefully it will help take my work to the next level.
It has opened the door to behaviour change and the immense value it has in Public Health and Local Authorities.
—Holli
Public Health, Royal Borough of Windsor Council
Don't get lost in Frameworks.
When you first get started in Behaviour Change it is easy to get lost in all the tools and frameworks.
So if you are a COM-B enthusiast social norms sits in 'Opportunity' and is often hugely overlooked.
Because guess where the default insights always seem to go to ...lack of knowledge which then equals more comms.
But behaviour change is more than communications and marketing.
We know that more knowledge is rarely the answer.
When you understand social norms you'll join the dots between design, strategy and planning with the ease of a swan. (A flocking bird!)
That's why this training is designed for pros working across disciplines;
- Health leaders, service leads, communicators and marketers - NHS & Local Government
- Public health practitioners, commissioners, project managers, transformation programme leads.
- Agency side marketing & advertising professionals working on change campaigns.
🐒 Join the Herd, Flock or Pack
(Whatever your species - we’re social creatures, after all.)
Hi, I’m Ruth Dale — founder of Hidden Voices Heard, host of the BrainFuel podcast, and long-time behaviour change disruptor.
Let’s be honest: we’ve all seen brilliant services ignored, urgent messages fall flat, and "awareness" campaigns that raise everything except action.
That’s why I created the Social Norms Mini Bootcamp — for the rebels, reformers, and public health pros who are done with guesswork and ready to use behavioural science that actually works.
🐘 We’ll tackle the elephants in the room (like why no one uses your service even though it’s brilliant).
🐑 We’ll explore follow-the-crowd behaviour, and why your audience might just need a nudge (not a shove).
🦜 And yes, we’ll ruffle a few feathers on what we think we know about “awareness campaigns.” From a commissioning, policy, service design perspective as well as marketing.
This Bootcamp is 2 hours of high-energy insight, practical tools, and a Social Norms Starter Pack you can take away and use on any health prevention work and health service design.
We'll share the latest evidence but also real world case studies - social norms in the 'wild' and how we use them in our Behavioural Insights Deep Dives. We'll be looking across the public health portfolios from smoking to sexual health, across primary prevention, secondary and access to services but all through the lens of the person.
Because people do not tend to sit neatly into categories!
No jargon. No wristbands. Just wisdom.
🎟️ Book your ticket and fly in - this flock doesn’t gather often.
Let’s make behaviour change less “should” and more social.
Technical & Practical Questions Answered Here
When do I get my Social Norms Starterpack?
Can I request an invoice?
Where does the training take place?
What if I miss the Live training session?
When is the next Mini Social Norms bootcamp?
How is this different to Bootcamp?
We're confident that you'll find immense value in our training program. However, if for any reason you're not completely satisfied with your experience, we offer a hassle-free 100% refund.
Your satisfaction is our priority, and we want you to feel confident in your decision to join us. Simply reach out to our support team, and we'll process your refund promptly – no questions asked.
It's our commitment to ensuring your journey with us is risk-free and rewarding.
