BrainFuel

Cast your mind back to January 2021. When I do that, I just can't get the Simon and Garfunkel song, Hazy Shade of Winter out of my head. And that's because I'm now associating it with Time. In the sense that in January 2021, we were still in the middle of the pandemic, and of course, behaviour change and behavioural science and the demand for behaviour change marketing based campaigns was at its height.  And so we ran a survey called “Help. I am not a behavioural scientist, get me out of here" across public sector, comms NHS, local government fire police, and we asked what are your biggest challenges and how confident are you feeling in delivering communications based messaging using behavioural science. The overwhelming theme that came back was time. Everyone was saying they just had no time to actually do it, whether to learn it, or whether to apply it to the standards that they wanted.  Time just was the biggest  B.S. barrier.  To really respond to the survey we've now running…drumroll please. We're launching The busy communicators guide to behavioural science. So this is going to be some core worksheets that will be made available to you for your CPD for free. And excitingly, we're going to lead with audio learning, it's a really popular style of learning.    3:18   Okay, so welcome to the busy communicators guide to Prospect Theory.  We're going to do a very short overview on this. Clearly, we can't fit everything in. And what I've done is I've taken out the most salient points that I feel are most useful for us in our profession.  But I will put in the shownotes, lots of links to more detailed conversations and more detailed reading for you.  But I just want to highlight that I don't think there's going to be anything in here that you don't already know. But I think the penny will drop as to why those things happen. As a communicator, you already know that things really need to be really salient, we need to break through the noise. And so Prospect Theory is just a little bit about the science as to why. And it's really good because if you're ever tempted or away from these gut feelings you've got, I'd say, as a marketer, stick with the gut, and there's some science behind it. So hopefully do prepare for some penny drop moments as we go through.  And I like to start now with taking your mind back 300 years. So if this was a history book, we'd have a big chapter title -  the end of the rational era, 300 years of rule, and a heralded mathematician called Daniel Bernoulli a Swiss genius. He espouses a theory called Utility Theory to understand how humans make decisions based on risk. Little do you know, standing in this beautiful Swiss court in 1738, that this theory would come to dominate The Western world of economics for over 300 years. So to reduce years of complex research and modelling down to one sentence, basically, the utility theory was that we, as in humans, you and me, will make decisions primarily to avoid loss. And these decisions would be useful or have utility. So they would be in our best interests, aka rational.  So now, just close your eyes for a moment and imagine the BBC news readers from the 1950s. You can hear this premise in action, the driving force behind the tone behind the delivery of the news, you know, it was very much I'm sharing with you some information with the expectation that you will take it seriously and apply it sensibly. There definitely was the sense of here's the information now make a very sensible, rational decision.  So let's jump forward to the 1970s. And not only is the first female prime minister being elected, the Walkman has taken the world by storm. And interestingly, in 1979, the UK public sector workers were on strike, they were demanding a 60 pound a week minimum wage and the 35 hour workweek. So whilst all that's going on a revolutionary new economic theory has arrived, that basically ends this 300 year rule of the rational.  This theory is called Prospect Theory. And it is the work of two geniuses, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and his colleague, Amos Tversky.   7:13   It signalled a huge paradigm shift that has continued to grow in strength to this day. And essentially, I like to call it the beating heart of behavioural science. And again, to really drill down years of complex research (they continued working on this until 1992) so literally years and years, decades of work into one sentence, it basically says that we are irrational. And we don't always make the best decision in favour of utility.  So it sounds obvious, right? Yeah. How is this revolutionary?  What's really important is it really truly was, this is a huge paradigm shift. And if we take a moment just to pause, and reflect on that, and if you think about your work, and the amount of requests that come in for you to sprinkle your fairy dust of magic, am I say that because I know it's cringe worthy. And I know it's so hated in the comms world, but if you think about all the incoming requests, there is so often this rational assumption that comes with them that please share this information. Yes, make it fun and lively. But please share this information with the expectation that the audience will hear it and do what is expected.  So yes, it's a huge paradigm shift. But it's still a baby, we've gone through 300 years to 1979. I am older than this theory, I was born in 1975. So not by much, but still in the terms of science looking at it is it's a young theory, and it's still growing and evolving today, which is why behavioural science is just exploding. The research industry is just is huge. And it's growing a lot. So this is a cornerstone theory, which you can if you learn and understand you can be really confident in applying.  So of course, it is slightly more complex than that one sentence and I'm going to share with you three concepts that break it down quite nicely.  Certainty – offer a guarantee Your audience wants certainty of avoidance of loss. And your audience will take greater risks to achieve that. You're thinking, you know, the more people lose, the more people are likely to actually take greater risks to avoid the loss because they've got nothing left to lose. And if we think about the national smoking campaigns been for well over a decade, I know I worked on them for 15 years, I think, and we've talked about it before. But one absolute genius move that they started and is probably familiar to everyone is that they do say that you're much more likely to quit using the service, and they even have a number. So is it 2.5. But anyway, they have a guarantee, they say you are much more likely to achieve your goal. And this is really important, especially when you're asking someone to lose so much when you quit smoking. Okay. A nice fun example -  think about it in terms of products, when you're buying a TV, you know, they might say yes, we guarantee you can watch endless streaming of Netflix on our TV, absolutely wonderful cinema surround sound. And if you don't bring it back, no questions asked, okay, this is great, you might spend my money if I don't like it, there's no loss here. And this is really closely linked as well to the endowment effect, which we will come on to in a later episode, which just talks about the importance of getting people to try and use your information.    The second is isolation effect. – We focus on differences more than we do similarities   12:08   No surprises to anyone here that salience is essential. Prospect Theory explains that we as humans focus on differences more than we do similarities.  Think of the matrix and the girl in the red dress, very salient, very obvious, and everyone goes and looks, but you know that already – you know that to break through the noise, you need to be as salient as possible.  So for me as a marketer, I like this, because it brings out the role of the other elements of communication. So it brings out the role of the actual product of design of packaging, and all these other intrinsic paths that actually will take go a long way to reaching your goal.  Loss looms larger than gains (2.5x larger) So the other one is loss aversion. Loss Aversion looms larger than gains, our fear of loss is at least two and a half times greater than our joy of the game.  It is applied in varying degrees, but it does remain consistent across everyone as we have a psychological response to loss. It's human nature to prevent that pain prevent that hurt.  Importantly  the research pointed out something called a reference point. So a reference point was brand new, it did not exist in Utility Theory. The reference point understands that people will make decisions based on where they are in that moment. And this is why it is essential, because when we working with deprived communities, people without financial safety nets, their reference point is very different to someone else's reference point, who perhaps does have that safety net, which is why segmentation and marketing is absolutely essential.  So if you think about your work programmes, and your campaigns, think about, well, how different does my audience respond to this loss? Do they perceive a loss? Is my current messaging triggering a loss when it doesn't need to? Am I talking more about gains than losses is human nature to focus on the losses? They found in the research that we will quite naturally focus on what we're going to lose more than what we'll gain? So is it our job to actually make sure that we're shifting the narrative and making the game the game that bigger shiny a brighter, brighter, brighter, brighter thing to. Ask yourself, do you understand your audience reference points?   14:57   In 1995, the American Psychological Association studied the medal winners from the Barcelona Olympics. So they studied those wonderful Olympians who won their gold, silver and bronze medals. And it's a lovely way to illustrate the concept of the reference point. Because they found that silver winners were a lot unhappier than gold, and bronze winners. And that's simply because their reference point was, they were going for gold. So they have lost something. Whereas often in training and expectations, at a bronze medal winners level was actually the bronze was the highest, and perhaps they'd get fourth or fifth place. So they didn't lose. The study was done by the American Psychological Association, in 1995 and is a really nice way to just understand the power of framing and the reference point.  And ultimately, at the end of the day, these are economic theories. And they're based around probability. But they're really useful for us to have as a deeper understanding of people, especially if we know there's some easy wins, we can make an are copy, and we're focusing in on a loss.  And you can also easily shift it or I know my audience, I thought I did, but actually I don't, because I don't know what their point of references.  I don't know what their reaction is to this loss. And actually, it could change your market research and your insight plan. Because you can might think I need to understand what the gains are.  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

In today’s episode, we welcome Professor Steve Maddern, Director of Public Health, Swindon Borough Council. The idea for this episode was for Steve to share how he rose to be Director of Public Health to inspire communications and marketing professionals to believe no senior management level is too high. Our main question was “Imagine you are doing your TED Talk on Leadership – what one message would you share with someone who is a couple of steps behind you.”His advice is well worth a listen and includes: saying yes to opportunitiesinformal and formal learning considering the impact of work decisions on your whole life not just your work life.  But ultimately whatever your dream turning up as your best self and keeping abreast of the knowledge you need to do to be the best at your job.But our conversations gave us so much more; as Steve discusses how public health and marketing and comms have become much closer bedfellows.Public Health, like marketing,  is often referred to as an art and a science. We discuss how there is so much growing synergy between the disciplines and that ultimately they need to work in sync to make a difference and be effective. Steve talks about his experience delivering a community-based activity campaign called the Big Pledge across Wiltshire. A legacy of the Olympics it used micro commitment to reset social norms. Steve highlights that the first year wasn’t very successful but use of data and perseverance resulted in it running for many years to become a phenomenal campaign that created community spirit whilst helping people to begin and keep activeSteve highlights the importance of attitudes when delivering communications and marketing – the willingness to test, review, refresh and adapt where needed. The safe space to explore what is working and what isn’t. The confidence and leadership to have honest conversations around measuring and evaluation. After all how realistic is it to think you can get it perfect every time? (Editor’s note: Expectations run perfect campaigns can cause real stress for colleagues!)Steve’s current COVID campaign is called  It’s Up to all of Us. It is a community-based campaign - a call to action to protect each other and consider the impact of their actions directly or indirectly. This work highlighted the importance of the application of insight and a deep understanding the audience. Swindon has 40 different languages, reaching everyone to help keep them safe was fundamental. Steve says“Behavioural science is more important than ever and I think this has shown the evolving and advancement of public health, it isn’t just a leaflet or a poster telling you what to do it’s about actually taking the insights from the communities and the people you want to influence and using that along with the data and the science to develop the campaign. Q: What makes you – your best self?“Knowing I can make a difference.” "I am in awe of the team I have around me” Q: What book would you recommendNudge. The goal is to make better lifestyle choices the easy choice. It highlights the role of policy but also translates how behavioural science can be used as a local level. A core text for public health and communications.Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness: Amazon.co.uk: Thaler, Richard H., Sunstein, Cass R: 8601404213366: BooksYou can connect with Steve via LinkedIn

Today's episode welcomes Claire Holm, Head of Communications and Customer Service at North Devon District Council.We chat about how loss aversion can be applied to support customer channel shift in local government. In other words, how we can use the science behind loss aversion to nudge people online and free up resources for the most vulnerable. We talk about the expectations and feelings of ownership residents have and how reactions can magnify during periods of change. We talk about the sheer difficulty of reducing budgets and how once you give someone something and they feel they own it you cannot take it away. Claire shares ideas and tangible ideas to use loss aversion, the importance of staying positive and not increasing anxietyUltimately to use loss aversion for positive gain. Don’t build messaging around fear.  

In today’s episode, we welcome Louise Ward, Louise is co-founder of the Behavioural Science Club and she shares the birth of the club following Nudgestock 2020.We explore how the club brings together practitioners, academics, professionals from a wide range of backgrounds to explore their shared passion and understand why we do what we do.Books Louise recommends:·       Alchemy: The surprising power if ideas that don’t make sense – Rory Sutherlando   The best ideas don’t make rational sense: they make you feel more than they make you think.·       Ripple: The big effects of small behaviour changes in business – Jez Groom & April Vellacotto   How to make small behaviour changes that have wide-reaching effects in the real world. ·       Hype Machine – Sinan Aral   o   A look at how social media affects our decision-making and shapes our world in ways both useful and dangerous. ·       The Choice Factory – Richard Shottono   Essential read to understand what drives peoples everyday decisions·       Behavioural Economics – Bri Williams  o   How to apply Behavioural Economics to improve your businessBehavioural Science Club: Join over 3500 members on LinkedIn. Meet with like-minded souls every Saturday to hear from experts and authors in behavioural science and related fields.  

In today's episode, we chat with the #NHSCommunicate winners.Edna Boampong, is representing the team from Cheshire & Merseyside Health & Care Partnership Trust whose behaviour change programme increasing vaccine uptake in ethnic and minorities made a significant increase of 5711%. Edna is now Director of Communications & Engagement, Shropshire, Telford, Wrekin ICS formerly Director of Communications & Engagement,  Cheshire & Merseyside Health & Care Partnership Trust.  Insights from this episodeUnderstand your audience. Edna developed a proposal and brought partners and their budget on board to be able to commission this work out.  NHSEI team, Directors of Public Health and Public Health England. Stage 1: Census data was out of date. A refreshed view was needed. Commissioned a data mining company to get a better, deep understanding of who the audiences are; down to street level. Stage 2: Quantitative survey in the areas identified. Reached over 632 people in the target audience! Success down to using the new data tool and targeted ads. Data arrived just as the vaccine arrived. Ahead of the curve as aware of which communities were more likely to take the vaccine. BAME audiences are not a homogenous group.  Able to drill down to 8 groups that were most hesitant and focus efforts.  Insights included:  The older you were the more likely you were to take the vaccine.  Worry about catching covid at the vaccine centre itself. No trust in the Government.Stage 3: The quantitative data tells you the what. The qualitative tells you the why. Ran focus groups and conversations with leaders.  Then able to segment further based on attitude and likelihood to take the vaccine.  key insight: trust in message and channel is key. First, think about the messaging. Second, think about the channels to target the audience with the message. Microtargeting can mean you duck under the very busy crowded airwaves to cut through the noise. Created Place Plans to equip the Local Authorities so they can then also amplify the messaging. Top tip for winter: Follow the data.Top don't bother: Don't assume. Book recommendation: Then She Was Gone, Lisa Jewell

Don’t engage too late! How to use social marketing concepts: reward & exchange  With Social Marketer Luke van der BeekeThis episode explores how to use the core social marketing principles: Exchange & Reward. It also touches on the concept of customer orientation and the behavioural bias hyperbolic discounting.Luke explains what the concepts are and why they are so powerful.  He ends with a powerful domestic violence case study. Definitions:·       Exchange concept has been around for a long time, in commercial marketing it is a transactional – you exchange money – a marketer is looking to optimise that value for their customers.·       In social marketing we are looking to is get people to exchange behaviours. More often than not it is swapping out something they quite enjoy for something that is maybe not giving them the same level of gratification e.g. drive safely, smoking, eating healthy.·       Customer orientation – understanding what you need to do in terms of maximising benefits minimise costs so an individual can take up a new behaviour.Challenges:·       Factual based communications are useful but behavioural comms is a different beast altogether.·       We know through behavioural science people discount long-term benefits …. It informs how we need to go about presenting choices to maximise opportunities (Hyberbolic discounting)·       Start engagement to understand what the exchange and reward is at problem definition stage! It’s so often late or…..hidden in consultation. Tips:·       Engage to understand intrinsic rewards, the intangibles around the change and what the exchange is through the audience’s eyes. ·       Stop using long term health messaging. Focus on tangibles and move beyond facts to messaging that  motivates the desired action or attitude ·       Use the insight to segment and frame communications messaging rather than what ‘we’ think it should be. Ultimately the exchange concept is a useful tool to break down benefits and costs as seen by the target audience not how we think!  BOOKSStrategic Social Marketing by Jeff French & Professor Ross GordonFreaknomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner (Luke’s go to for behavioural economics) Optimists Tour of Future: One Curious Man Sets Out to Answer “What’s Next?” Mark Stevenson  Contact & LinksLuke@bcc.org.au https://thebcc.org.au/The National Social Marketing Centre | The NSMC If you would like to know more about how to apply behavioural science and social marketing check out our Autumn Bootcamp.  

Today’s episode is all about CommsCamp 2021 – Still at home! We are joined three of the great minds behind the scenes Dan Slee, Lucy Salvage and Bridget Aherne.  Not only is CommsCamp free all the organising is on top of the day job. Key points in this episode CommsCamp is an Unconference for public sector communicators; the vision is it takes people out of their comfort zone and makes them even more comfortable! It’s the tea break at a normal conference but stretched out over the whole day. Key factors: ·       Leave your job title at the door ·       Agenda setting on the day ·       30 second pitching at the day ·       No powerpoint ·       Cake ·       Curry ·       Quizzes ·       Fundraising for the Christie Hospital in Manchester   Pitching  A good pitch can be on personal well-being or it can be work related; it doesn’t need to be sophisticated just focus on what you feel strongly about. You can share knowledge, solutions as well as a therapy or rant session.  It’s a safe container to get stuff off your chest.  And it’s also about problem solving and passing on knowledge. It’s like a live Facebook Sector Comms Public Headspace session – rather than posting on the Facebook wall we are there live together.   Dates for commscamp still at home 2021 Pre event social – 21st Curry and quiz social (early evening) Day 1: September 22nd  9:30 – 1pm Day 2: September 23rd 9:30 – 1pm   Links Public Sector Comms Headspace The Christie Foundation https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/commscampstillathome Recommended Books Dan’s choice:  Harold Nicolson 'Letters and Diaries 1939 to 1945'  get it here Amazon and also on ebay second hand, too  Lucy’s choice: The Beekeeper of Aleppo: Christy Lefteri get it here on Amazon Bridget’s choice: The Manchester Man: Isabella Banks get it here on Amazon

Segmenting Your Audience:  Don’t over-cook then under-cook  with social marketer Professor Alan Tapp The second is the three-part series exploring social marketing ·       Professor Alan Tapp began his career in marketing in commercial direct and database marketing and for the past 15 years has taught and delivered social marketing. He currently teaches at Bristol Business School and supports Local Authorities including Dorset County Council, South Gloucestershire Council.·       This episode ends with an example of segmentation and cancer self-care. ·       Segmentation is a key principle in social marketing. (Remember we are not talking about social media!)·       It is also a huge subject. ·       Segmentation is a way of grouping or differentiating audiences. You can segment by many factors, age, gender, socio-demographic, psychographic. It is a task that needs data and as this episode reveals it is very different in the public sector·       Public sector and commercial segmentation are different. o   A commercial company will draw on years of internal data sources that are shaping their products, customer experience, and marketing.  For example a club card. o   Public sector balances political considerations, committee-style decisions, often with few streams of market research but loads of organisation based data. ·       Once you have segmented ….then you target. ·       Let’s be honest segmenting costs time and energy – it’s effortful and intensive so when making decisions consider how you will capture your return on investment.·       How do you know if you have got your return on investment? That’s right – the ‘e’ word again…evaluation. Segmentation and targeting are different but both imply evaluation….otherwise where are you getting that data from????Tips: Keep it simple – don’t overcook the data and undercook the delivery. If you have core channels you will be using find out your target levels. There is no point in segmenting when you have one broadcast channel to use! Hover above – look at the whole pictureGet curious Get some insight work and use it to think and planRecommended booksPersuasion in Society Herbert Simons. 2001   Social Marketing: From Tunes to Symphonies,  Gerald Hastings 2013  If you would like to learn more about how to apply social marketing and behavioural science into everyday communications & marketing check out our Autumn Bootcamp.

Social marketing is not social media Three things you need to know about social marketingThis is the first episode in a 3 part series and to  get started we talk about 3 things you need to know about social marketing: 1)      Social marketing is not social media! Obvious? Yes. Social marketing uses intervention levers across multiple levers including training, education, public health, legislation. Smoking reduction is considered a successful social marketing approach to behaviour change as it tackles multiple influencers at once across policy as well as the individual. Macro efforts including legislation allowed local authorities to niche with services and marketing and reach those most in need. 2)      There are three key concepts, segmentation exchange and reward.  Love Your Skin young person campaign is used as an example of how to do this and shift from a population approach to a segment that allowed a deep understanding of young people and understand what would motivate them.3)      Insight is key, actionable insight will help you focus on measurable behaviour change. This is a huge win. Shifting from policy goals to behavioural goals and securing all your stakeholders is key. Remember if you can't measure it you can't grow it and you may be inadvertently causing a negative impact. Never take for granted that our audience will understand our message the way it is intended.Want to know about Behaviour Change Marketing check out our Autumn Bootcamp