Perhaps one of the most thought provoking books published over the last couple of years has to have been Nudge: Improving decisions about health ,wealth and happiness. Last night, some of us were lucky enough to hear its author, economics god Professor Richard Thaler speak as part of the IPA’s Writers Unblocked series of talks.
With his co author Cass Sunstein, Thaler coined the phrase ‘choice architecture’, to explain how we, as humans, are all susceptible to the influence of a variety of environmental conditions that in turn, can cause positive and negative effects on our behaviour. He describes these factors as nudges. As he does in his book, Thaler took us through a number of examples of how ‘nudging’ can help to bring about changes in our actions. These ranged from the practical – such as the inclusion of smiley faces on some American households’ electricity bills when they used less power than comparable houses in their neighbourhoods – through to the hilarious – such as how the engraving of a fly, or insertion of goal posts in the drain of a urinal, could help the more careless males amongst us improve our aim in the bathroom.
For Thaler, it can be these little, relatively low cost initiatives that bring about some of the biggest changes in our lives, and in the case of global warming, potentially prove to be a solution.
Regardless of context however, Thaler cited 3 qualities that would automatically help to ‘nudge’ people. Firstly, as in the case of the urinals, Thaler argued that simply by making the more mundane tasks fun, it can be possible to both change behaviour and bring a smile to people’s faces. Secondly, again playing to human nature, he also argued that just making things easier to do was one of the most obvious and successful catalysts for change. Thirdly and perhaps most far reaching however was his support of sharing data and information – essentially enforced disclosure. That way, Thaler argued, it would be possible to regulate organisations based on what they revealed, rather than what they chose to keep private. Given the pace of change in life and both the public and private sector’s inability to keep pace with it, he maintained that through this sharing of data, we as humans would have been better equipped to cope and adapt our behaviour accordingly to one in a million chance events, from the credit crunch to the recent oil spill.
But what does this mean for adland? After such thought provoking stuff, it was hard not to agree with Rory Sutherland’s summation that Thaler’s thesis provided an “Uplifting view of our skills”. Despite the wealth of tools and advancements in the ways we communicate, so many campaigns today still focus on outright cajolement rather than the art of intelligent persuasion. Key to changing this behaviour is the genuine appreciation that it’s not always he who shouts loudest that wins the day – rather it’s human insights and psychological rationale that are the key to effective communication.
