Recently I was invited to give a presentation on Behavioural Economics to the good people at Which? magazine.

As experts in consumer rights they’re naturally interested in the reality of how consumers behave, and how the advertising and marketing community use insight to communicate effectively.

Yesterday I gave the presentation, and it ended up being quite a sprint across quite a bit of ground. Of course there’s the initial ideas behind the theory of behavioural economics and a few examples of how advertisers have applied them. At heart, I think, brands have started, rightly, to focus on generating behaviours rather than merely seeking to change attitudes.

I also wanted to reflect the the importance the coalition government have attached to ‘nudge’ theory, and the influence of the Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insights Team in cascading the value of insight through government policy and communications.

I’ve also given a nod to how the application of behavioural theory is developing, and more explicitly concerned with social norms and the contagiousness of ideas. Gamification, too, is clearly built on BE principles, and technology altogether is extending the ways brands can get people ‘doing’ in response to communications, rather than merely ‘thinking’.

The deck is below.