Rory Sutherland is a brilliant speaker, a cross between Stephen Fry and Boris Johnson. Rory is President of the IPA.

His current passion is to encourage Behavioural Economics into wider use amongst ad agencies.

The problem is, no one outside the planning department is interested in Behavioural Economics. Or any other kind of economics come to that.

That’s just sounds like more complicated planning stuff we don’t need to know about. We’re too busy doing ads that people can understand. Ordinary people. People who read The Sun, not The Guardian.
So just give us something simple we can understand.

Okay.

Actually there’s another name for Behavioural Economics.

In creative terms it’s called Good Ideas.

Really clever thinking that we can use to do better ads. Ways that we can out think our competition. It’s encapsulated in a book called ‘Nudge’.

It’s about setting up the situation so that people choose to do what we want them to do.

Rather than nagging them into doing it. If you’re a creative, that’s clever thinking. If you’re a planner, that’s Behavioural Economics. Either way it’s what we should be doing.

Rory’s favourite example is Ataturk, the Turkish ruler. He wanted Turkey to become a modern, secular state. So he needed to move the people away from religious domination.

One outward sign of this would be to stop Moslem women wearing the veil. One way to do that would be to pass a law banning it. But that might elevate the veil into a symbol of religious freedom. Which might actually turn people who wore it into martyrs.

How could he get women to choose to stop wearing the veil?

Well he didn’t pass any laws about women and the veil.

Except, he made it compulsory for prostitutes to wear the veil.

Suddenly no respectable woman wanted to be seen wearing a veil. By her own choice. Edward de Bono, the father of lateral-thinking, had a similar idea.

When London was about to introduce parking meters, he said there was a better way.

Don’t have any meters, but change the law.

So that you had to leave your headlights on when you parked.

No one would leave their car very long with the battery draining.

Several hundred years ago, the Duke of Buckingham owned a lot of land to the west of London. It was just farmland, of low value. But his son found a way to drastically increase he value of the land. He sold a house in the middle of that land, very cheaply, to the king. That became Buckingham palace.

Of course London society wanted to live near royalty. In fact they’d pay a premium. So the value of the land skyrocketed.

In the 1950s the Betty Crocker Company invented a cake mix. It was so easy, all you had to do was just add water and bake. But it didn’t sell.

Marketing expert Ernest Dichter found housewives felt they weren’t looking after their family by just adding water. So he changed the instructions to include adding an egg.

The cake-mix didn’t really need it, but housewives felt more fulfilled. And Betty Crocker built an entire cake mix market.

In Africa they have a problem with fresh water. It’s so far underground they need pumps to raise it to the surface.

But how do they get the machinery, the petrol, the electricity, the money? A charity called Water-Aid didn’t use any of that.

They had roundabouts built where the pumps would be. Children came from miles around to play on the roundabouts.

They were the only playground leisure equipment they had.

The roundabouts turned pumps, which raised the water to giant storage containers.

So the children came to play, and carried clean water back home. Nature knows the value of a nudge, too.

There is a plant in Africa that puts out a sap, and a fragrance, elephants find irresistible.

The elephants strip the bark of the plant, chew it and swallow it. At the same time swallowing the seeds.

As the elephant moves around the countryside it defecates everywhere. Distributing the seeds, partially germinated and wrapped inside a ball of manure.

And another example of Rory’s. Speed cameras.

Have you ever been driving and seen ahead of you a sign light up saying PLEASE SLOW DOWN?

These polite little reminders cost less than a quarter of what a speed camera costs. Yet they are four times more successful in reducing speeding.

A nudge is a great way to get people to choose to do what you want them to do. Rather than trying to nag them into doing it. Like the creative department.

A lot more of them will choose to get involved if we explain that it’s a way to beat their competition. By clever thinking.

That’s something they’ll choose to do. Rather than nagging them into Behavioural Economics.