Posts we like
More liked postsWhen car insurance companies get marketing right
The Australian insurance company Youi has been running TV ads over the past few years featuring auto policies flexible enough to allow those that don’t drive to work everyday to pay lower rates.
This is an approach many insurers offer, but Youi has taken this to a new level by:
- Making this point explicit - if you don’t drive to work, you can save
- Producing some terrific spots featuring people that get to work by cycling, walking, and taking public transport.
Here are links to three of the commercials from 2010. There are new versions playing now, but the following are more readily available to view online.
The Guardian: Taking Behaviour Change to Scale
The Guardian is on a roll with several recent articles on behaviour change. Kudos.
Where to start with the recent article on changing behaviours at scale?
There are far too many elements to discuss in this one post - so let’s keep it tiny… one bad, one good.
THE BAD: There’s still a lot of muddled thinking here on changing attitudes. The central theme of the article is that, until recently, large-scale behaviour change has been the domain of government. Case in point: “Attitudes to issues such as binge drinking, unprotected sex and regular exercise have largely shifted thanks to government-funded campaigns.” Indeed - attitudes may have changed, but did behaviours follow? In our recent behaviour change project in Geraldton (WA), ActiveSmart, formative research found that most people were indeed aware of the need to exercise. Predictably - this did not correlate to actual behaviour. This is where behaviour design comes in - allowing us to think clearly about facilitating new behaviours.
THE GOOD: On the flip side, the article ends with a great line of thinking… “Companies could start with the sustainability habits they want to see, and then design products and business models to fit. Not vice-versa as at present.” This is spot on, and exactly the kind of design thinking that will indeed lead to large-scale behaviour change: Identify the target behaviour, design solutions that achieve that behaviour.
Robust behaviour design can certainly extend beyond products and business models. It should also apply back to the aforementioned large government campaigns. Well-designed, direct behavioural interventions should replace vague marketing campaigns that, at best, change attitudes alone.
Brands, Persuasion and Sustainable Lifestyles
Are brands the antidote to ineffective information campaigns?
That is largely the proposition proffered in the article Nudging the Nudgers. Lucy Shea makes the case that while public information campaigns have worked well for fear-oriented initiatives (eg, don’t drink and drive), they tend toward ‘nagging’ when applied to the sustainability arena.
The problem in this line of thinking is that no effective campaigns have ever been purely ‘information campaigns’. Behaviour experts agree that information alone does not change behaviour. Any success in the drinking and driving arena, for example, is due to a full suite of approaches to the problem, from fear-based marketing campaigns to severe enforcement and punishment of offenders.
As such, the problem isn’t so much that information campaigns don’t work in the sustainability sphere - it’s that they don’t work anywhere. Information alone would indeed be simply nagging. More likely it is simply ignored, lost in the deluge of information that rains down on us daily.
In this context, the push to emphasize brands as an alternative seems to fight the wrong battle - primarily because it’s not an either/or issue. Brands clearly have a role to play, and should be part of the mix. Effective brands make people feel comfortable, and brand managers can use this attribute to get people to try new behaviours (eg, I trust Tide to clean my clothes, so I will try Tide’s Cold Water detergent).
Behaviour design for sustainability must move well beyond information. Successful interventions will target specific human behaviours (eg, use cold water for washing each week) and design to trigger these behaviours. You can design to make the behaviour easy for people to do, and utilize triggers to prompt the behaviour at just the right place and time.
Check out this sweet new ‘floating’ bicycle roundabout in Eindhoven (Netherlands). The design fully separates pedestrian and cyclists from traffic.
For more information on this project, check out the blog post from René Teeuwen on the Allinx website (log-in required). Full credit to René Teeuwen for the photos.
I recently joined a public forum on transport in Bendigo. An audio stream of the discussion is here (at the 1:08 mark of Session 1).
As car use declines, will the outer suburbs become ghettos? http://tiny.cc/104b7
