Behavioral Science For Brands: Leveraging behavioral science in brand marketing.

In this episode we return to the question of how to break old consumer habits and build new ones. We cover four new studies, each of which has practical implications for brands. We begin by looking at when people are open to changing their behavior and discuss the fresh start effect and the destabilizing effect of life events. We then turn to the behavioral science of building new habits and look at the foot in the door technique and the perennial question - how long does it take to form a new habit?

In this episode MichaelAaron and Richard sit down with Phil Barden, author of Decoded and Managing Director at DECODE Marketing. His excellent book was one of the earliest to look at how ideas from neuroscience and behavioral economics could be used to improve marketing. Phil covers how best in class brands like Apple apply these principles but also how he has personally used behavioral science in his work at T-Mobile. 

In this episode we look at a range of behavioral science experiments that shed light on effective gift giving. These are useful because our intuition about what receivers want is often off the mark. In particular, we cover experiments showing how spending on others is a better way for givers to boost their own happiness than spending on themselves and why receivers tend to prefer experiences rather than material gifts. While there are plenty of personal applications for these findings we also focus on the implications for brands.

In this episode we talk with Les Binet, co-author of The Long and the Short of it about his research into effective advertising. We discuss some of his best-known findings, such as the value of emotional campaigns. But we also cover some lesser-known areas such as whether wear out is a myth, why music in ads should get more attention and finally what he calls the “dark matter of effectiveness”: price effects.