OGILVY CONSULTING

OGILVY CONSULTING

The Behavioural
Science Annual

The Behavioural Science Annual 2018–2019

2018–2019
A collection of social change
initiatives for brands, charities,
non-profits and local government
Welcome to The Behavioural Science
Annual for 2019.
We’re thrilled to share a selection of the projects that Ogilvy
Consulting’s Behavioural Science Practice have been working on over
the past year, with a particular focus on those developed in partnership
with brands and local government supporting social outcomes. 

The ambition of our global practice is to creatively apply the insights
of behavioural science to diagnose, create and validate what we call
‘Unseen Opportunities’.  These can be fresh ways of looking at a
problem, as well as interventions helping us to address old challenges in
unexpected and effective ways.  

Critically, the intention of The Annual is not simply to share the projects
where we have achieved significant impact, but also interventions
that are incomplete or unsuccessful in their objective.  As public and
private sector organisations increasingly look to behavioural insights
to address their challenges, we hope our experience and learning will
advance our success and ultimately, help us all achieve more positive
outcomes through behavioural science.

In this report, we’ll share examples of ‘Unseen Opportunities’ across a

spectrum of challenges; from improving patient experiences, optimising
a self-help manual for people in debt, increasing charitable donations,
and influencing a nationwide mental health campaign.

We hope these examples start some conversations, open a few doors

(maybe close some others… ), and ultimately encourage others to
explore how applied behavioural science can help to make our world
a better place.

We’re immensely proud of our work this year and we hope you enjoy
the read!

SAM TATAM
Consulting Partner
Head of Behavioural Science,
Ogilvy Consulting, UK

To get in touch, please email [email protected]

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At A Glance
HELPING ORGANISATIONS...

BY USING BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE...

Social Norms Effort Reward Heuristic

Ambiguity aversion Risk Compensation

Reciprocity Self-Efficacy

Concreteness Effect Costly Signalling

TO ACHIEVE...
• Nudging direct debit payments
• Creating a ‘Home Safe Checklist’
• Giving ‘free’ a value for teenagers
• Optimising coffee cup collection bins
• Designing better debt advice
• Re-framing recycling waste
• Behavioural ergonomics for safer factories
• Improving banners to nudge donations
• New envelopes to nudge donations
• Asking twice for mental health

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Contents
THE VIEW FROM RORY  4

INTERVENTIONS FOR THE 9

CHARITY AND NON-PROFIT SECTOR

INTERVENTIONS FOR THE 29

PRIVATE SECTOR

INTERVENTIONS FOR 39
LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE PUBLIC SECTOR

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 Here’s to the people
who changed their
behaviour this year.

And here’s to the

people who didn’t. 

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THE VIEW FROM RORY
There are two great things about behavioural interventions. The first is
that they work. The second is that they don’t always work completely, or
not in the way we expect. For people obsessed with conceptual neatness
and reductionist models of the world, this messiness is a constant
source of frustration. I believe it is an underappreciated virtue of the
behavioural approach. 

Let’s take the example of direct debit payments on page 40. There
are many ‘bad’ reasons why someone may not complete a direct debit
mandate: they may not find the benefits salient, for instance, or they may
not realise that the council prefers you to pay that way. Maybe they’ve
never done it before. Or they may be focused on the short term: at time
of deciding, it may be easier to send a one-off payment than to dig out
your bank details, and so short-term expediency triumphs over long-
term ease. 

But there are also ‘good’ reasons not to fill in a direct debit. Best of all
might be that you don’t have a bank account. Or perhaps your finances
are so precarious that you could never be sure in advance that you
had funds available to cover the payment. Or perhaps you are secretly
planning to skip town and hide out in the Ecuadorian Embassy for the
next seven years?

Like all good marketing, behavioural science allows people to make

new decisions by presenting choices in a better light. But it does not
interfere with people’s basic right to use personal agency to make the
best of the situation they are in. Nor does it presume to understand the
circumstances of people’s lives better than they do themselves. If you
have one good reason to resist a nudge, the nudge doesn’t work. And
that’s not a bad thing, it’s a very good thing indeed.

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When Richard Thaler wrote Nudge, the working title was Libertarian
Paternalism. Since its release, there has been more attention paid
to the paternalistic aspects of the idea than to the libertarian ones.
But the libertarian aspect is vitally important. In the case study on
page 40 (indeed in many of the cases in this report) a lawyer or an
economist would devise solutions that are wholly inappropriate or
unfair for a large percentage of the sample. An economist might fine
people for not completing a direct debit or else subsidise people who
do; a lawyer might make direct debits mandatory. In each case they
are penalising people who have perfectly sound reasons for dissenting.
(The annoying thing about government is that it is the lawyers and
economists who tend to be consulted first; it makes no sense to try
compulsion before you have even attempted persuasion.)

Or let’s assume that you charge people much more for running their
domestic appliances during the day (when carbon emissions are higher
for every kilowatt used). Is this a good idea? Well it would work. But
it would be significantly unfair to people who work night shifts, who
might be understandably reluctant to leave their appliances running
while unattended (indeed it might even be dangerous). It would also
be unkind to people in apartments whose bedroom lies beneath their
neighbour’s washer-dryer when it launches the spin-cycle at 3am.

On the other hand, if you used persuasion to encourage this behaviour,

many people could freely adopt it, but those for whom it was
inappropriate could continue as before. Law and economics are blunt
instruments by comparison.

The great thing about persuasion is that it works just as far as it

should, and then it stops working. The end-goal in behaviour change
should almost never be 100% conversion. Even in the case of organ
donations there are people who have perfectly sincere religious
objections to the practice. And, in any case, we don’t need 100% of
people on the donors’ register.

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I make this point because understanding the upside to the limitations
of persuasion is vital if we are accurately to assess the success of
any nudge-style intervention. If a benign behaviour which was
previously adopted by 40% of people is, post-nudge, adopted by 60%,
how successful have we been? Framed one way, we have increased
conversion by 50%, which is significant. But how successful have
we been overall? Is our intervention only 33% effective, since we
persuaded only one third of the audience to change their minds? I think
this understates things. Indeed, if 30% of people have a good reason
not to change their behaviour, I would argue that we have been 66%
effective, since two thirds of the people who can and should adopt a new
behaviour have now done so. And (unlike a typical solution proposed by
lawyers or economists) we have imposed no unfair penalties or coercion
on people who are perfectly justified in continuing doing what they did
before.

In short, we are in danger of forgetting that libertarianism has a value

alongside paternalism: for an intervention shouldn’t be judged solely by
those people whose behaviour it changes; it should also be valued for the
people whom it leaves free not to change.

“Like all good

marketing,
behavioural science
allows people to make RORY
SUTHERLAND,
new decisions by
Vice Chairman,
presenting choices Ogilvy UK

in a better light.”

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8
1
INTERVENTIONS
FOR THE 
CHARITY AND
NON-PROFIT 
SECTOR

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Increasing donations
with heavy envelopes
AUTHOR: MADDIE CROUCHER

Behaviourally optimising charity donation

envelopes to increase the frequency and
amount of donations from door-to-door fundraising.
The Behavioural Challenge

Christian Aid run house-to-house charity collections in May every

year; volunteers hand-deliver donation envelopes to houses in their
local area, and return to collect them along with any donations inside.

During Christian Aid Week the charity distributes approximately seven

million envelopes across the country. The success and effectiveness of
these envelopes is paramount to the success of Christian Aid Week and
overall donation revenue.

Our challenge was to use behavioural science to increase the frequency

and amount of donations elicited from Christian Aid Week donation
envelopes.

Our Approach

First, we reviewed the extensive academic literature around charitable

giving and identified 20 key behavioural barriers and drivers to
donating. To supplement this, we explored the strategies that others,
both within and outside our category, had used to overcome challenges
similar to engaging and acting on direct mail.

We creatively applied these insights to develop strategies for people to

Notice the envelope, Engage with it, and Donate.

A long list of ideas were then refined, developed, and prioritised with
Christian Aid, guided by anticipated feasibility and impact. This
resulted in six final behavioural strategies, brought to life in six new
envelope designs.

We tested the impact of the six behavioural envelopes in a randomised

control trial during Christian Aid Week 2018. Each test condition
contained 200,000 envelopes.

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 Country: UK Trial length: 1 week
Date: May 2018 Sample: 200,000 per condition

Our ideas 

Our six new donation envelope designs

included the following:

1. Hand delivered stamp

“Hand Delivered, Hand Collected,
by your local volunteer” stamp.
Strategy: Labour Illusion

2. Urgency
“We’re collecting donations this
week only!” banner.
Strategy: Scarcity

3. Appeal
“Appeal. Donation Envelope”
banner.
Strategy: Cognitive Ease

4. Orientation
Portrait orientation envelope to give
cues that it was an envelope rather
than a leaflet.
Strategy: Affordance Cues

5. Gift Aid
Highlighting the benefits of Gift Aid
“Boost your donation by 25% for
free”.
Strategy: Salience

6. Weight
Using thicker paper stock to increase
the perceived value of the envelope.
Strategy: Costly Signalling

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Our Results

Our analysis revealed that four of our behaviourally optimised

envelopes significantly increased total donations relative to the control.

• Orientation +17%
• Weight +14%
• Hand Delivered Stamp +13%
• Appeal +10%
Specifically, the Orientation and Hand Delivered Stamp drove return
rates, the Weight envelope drove average donations, and Appeal
drove both.

By contrast, the Urgency and Gift Aid envelopes significantly reduced

return rates and total donations.

This may be because Urgency gave people a justification not to donate.

Similarly, our hypothesis is that calling out that Gift Aid was “Free”
made donating too transactional (crowding out the ‘warm glow’ of
donation).

The results revealed that heightening cues of the envelope’s purpose

(affordance cues & cognitive ease) and value (labour illusion & costly
signalling) encouraged donations.

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RETURN RATE: NUMBER OF ENVELOPES RECEIVED (CHI-SQUARE TEST)

AVERAGE £ PER ENVELOPE: AMOUNT OF £ PEOPLE DONATED (UNPAIRED T-TEST)

TOTAL DONATIONS: TOTAL REVENUE GENERATED

Note: only gift aided envelopes were tracked as part of this trial

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Start small, ask twice!
Creating simple actions
for better Mental Health
AUTHOR: SARA BARQAWI

Time to Change is a growing social movement working to

change the way we all think and act about mental health
problems.  They asked Ogilvy to help them build a campaign
that will drive behaviour change, by helping key audiences
step in to talk to a friend in need.
The Behavioural Challenge

One in four of us will be affected by a mental health problem in any

given year. Despite the progress society has made, we know that many
people still don’t know how to take action. They don’t believe mental
health problems are likely to affect them or people they know, and may
not always have the tools and language to help.

Our Approach

We applied the COM-B model of behaviour change across all of

the Time to Change research conducted in the last two years, with
a particular focus on C1C2D men. This group could identify when
a friend was acting differently but were lacking the ‘psychological
capability’ to understand how to step in and have a conversation
about mental health. They simply didn’t know how to start these vital
conversations. Our challenge was to show this audience what a natural,
realistic mental health conversation looked and sounded like.

Our Ideas 

From the COM-B diagnosis, three creative concepts were brought into
initial research. Research consisted of nine focus groups, engaging over
90 people in total. 

The strongest performer from this testing was ‘Ask Twice’, a message
encouraging those to ask their friends how they are, twice, to break
beyond the response of ’I’m fine’ the first time around.

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 Country: UK
Sample: 600 C1C2D men
Date: October 2018–Present

When it came to the creative execution, behavioural levers ensured we

maximised the campaign’s message. Knowing that people might expect
mental health conversations to be awkward or scary, we turned the
intangible concept of mental health into a physical form (being stuck
under a tree). With this analogy making the issue more concrete and
relatable, therefore less intimidating to address.

We also ensured that each model of conversation had a positive

resolution, to address our audiences’ fear of addressing potentially
sensitive subjects.

Finally, we added an irreverent and playful tone, keeping the

conversation light-hearted while deploying talking taxidermy animals
to deliver the voice-over. Having a ‘third voice’ refocuses the viewers
attention, but also gives a sense of authority and clarity to the call to
action. The term ‘humans’ is a deliberate attempt to elevate issues above
society, culture and stereotypes.

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Our Results

As a result of our ‘Ask Twice’ campaign, recognition is 50% higher

amongst ‘Detached Men’ (C1C2D men) compared to the last burst
of the ‘In Your Corner’ campaign, and we’re reaching twice as many
‘Detached Men’ as we did when ‘In Your Corner’ launched.1

As targeted by our COM-B diagnosis, the campaign impacted the

psychological capability of our audience, with a 14% increase in people
who felt equipped to step in for a friend coping with depression.2

Importantly, we found a 10% increase in people checking-in with a

friend who they think may be struggling.3

After having seen our campaign, 35% of our sample claimed that
they've stepped in to help a friend.4 When extrapolated to the broader
picture of all of those who have recognised the campaign, this equates
to the behaviour change of 547,000 people. 5  In terms of media spend,
that equates to £1.15 per person taking action – our most effective
campaign yet.6

VIEW THE ASK TWICE CAMPAIGN AT:

HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=NOKH2JGK4P0

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CALL TO ACTION

Amongst those who viewed the ‘Ask Twice’ campaign, there was greater
self-reported willingness to 'check-in with a friend', 'listen without
judging' and 'watch out for friends acting differently', compared to
previous campaigns. 
Base: All who recognised Time To Change campaign: IYC 1 – April 2017 (94);
IYC 2 – October 2017 (166); Ask Twice – October 2018 (192).

Significant difference vs IYC April 2017 at 95% confidence level

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Ads for Good
AUTHOR: PETE DYSON

Applying behavioural science to contribute to more positive

online economy, an innovative new banner advertising
placement that donates half the money to selected charities.
The Behavioural Challenge

Let’s be honest, we all usually hit the ‘skip ad’ button when faced with an
advert online. Could we design a compelling message to motivate users to
watch the adverts they are shown and donate to charity in the process?

Good-Loop is an organisation that is working to make ad-banners that

create social good. Their ‘ads for good’ banners donate money to your
chosen charity every time you choose to opt-in and view their short
video advert for at least 15 seconds. In this way they are a ‘win-win’ for
charities and brands, converting people’s time into charitable donations
whilst delivering a higher quality impression for the brand.

Because people are now conditioned to be cynical about online ads,

they have become ‘banner blind’, meaning that they easily miss or ‘skip’
Good-Loop banners that can actually raise money for charity. How
could we break through a perception and get people to act? How could
we get people to even notice our ads in a world where every piece of
content is built to grab your attention?

Our Approach

The Behavioural Science literature is brimming with studies on the

motivations that drive attention and engagement. We applied these
principles to get people to notice, understand, click and watch the ads
for 15 seconds so money could be donated to charity by the brand and
publisher.

Our Ideas 

Working collaboratively with Good-Loop, we employed seven different

behavioural techniques including: re-framing, self-efficacy and priming.
For example: re-framing the concept of giving money to ‘donating your
time’ – or harnessing the power of social norms by highlighting the
number of clicks the banner had already received.

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 Country: UK Trial length: 4 months
Date: April 2018 Sample: 500,000 users

The banner concepts were tested online for a period of four months –
showing ads to over half a million people. The banners were shown to
500,000 users and received over 13,000 clicks on sites such as Stylist,
Netmums, The Londonist, CityAM and WikiHow. 

Our Results

The test was kept accurate by using Good Loop’s original banner
supported by the mattress brand Simba. The independent variable was
the seven behavioural conditions, which aimed to achieve a better click-
through-rate (CTR).

The results showed the control banner received a click-through-rate

(CTR) of 0.2%, while the nudge banner achieved a 1.7% CTR, seeing an
increase of over 600%. Interestingly, the test showed that ‘traditional’
charity imagery and language of using Messenger and Identifiable
Victim Effect scored poorly with audiences, whilst re-framing the call
to action or inferring an established social norm resulted in significantly
higher engagement.

Therefore, given a new engagement rate of 1.7% - we can forecast that

a website, with approximately one million visitors a month, could
monetise their content whilst generating an additional £20,000 in free
charity donations each year.

“Our platform
needed a creative
leap and it was
the behavioural
framework that
really cracked
open these
new banner
executions for us”
AMY WILLIAMS,
FOUNDER & CEO, GOOD-LOOP

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Dealing with debt:
Helping users make the right start
AUTHOR: JORDAN BUCK

Combining evidence and creativity to make Money Advice

Trust’s debt advice guide easier to understand and more
compelling for users.
The Behavioural Challenge

It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.

The Money Advice Trust (MAT) has been producing a self-help advice
guide for 25 years, designed to give those with financial issues all the
necessary information they need to resolve and deal with their debts.

However, the guide had not had a significant review or redesign in over
five years, and there had also been no independent user-testing during
this time. Our challenge was to help MAT redesign and restructure
the guide, embedding behavioural science techniques to make it more
behaviourally motivating, putting the user experience at the heart of the
redesign. 

Our Approach

Working alongside MAT and the Money and Pensions Service (formerly
Money Advice Service), we immersed ourselves in the existing guide and
conducted research to uncover relevant insights regarding the current
benefits and drawbacks of the existing guide.

We interviewed users who were currently or previously in debt, to gather

their stories and perspectives on seeking advice and using the self-help
guide. Finally, we reviewed all existing research and feedback related to
the guide, and conducted a competitor analysis of similar self-help packs
from different charities and organisations. 

All of these insights were carried forwards into a Diagnosis Workshop

with MAT and the Money and Pensions Service, in which we used the
COM-B2 Model of Behaviour to diagnose the specific challenges users
were facing (beyond a simple lack of information or knowledge) and
identify each of the steps we needed users to take in order to successfully
deal with their debts. 

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 Country: UK
Official launch: April 2019
Date: 2017–2018

Next, we facilitated a day-long Ideation Workshop focused around

the ‘macro’ or ‘structural’ opportunities identified. For example, we
ideated a wide range of intervention ideas and concepts concerning the
overall look, feel and structure of the resource. We then hosted a second
workshop focused on the ‘micro’ challenges surrounding the specific
content of the new guide (for example, the budgeting tool).

The strongest concepts were incorporated into an initial draft of the new
guide. Comprehensive user-testing was then conducted to validate and
improve the guide’s effectiveness, ensuring that everything in the newly
designed resource is ultimately driven by the needs of the end user.

PAGES FROM THE

PREVIOUS EDITION
OF THE GUIDE

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Our Ideas 

We completely overhauled and restructured the guide, ensuring that

the flow of the new resource mirrored the ‘non-linear’ journey of the
user, while reducing the chance of users getting lost or confused by the
information.

Throughout the new guide we embedded a great number of evidence-

based behavioural techniques designed to encourage users to continue
and enable the sustained and successful use of the materials.

One key insight was that simply giving people all the necessary
information is not enough to enable and encourage a lasting and
concerted behaviour change.

Lack of knowledge was just one of a myriad of factors which were

preventing users from successfully using the guide to get themselves out
of debt – not least the fear and embarrassment which often accompanies
this topic, as well as low levels of financial literacy.

By acknowledging users’ feelings and the psychological challenges at play

throughout the guide, we intended to make users feel at ease with using
the resource and with tackling their debt problems ‘head on’.

The Results

The new ‘How to deal with debt’ guide is now available in debt advice
charities across England and Wales. It is available both in print and
online, and can be downloaded from www.nationaldebtline.org

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“We are delighted to have worked with the Money and
Pensions Service and Ogilvy Consulting Behavioural Science
Practice in producing a resource that we hope resonates with
people in debt and inspires them to take action”
JOANNA ELSON
OBE, CEO OF THE MONEY ADVICE TRUST

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Making waste feel
like a wasted opportunity
AUTHOR: DANE SMITH

Queensland is Australia’s most littered state but it’s

undergoing transformation. We were challenged to
break through bad habits and frame their new Container
Refund Scheme (CRS) in a mass-motivating way.
How could we make the incentive of 10c feel bigger than the
effort of pitching in?
Tapping into the power of loss aversion8, our campaign
steered away from the conventional CRS conversation of
‘10c can be earned per container’ and towards something
far more motivating: ‘you are throwing out 10c in every
container’. We flipped waste on its head.
The Behavioural Challenge

Queensland, Australia’s most littered state, was gearing up to launch

their new container refund scheme (CRS) – an incentives programme
that rewards recycling with 10c per drink container.

With a state-wide recycling rate of only 44%, and three billion

incremental containers generated each year, we needed to position the
scheme in a way that cut-through inertia and changed mass behaviour.

In essence, we needed to make 10c feel

less like small change and more like a
reward with universal appeal.

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 Country: Australia Trial length: 4 months
Date: : November 2018–February 2019 Sample: 4.691 million

Our Approach

Kicking off with a literature review, we identified 20 different ‘value’

frames we could use to position our 10c incentive.

Using sponsored posts on Facebook, we tested seven different CRS value

propositions against a randomised Queensland sample (N=671,009),
measuring success via unique clicks. Our control condition was a pro-
environment message, ‘Helping you clean up Queensland’.

Our top-performing condition, Loss Aversion, significantly

outperformed the control with its appeal: ‘Claim back your money on
every container’. This became the creative launchpad for our state-wide
communications campaign.

Our Ideas 

The distinctive sound of 10c coins rattling in empty drinks containers

became our call to arms – urging all Queenslanders to stop throwing
away and start banking the trapped cash in their containers.

To bring this proposition to life where it mattered most (in moments of

public drinks consumption), we re-skinned Queensland bins to look like
cash-vessels, loaded to the brim with 10c coins.

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Our Results

From the start, our campaign has greatly exceeded industry benchmarks.

Awareness

Our original target (based on similar scheme launches) was to increase

scheme awareness from 22% to 80% by 2022. We reached 91% after just
two months in market.

Participation

In the first month, we took deposits far beyond 18 million containers

(a benchmark set by NSW’s 2018 Return and Earn Scheme) to a
whopping 50 million containers!

As of January 2019, Containers for Change has processed over 230

million containers across Queensland. This equates to 230 million fewer
containers in Queensland landfill and $23 million already reclaimed
from waste.

OUR HIGHEST PERFORMING TEST POST,

APPLYING A LOSS FRAME TO THE 10C INCENTIVE.

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OUR BROADCAST ADVERTISEMENT, URGING QUEENSLANDERS NOT TO
THROW AWAY THE CASH IN THEIR CONTAINERS.

HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=OJ0QLPB7ULG

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28
2
INTERVENTIONS
FOR THE
PRIVATE
SECTOR

29
Counting the cups:
Helping to make recycling
behaviour more noticeable.
AUTHOR: JORDAN BUCK

Working with Costa Coffee, we designed

behavioural interventions to increase rates of
coffee cup recycling at Heathrow Airport, with
a view to being scaled up across the UK.
The Behavioural Challenge

Over seven million disposable coffee cups are used every day in the UK8,
but less than 1% of those cups are currently recycled. 

To help tackle this problem, Costa Coffee – in collaboration with

Heathrow Airport and waste management company Grundon –
challenged Ogilvy Consulting’s Behavioural Science Practice to create
interventions to increase the number of coffee cups being successfully
recycled. Thus helping Costa achieve their impressive target of recycling
500 million cups by 2020.

We therefore set out to create interventions to be implemented and

trialled at Heathrow Airport, with a view to scaling-up the most effective
ideas nationwide.

One overarching insight to inform these interventions was that in the

airport environment, people are often operating on autopilot. To be
successful, we therefore needed to design interventions for people’s
‘System 1’ (their automatic mode of thinking). In addition, the multitude
of nationalities and languages at the airport meant that our designs
needed to be intuitive and easily understood by all, rather than overly
relying on language or cultural cues.

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 Country: UK
Date: Jul 2018—Oct 2018

Our Approach

First we conducted an environmental audit of all five terminals at

Heathrow, identifying key barriers and drivers to correct recycling
in-situ. We also conducted a Behavioural Insights Review to uncover
relevant insights into the challenge of increasing recycling rates, from the
behavioural science literature as well as previous trials and initiatives
related to waste behaviours.

Building on these insights, we co-developed a number of long-term

and sustainable intervention ideas, centred not only around the airport
environment, but also the coffee shops, the coffee cups themselves, the
bins, and the waste collection processes.

“We’ve set ourselves an ambitious target to

recycle 100m takeaway cups in the next
year. To help us recover these cups we need
to provide consumers with convenient
solutions to cup recycling. We are excited to
work with Ogilvy to better understand what
effective solutions look like for consumers”
OLIVER ROSEVEAR,
HEAD OF ENVIRONMENT, COSTA

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Our Ideas

One of our intervention ideas combined two new bin designs, making
it as simple and easy as possible for people to correctly dispose of their
cups. A key issue we identified was that of contamination; namely,
people not recycling correctly (removing the lid and liquid from the
cup) and putting other material in the recycling bins.

Crucial to our idea was the need to clearly communicate — through

minimal imagery and wording — recycling instructions to an
international audience. Our new designs utilised the power of social
norms to overcome this issue, with clear tubes creating the implicit
norm (reference) of cups being correctly recycled. Wrap-arounds
imitating cups in the bottom of the tubes ensured that this implicit
cue persisted even once the tubes have been emptied. Furthermore,
subtle affordance cues were employed to nudge correct recycling
behaviours, ensuring the opening at the top of each tube reflects
the content which should go in it (i.e. lid slots, shaped as lids, liquid
container like funnel, etc.).

Finally, we created a salient new coffee cup recycling logo to emphasise

the need to separate out the coffee liquid from the cup and the lid.

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Additional ideas in development are:

1. Re-framing the messaging of baristas in-store (i.e. “do you want

a recyclable cup?” vs. “do you want a takeaway cup?”)
2. Optimised cup designs to prime customers to recycle.
The ideas are currently in the design and production stage, with a
UK-wide roll out to city centres, tourist attractions and shopping malls
planned for 2019/2020.

33
Making safety salient
AUTHOR: PETE DYSON

People never evolved to work in offices and factories;

these environments and hazards are brand new. So we
invented solutions that work with our hardwired perception,
risk taking and emotional judgement.  ​
The Behavioural Challenge

Factories first achieved success improving safety with better processes,

hardware and management structures. But accidents still happen, and
Kimberly-Clark targets zero injuries of any kind per year. Behavioural
science has answers to the final mile challenge of ‘human error’
(Lindhout & Reniers, 2017).9

Our Approach

By applying the latest insights from evolutionary and behavioural

science we began to understand why people don’t always follow safety
regulations perfectly.

We started by connecting persistent safety challenges with the

behavioural science literature. For instance:

• Why can the most familiar tasks be the most dangerous?

(Habit Formation, Focus & Attention)​
• Why do people get carried away on projects, pushing too far and
prioritising production over safety? (Behavioural Economics,
Judgment Under Risk and Uncertainty)​
• Why do people act on emotion and why don’t they slow
down and ask for help? (Social Psychology)
Using qualitative research, existing studies and literature as a foundation,
we created a bespoke workshop for four tissue manufacturing facilities
in the USA & Canada. The sessions pioneered the co-creation and design
thinking with the manufacturing experts themselves; operators, drivers
and technicians. Together, we generated dozens of ideas to solve the daily
problems, risks and opportunities they observed.

34
 Country: USA & Canada Trial length: 18 months
Date: 2017–2018 Sample: 5,000 employees
across 4 manufacturing sites

Our Ideas 

Our ideas changed attitudes and behaviours, to give stimulus for

focusing, caring, prioritising and looking out for one another. Here is
a selection:

‘Hourly Board’ Colour Change:

Workers suffer from stress when their machines are running below
target (typically measured on an hourly board). Colour theory suggests
that swapping red pens for purple pens would calm people down. We
saw a 26% reduction in operators feeling pressure to ‘catch up’ on a task.

Big Blue Promise Lock

’Locking out’ is a process of disconnecting, then ‘locking off ’ hazardous

energy sources when working on a machine. To increase commitment
to this safety precaution, we applied theories of emotional engagement
to transform the existing ‘lock-out’ process into a safety ‘promise’. Now,
workers personalise their locks by writing/engraving their loved one’s
name on the body of the lock or attaching a photo.

35
Mindful Moment

Routine tasks become automatic which creates collective danger as

entire groups are not attentive to familiar risks. We applied habit
disruption theory10 by triggering a moment of mindfulness, with the
‘roll change’ task (literally when large rolls of paper are moved) selected
for pilot because operators use a remote control to manipulate two-
tonne tissue rolls. Focus is key to avoiding mistakes.

Operators voted for a 30-second clip of instrumental music (Stevie

Wonder, Superstitious) to play as the machine slowed down. The crew
is then encouraged to concentrate on timing their breathing and staying
relaxed. Fifty-six workers trailed this over three months; there were
zero incidents and the majority of participants would recommend to
another crew.

Results

Change in safety mindset, culture and behaviours are notoriously hard

to measure (Dekker, 2014)11. We created a framework covering safety
engagement, proxy behaviours and safety performance. With so few
incidents each year, this final measure is alluring to track but causation
can be misleading to attribute. The 2018 performance was strong, but
we think this evolution in thinking and behaving will take several years
to take effect.

The challenge our future roll-out plan seeks to overcome is achieving

scale (reaching more people in more factories), autonomy (facilities
creating their own ideas) and sustainability (keeping engagement high
by refreshing ideas periodically).

36
“I’d never have expected operators could be learning
and applying behavioural science principles to
improve their own and teammates’ safety. This
approach is unique in the safety space”
MATT LITTLETON,
SAFETY LEAD, KIMBERLY-CLARK FAMILY CARE
NORTH AMERICA

37
38
3
INTERVENTIONS
FOR THE
PUBLIC
SECTOR

39
Creating the 'Effort Index'
Nudging to Direct Debit payments
AUTHOR: MIKE HUGHES

A joint initiative with the Local Government Association

(LGA) and Worcestershire County Council (WCC)
to reduce fairer charging debt through optimising
care service communications.​
The Behavioural Challenge

Many people receiving social care services at home are required to

contribute financially to their services, but many invoices go unpaid.
WCC and LGA challenged us to explore how we approach WCC care
users who fail to pay for their service.​As well as payment, could we also
nudge people to direct debit payments sooner, to avoid debt increasing
over time?

Our Approach

Focusing on the Invoice, Reminder 1 and Reminder 2 letters care users

received, we undertook a COM-B2 analysis of three key stages of
payment, and defined behavioural barriers at each stage:

1. Opening the letter: We found that some clients did not open
their letters due to the high volume of letters received, or
simply because they believed it could be bills or spam. This
was exacerbated by not having any indication of who the letter
was from.
2. Acceptance to pay: The invoice received didn’t outline the
previous agreement to undergo care; therefore, some clients
were not expecting an invoice. In addition, some service users
did not agree that they had to pay for their care; or were
confused about the state of their current care plan.
3. Making a payment: For many, it wasn’t immediately clear
on the ‘next steps' necessary to make a payment. The helpline
number included on the invoice was no longer in use. Similarly,
there was no perceived consequence for non-payment, as well as
a lack of positive reinforcement for paying, while there was no
‘preferred’ way for the user to pay.

40
 Country: UK Trial length: 3 months
Date: February 2018–February 2019 Sample: 1100 Worcestershire
Care Users

Our Ideas 

To overcome these barriers, we designed 58 behaviourally informed

ideas. We then clustered these ideas into three overarching strategies,
they were:

1. Increase the ease to process information

2. Increase the perceived value of the service
3. Increase the consequences of non-payment
The below details a selection of the behavioural principles executed
within each theme:

1). Increase the ease of processing information:

Chunking: Breaking information into chunks and highlighting

important areas (e.g. ‘Your invoice at a glance’), helped the reader
process the information more easily.

Ambiguity aversion: By describing each payment option in terms of

the behaviour required for each (e.g. ‘I want to pay manually online
every month’) with a time estimation and difficulty rating, we helped
increase service users’ understanding of what is required to perform
each task.

We applied these ideas to optimise each Invoice, Reminder 1 and

Reminder 2 letter.

Using these redesigned letters as a base, we then included information

that laddered up into two separate conditions for testing:

41
2). Increase the perceived value of the service:

Concreteness: Stating that ‘every penny you pay goes back into
providing your care’ (with an image of a penny included) increased
the ease for users to understand how their care is funded.

Labour Illusion: Highlighting the effort that the care workers go to,
to deliver ‘thousands of hours’ of care, increased the perception of the
service’s value.

3). Increase the perceived consequences of non-payment:

Reciprocity: Communicating the actions of the council on their

service users’ behalf (e.g. ‘we have paid your care providers’)
increased the incentive to act.

Goal Gradient: Using a ‘negative’ goal gradient helped the user more
easily process where they currently were in the journey and indicated
the consequences of non-payment (e.g. ‘investigation commences in
14 days’).

During September–December 2018, we conducted a randomised

controlled trial (RCT) with 705 WCC domiciliary care users. We
tested our two behaviourally optimised conditions against the control
across the Invoice, Reminder 1 and Reminder 2 phases.

Our Results

We conducted Chi-Square tests to examine for significant differences

between the groups of interest (i.e. comparing the control vs each
condition).

The increased value condition increased direct debit sign-ups by 61%

(p<.10) compared to the control. 

The increased consequence condition increased people paying their

invoice via the WCC website and automated telephone line by 33%
(p<.10), compared to the control.

The increased consequence condition increased people calling the

helpline by 36% (p<.20), compared to the control.

42
 CONDITION 1 CONDITION 2 CONDITION 3

Increase Increase
the ease to the ease to

+ +
Current process process
Version As information information
Increase Increas
Is the the 

perceived perceive
value of the consequen
service

Control “Why your service “Failure to pay means

Letters as is is so valuable” moving to the next stag

ON 1 CONDITION 2 CONDITION 3

Increase Increase
the ease to the ease to

+ +
t process process
As information information
Increase Increase 

the the 

perceived perceived
value of the consequences
service

l “Why your service “Failure to pay means

s is is so valuable” moving to the next stage”

ON 2 CONDITION 3

Increase
the ease to

+
process
ncrease information Increase 

the the 

erceived perceived
lue of the consequences
service WE RANDOMLY ASSIGNED
DOMICILIARY CARE RECEIVERS
ACROSS 3 CONDITIONS,
vice “Failure to pay means TESTING OUR TWO
e” moving to the next stage” EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS
AGAINST THE CONTROL.

43
44
 PERCENTAGE OF DIRECT DEBIT SIGNUPS
WITHIN EACH CONDITION AND PHASE

Our findings suggest that by ordering payment methods by ‘time

required’ and difficulty, users are able to process each option more
easily, and ‘default’ to the easiest method (direct debits).

If we were to roll out our direct debit intervention for the domiciliary
care service within WCC, we could potentially see a total benefit of
approximately £70,000* over the next 12 months (reduced invoicing
costs and increased debt repayment).

A higher amount could be achieved if this intervention were rolled out

across other Direct Debit applicable WCC services.
*Calculated at 100 new service users per month. Average invoice value per
customer calculated at £305. Forecast calculated at 3.4% mean difference
between people signing up to direct debit with Ogilvy’s ‘Effort Index’,
compared to the control. Final figure is calculated assuming 50% of cohort
expected to pay at invoice stage, 17% at the 1st reminder stage, and 3% at the
2nd reminder stage. Assumed each individual is on book for a period of 15.7
months before service is cancelled. Individuals who signed up to direct debit
are invoiced once per month after signing up.

45
Raising the bar of patient experience
AUTHOR: VISHAL GEORGE

We co-designed three nudges with hospitals across

New Zealand to improve patients’ understanding
of medication side-effects.
The Behavioural Challenge

People don’t always understand the treatment they receive. In the National
Adult Inpatient Experience Survey, understanding of medication side-
effects and condition management received persistently low scores. Health
Quality and Safety Commission partnered with our behavioural science
team at Ogilvy to investigate these questions and co-designed three
nudges to fix issues and improve patient experience in hospitals.

Our Approach

Diagnose & Understand Issues

• Primary research – We conducted mixed methods research

with hospitals across four District Health Boards (DHBs) which
involved reviewing key documents, in-situ observations and
interviews/focus groups with staff members.
• Secondary data analysis – We analysed survey data to evaluate
demographic differences and wider trends across similar questions.
• Intervention design – We used the MINDSPACE1 framework to
conceptualise nudges for changing behaviours.
Co-designing and selecting our interventions

• We designed interventions with consumers, pharmacy leads,

nurse managers, clinical specialists and quality improvement
staff to ensure nudges were patient-centric, feasible and
practical for hospitals.
• Nudge Selection – We identified suitable nudges for each of the
three partnering hospitals.
• Behavioural Modelling – We synthesised key insights using the
COM-B2 behaviour model.
• Qualitative Assessment – We evaluated the impact of the three
nudges via phone surveys with patients receiving each intervention.

46
 Country: New Zealand Trial length: Co-designed nudges
Date: October 2018 between November 2017
and February 2018
Sample: 20 patients per hospital
for our pre-pilot

Our Three Behavioural Interventions: 

1. Follow-up Call: Patients received a follow-up call from a

hospital staff member to explain their medication side-effects.
2. Home Safe Checklist: Patients were encouraged to prompt a
discussion about their medication, condition management and
care plan.
3. Optimised Discharge Summary: Patients checked their
own knowledge gaps on a ‘behaviourally optimised’ discharge
summary.

“Finding ways to improve

the patient experience in
hospital is central to this
project. Working together
with us, the District
Health Boards, and,
crucially, the
patients accessing
services, the team at
Ogilvy co-designed useful
nudges to improve the
patient journey”
DEON YORK
PROGRAMME MANAGER –
PARTNERS IN CARE, HEALTH
QUALITY & SAFETY COMMISSION

47
Measurements

For each of the three hospitals, a phone survey was conducted by a

local pharmacist with 20 patients. We used the EAST3 framework to
evaluate the impact of the interventions across the four parameters:

1. Easy - Did the nudge make it easy to get information?

2. Attractive – Was the format useful for you?
3. Social – Would you recommend the nudge for others?
4. Timely – Was the timing of the intervention useful for you?
The ‘Home Safe Checklist’ was pre-piloted at a ward in the Whangarei
Hospital in Waikato DHB, the ‘Follow-up call’ was put on hold
at Blenheim Hospital in Nelson-Marlborough DHB since the call
durations were longer than anticipated, requiring more resources and
the ‘Optimised Discharge Summary’ is now designed for testing.

Our Results - Home Safe Checklist

1. Easy – 75% reported that the checklist made it easy to ask

questions
2. Attractive – 80% found the checklist useful
3. Social – 91% recommended the nudge for others
4. Timely – 82% found the timing helpful
Overall the ‘Home Safe Checklist’ nudge excelled on all four parameters.
We now recommend a large scale pilot to rigorously measure the impact
this has on improving patient experience in hospitals.

Right. The final version of the ‘Home Safe Checklist’ nudge pre-piloted with
patients at the Whangarei Hospital (Waikato DHB) in New Zealand. This
behaviourally optimised checklist incorporates the following features: (a) The
‘Am I ready to go home?’ heading primes patients to think about what they
need to know, (b) The check-list arranges information into easy to process
chunks 4 (c) The salient5 red icon draws attention to ‘Speak with your nurse’ 
and (d) the signature request at the start asks as a commitment6 device for
users to complete the information.

48
For more information:
Publication of Phase 1 Investigation - https://www.hqsc.govt.nz/assets/Consumer-
Engagement/Publications/Raising_the_bar_on_the_National_Patient_Experience_Survey_-_
May_2017.pdf

Publication of Phase 2 Co-designing - https://www.hqsc.govt.nz/assets/Consumer-

Engagement/Publications/Co-designing-nudges-raising-the-bar-on-the-national-adult-
inpatient-experience-survey-Nov-2018.pdf

49
An offer too good to be true? Framing
value for the National Citizen Service
AUTHOR: JACK DUDDY

The National Citizen Service (NCS) is enjoyed

but not valued; we tested if behaviourally informed
language would help
The Behavioural Challenge

NCS is a government-backed personal development programme in the UK,

in which 15–17 year olds spend up to four weeks challenging themselves,
discovering and building skills and giving back to their community. Whilst
the government invests up to £1,000 per place, the cost of the programme is
just £50.

NCS tasked us to find the most appealing way to frame the £50 cost.
The challenge was to increase the perceived value of the course without
changing the price and using language alone. These ‘value frames’ would
have to apply to two audiences: teens (15–17 years old) and their parents/
guardians.

Our Approach

We collated a total of 20 relevant behavioural principles that could be

used to influence people’s perception of value through language including
scarcity, regret aversion, endowment and concreteness. Using each
behavioural principle as a creative ‘springboard’, we developed over 300
possible ways of framing the value of NCS into concise, behaviourally
informed messaging.

50
 Country: UK Sample: 600 teens and 600 parents/
Date: 2017—2018 guardians across the UK.

Our Ideas 

The final 10 behaviourally optimised messages included:

Concreteness + Power of Free

“Your NCS ticket costs £50 – the rest is
completely free”

Social Norms + Endowment Effect

“Your place can be reserved for £50.
Don’t be the only one without
an NCS Summer”

Effort Reward Heuristic + Anchoring

“Because you’ve earned it, we’re giving
you a Summer worth £1,000, for only £50”

The language of these frames were adjusted

to apply to teenagers in one condition and parent/guardians in another.

Our Results

The 10 frames were placed into a conjoint analysis test using 1,200
participants across the UK: 600 teens and 600 parents/guardians. The
results illustrated that two frames resonated most strongly with teenagers:

“Because you’ve earned it…”

“You are only 16 once…”

However, the strongest result resonated extremely well with both audiences:

“Activities, food and accommodation, all in for £50”

By simplifying the message and concretely stating what is covered in the

price, we were able to reduce the ambiguity of what our audiences could
expect from the service.

These value frames have now become a key part of NCS’s marketing
and acquisition strategies.

51
Results of Conjoint Analysis for Teens frame preference.
Sample size: 600 teens and 600 parents/guardians across the UK.

Results of Conjoint Analysis for Parents of Teen’s frame preference.

Sample size: 600 teens and 600 parents/guardians across the UK.

52
Behavioural Principles Glossary:
Affordance Cues. Affordance cues give us a hint of how we should interact
with something.
Ambiguity aversion. We have an instinctive avoidance of the unknown.
Anchoring. We rely heavily on initial pieces of information as a reference
point for making subsequent decisions.
Chunking. Smaller, individual tasks are perceived as less daunting than big
ones with multiple, interacting stages
Cognitive Ease. We have a preference for tasks that are perceived as ‘easier’
to achieve.
Commitment. We like to be seen to be consistent in our promises and actions.
Concreteness. We process concrete concepts easier than abstract ones.
Costly Signalling. We trust things more when we feel there is an inherent
cost attached to produce them.
Endowment. Closely related to the concept of loss aversion, the prospect of
owning something increases its value to us.
Effort Reward Heuristic. We value things more when we have expended
more effort on them.
Goal Gradient. The closer we think we are to completing a goal, the more we
try to achieve it. 
Labour Illusion. We value things more when we believe extra effort has been
exerted on our behalf.
Loss aversion. We are more motivated to avoid losses than to pursue gains.
Ostrich Effect. We tend to avoid making choices when faced with a
potentially negative outcome.
Power of Free. We see no downside to FREE – this makes it overly,
irrationally, attractive.
Reciprocity. We feel compelled to return favours done on our behalf.
Regret aversion. When people fear that their decision will turn out to be
sub-optimal or wrong in hindsight they attempt to minimise potential regret.
Salience. Our attention is drawn to what’s novel and seems relevant to us.
Scarcity. People value attractive products more highly when they believe that
they are scarce.
Self-efficacy. An individual’s belief in their ability to achieve a goal.
Social Norms. Our behaviour is heavily influenced by that of others, with
common patterns signalling what is 'appropriate’.
Re-framing. Information may be numerically identical, but people will
interpret them very differently depending upon how it is presented.

53
Behavioural Frameworks Explained:
COM-B. The COM-B model is a powerful diagnostic tool which can help us
understand and prioritise why desired behaviour is or isn’t happening. Developed
by Susan Michie et al. at UCL, the model helps us identify key barriers to
overcome, and key drivers to leverage for preferred behaviour change. 
For more information: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21513547
MINDSPACE. MINDSPACE is behaviour change framework that boils
down the last century of behavioural research into nine principles of human
behaviour. Professor Paul Dolan and some of the world’s leading behavioural
thinkers have developed the MINDSPACE framework to make it possible to
apply psychological insights to non-academic settings.
For more information: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/
default/files/publications/MINDSPACE.pdf
EAST. A behaviour change framework developed by The Behavioural
Insights Team, EAST suggests that if you want to encourage a behaviour,
make it Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely (EAST).
For more information: https://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/wp-content/
uploads/2015/07/BIT-Publication-EAST_FA_WEB.pdf

References:
1. Time To Change Campaign, “Ask Twice”, October 2018 Adult Campaign Dip
by Consumer Insights, p. 41.
2. Ibid, p. 19.
3. Time To Change Campaign, “Ask Twice”, October 2018 Adult Campaign Dip,
Highlights, p.10.
4. Ibid, p.20.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid, p. 21.
7. Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. (1992). "Advances in prospect theory: Cumulative
representation of uncertainty". Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. 5 (4): 297–323.
8. https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/disposable-coffee-cups-
how-big-problem-environment-landfill-recycling-incinerate-export-
rubbish-a8142381.html
9. Lindhout, P., Reniers, G. (2017). What about nudges in the process industry?
Exploring a new safety management tool.
10. Phillips, R. O., Fyhri, A., & Sagberg, F. (2011). Risk compensation and bicycle
helmets. Risk Analysis: An International Journal, 31(8), 1187-1195.
11. Dekker, S. (2014). Safety differently: human factors for a new era. CRC Press.

54
Editors of this document:
An innovative and creative behavioural strategist, Mike excels at solving
complex problems through behavioural insight and creative thinking. ​

Having graduated with a master's degree in Psychology 2016, Mike

successfully applied for the Ogilvy Summer School and never really
left. Since becoming a strategist in 2017, Mike has worked on some
MIKE of the nation’s stickiest challenges, prototyping novel interventions
HUGHES to combat food waste and effectively helping councils to reduce their
Consultant organisational debt.

Mike has a deep understanding of how people engage with digital

applications and has been the behavioural consultant to some of
the world’s leading social media companies, helping to design and
optimise their services and products.

Mike is host of Ogilvy’s ‘O Behave’ podcast, you can listen to him ask
the biggest questions in behavioural science here:
https://soundcloud.com/o-behave

He also used to be a solo recording artist. Which he really doesn’t like

to talk about.

Pete has applied behavioural science to well over 50 different

organisations, his skill has been researching, designing and creating the
most minimal, practical and effective ideas that will change behaviour.
His passion is to venture into new sectors beyond traditional marketing,
such as safety, operations, product design, R&D and recruitment.
PETE Having first studied Human Geography at the University of Cambridge,
DYSON over the past seven years he has run projects and written campaign
Senior strategy with a specific behaviour change focus in societal and
Consultant organisational psychology. His portfolio of creative work ranges from
customer experience in hotels, improving safety in factories, door-to-
door charitable donations to direct mail effectiveness.

He has published research into the ethics and politics of allowing

tourism in Indian slums and is co-author of an upcoming book on
transport design and passenger psychology with Rory Sutherland.

Pete is also an elite triathlete competing internationally in Pro Ironman

events. Sometimes this is very energising, sometimes it is very tiring.

55
Introducing Ogilvy Consulting
Behavioural Science.
A unique skillset of psychologists, designers,
evolutionary biologists & marketers.

With a global hub in London, we work to creatively apply the insights of

behavioural science to diagnose, create and validate what we call ‘Unseen
Opportunities’. ​​Be it tasked with improving the security of Europe’s
busiest airports, changing how people interact with the world’s most
popular social media or leading sustainability projects across the UK,
our work spans product design, experience design, organisational change
and behaviour change campaigns.​So, if you’ve identified a behaviour to
change, face a ‘sticky’ challenge that traditional methods haven’t solved,
or simply have an interest in being more creative with the psychological
power embedded within your brand, communications and customer
channels, we believe ‘Unseen Opportunities’ await.​

Stay In Touch
O BEHAVE BLOG
http://o-behave.tumblr.com/

O BEHAVE PODCAST
https://soundcloud.com/o-behave

NUDGESTOCK
https://www.nudgestock.co.uk

June 2019
This paper is published by Ogilvy Consulting. No article may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher.
©

56
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