 Tell me, God, a little bit about yourself and your journey into behavioural science. Great, and I'm really disappointed. I thought Chris only called me Lord, but that's okay. It's an honour he bestows to many people and we absolutely love it and don't want him to stop. I knew he said it to all the girls. It's a pleasure to be here everybody and I've always been a massive fan of 42 courses from the beginning and I think together it managed to trade over 20,000 people so it's super exciting. I really care about evangelising the fields of applied behavioural science and believe that they often are the missing seat at the table. I don't think we should be the only seat at the table. I think we should always seek to work and have long arms and work with lots of different disciplines but I do think we're often the missing seat at the table. Over the past 11 years I've been practising with Ogrevia's. There's really started to change, which is really, really exciting. I studied psychology back in the day. The funny part of that story is I originally wanted to study philosophy but it during my A-levels accidentally ticked psychology and about six weeks in realised that I wasn't in psychology lessons. I wasn't in philosophy lessons or other but it was a very, very happy accident. I then studied at York and met some great professors who were great at evangelising and really simplifying down the complex worlds of behavioural science and really focusing on the application and then during my final years I became really obsessed with Dan Ariely, Rory Sutherland who I now get to work with and really just seeing the potential for what the behavioural sciences and deep human insight can do for the worlds of the private sector and the public sector ultimately and really a deep belief that people often think that behavioural science is kind of the opposite of creativity and there's some respects it can be but in the way that I like to practise it with Ogrevia is really making sure that actually we can use behavioural science to stimulate creativity to make people think even broader than they normally would do so I think that's one of the real untapped superpowers of behavioural science. That's me. That's a really great story Dan. Hearing somebody as you told us at the outset you were looking to these people as your mentors and then you're working with these people every day so it's such a lovely story and as you say them with Ogrevia really for the full length of the time that it's had its behavioural science unit started by Rory and Jez and now Jez has told me no longer with Ogrevia but Jez has told me a very interesting story about the way they, himself and Rory started behavioural science in that it wasn't so much as anybody gave them permission to start it, it was more that it was sort of going on in the background with various experiments that they then could tell people well you don't think it works but by the way now the one I'm thinking of Dan that Jez has told me is something to do with in the restaurant maybe or in the canteen with carrots, have you heard this story? Yeah, maybe you'd like to, it's such a simple story but so effective maybe you'd just like to share that story with everybody Absolutely, yeah and first of all to say I have a huge respect for Jez and Rory of course in really kickstarting the space and doing wonders really for Rory at all so massive thank you to those toping it up for all of us really to practice and make a career out of it so thanks Jez and the great skill I think there was really making sure that the experiment itself is interesting we'll talk about it but the cleverness of it is really making sure that we were speaking the language of the organisation I'm not sure it would have worked in the bank as much as it worked at Ogilvy for example but I'm sure we'd have done something else in the bank so ultimately Ogilvy is about in the UK is about a thousand very creatively minded people who all had to go for lunch and so they did some experiments on our choices and so they did a range of things to drive people to pick more healthier options ultimately which was having more carrot options using the psychology of language to add adjectives to the carrots I think they called them succulent carrots and some other psychological techniques to drive that and they got some great results and were able to then play back to the organisation it's not really a gotcha moment but did you know that your carrot consumption as a total of a thousand people increased as a result of things that you didn't notice which is super fun and the salad bar is still very popular at Ogilvy probably now what I absolutely love about that story is within the world of behavioural science of course there's a lot of terminology we talk about bias we're using words that you have to learn about what do they mean and yet that concept is so simple that when people are having conversations with you and say well how can I bring it into my business you can give that very simple example and suddenly it seems like the veil of the subject falls away and people realise that sometimes it's the simplest of change maybe just in a word or a movement or a different route or something and I think really that is that's sort of a core tenet of behavioural science would you agree Dan? I would yeah and it's really interesting actually because I think that was exactly the right thing to do then exactly the right thing to do then and since I joined Covid like everybody else got a bit bored so I started to start the podcast on the growing pains of applied behavioural science we interviewed about 20 plus different of the different behavioural science leads around the world it's a great way of kind of understanding what was going on and kind of showing that with everybody else and one thing that was kind of coming up as a common theme was those silver bullet stories of a simple change with a big impact kind of an outsize impact disproportionality effect were really helpful back in the day and they still play a big role today in really helping to capture people's attention on the first time but when you think about a behavioural science maturity curve and obviously different countries and organisations and people within the organisations are all at different points within there there's also the downside of a silver bullet story that makes it sound too easy and too magical and there's someone who doesn't get that result when they start to do it for the first time they're transformative results straight away that could be a challenge so I think like everything it's a sweet spot you know everything's on a spectrum and there's a sweet spot in that spectrum which is you want to make it sound really captivating and impactful but you also want to recognise that often you get to that rigor gets those great insights through the rigorous process of behavioural science as well so a sweet spot I think and is there a particular project that you've worked on with Ogilvy that really is like close to your heart you would say that was my pet my pet project there is a laughing because if anybody from the team is watching this they will probably turn off because I've heard it a million times but a couple of years ago we worked with Gatwick Airport and I just am absolutely in love with aviation and I think they're great places to do kind of behavioural science observations and finally got paid to kind of sit at airport security and watch people go through it was an absolute joy so we worked at Gatwick Airport and at the time it was to look at reducing what they called the liquid reject rate which essentially means when you go through security we've all had that fuss and bother of having to take our liquids out of our bags so they can be scanned separately oh yes liquid bombers that really cause that issue for us and and people don't always get it right so what happens when they get it wrong you've all seen the arm of death where your bag gets shoved onto the conveyor belt and then you're going to be in the queue for it to be looked at and that creates queues that creates dissatisfaction with the airport security process that takes away time from people shopping or going to eat or sometimes missing flights when you get queues there to make sure we get the sweet spot again bit of a thing of making sure it's a safe process but also making sure it's actually a system that gets hundreds of thousands of people through it every day think about hundreds of thousands of people go through Gatwick every day and so the challenge here was how do we look at this and they've worked on this for years what this group will call a system 2 perspective that put up signs that really the security guards and the security guards would say basically the French and the Italians so they put up signs in French and Italian outside to translate to make sure they got it right but made no difference so we wanted to bring a behavioural science lens into how do you get people to take their liquids out of their bags and pack them correctly when they go through security so we had a mixed methods we went at all different times to do observations and surveys of people and so we'd watch what was happening going through the lanes the most insane things would happen people would be taking circular saw blades through security and being confused why they were getting pulled over and a lot of people would just basically forget that they bought a water bottle and it's in the bag a lot of people would understand that a cream like a suntan lotion is actually a liquid cheese is a bit of a mixed one there's basically hard cheese isn't a liquid and then some brie and soft cheese are a liquid technically so it's not as simple as you might think but there's a lot of work that can be done by just making it kind of easier to be understood we also looked at lots of the data we looked at long haul, short haul hand luggage only and that made a difference nationality age we looked at all of the data points you could imagine really and came to the conclusion that it's quite spread and actually it isn't that it's a particular group that really gets it wrong it's actually quite outbound passengers versus returning I'm quite organized on the way out and I'm an absolute mess on the way back could be all of those different things and it wasn't so we basically did that mixed methods approach we then did a paper science workshop with a load of the security agents at the airport and our creatives and generated some ideas and one of the ideas that I found most interesting, I can't really talk about the case really beyond this point too much is this idea of really trying to recognize I mean some people don't know the rules some people don't remember the rules and some people don't care about the rules most behavior change barriers falls into those three categories and so we had to design something that really just got people to trigger their system to brain as they zombie through the security gates and so we had a point of choice a forced choice moment of whether you would consider yourself security ready or whether you need a few more moments to pack so security ready quick lines straight through need some more help you would go to the room with tables we could repack a bit more in fiber and secretly these were called the corridor of education and reminder and the corridor of doubt so basically if you thought you were ready we reminded you of things that be overconfident people forget and if you need help we give you all this simple support that you have and then you kind of you measure from there but it was a really interesting and I'll stop there on that one but it was a really interesting situation one of the most interesting findings was that one of the reasons we suspect they were misdiagnosing the problem is because when we watched French and Italian people being pulled over they were more likely there's a higher instance rate of them being quite expressive and annoyed about being pulled over that the body language of the nation just seems to be more more seems to be larger we suppose that the security agents were kind of just remembering more encoding the memory of those situations more and then assuming a higher instance rate amongst that group even though the exact same amount of British people were pulled over they were just a bit more polite and shy and bashful about it so they were remembered as much so a really interesting case of making sure that you really diagnosed the problem optimally and I think it's what you say is a case close to my heart not just because of the sector but because behavioural science can help us to kind of misbust and because I think that's one of the the first seeds of creativity is to kind of overcome any false assumptions we can't get to a new space if we're kind of clinging on to the problems of all that we think of there Fantastic story thanks Dan and of course it reminds me of the very well known behavioural science change that was done in the airports in terms of the distance of the walk to collect your luggage so that just by walking further your luggage was actually there and then you wouldn't have to wait again an example of such a simple solution and as you say the concept really behind behavioural science that we're taught the east framework the first of which is easy it's really crucial isn't it because it's got an extremely lazy and it's got to be extremely easy for us to make this make this change now Can I see a very quick other airport case studies because I won't forget myself We all got airports today Sorry to interrupt You know Professor Dilip Soman, he's spoken in a shop before I'm pretty sure this is his study I've certainly seen him present it but it was an amazing case of a very unexpected change that changed a very sticky behaviour so you know when you're queuing up to check in and sometimes you can have a bit of a queue there and a lot of the reason that queue is there is because people don't have their tickets and their documentation ready when they get to the checking desk because everybody's kind of usually wear a backpack where they don't usually wear for example they stuff important stuff really deep in so it doesn't get nicked and so when you get to the checking desk another one minute is spent collecting the right documents to actually check in and so what the airport's response was is to go around and kind of pay people and put a lot of signage and all the language is to say please have your tickets or documentation ready for when you check in it'll speed up when you think that would work because that's what everybody wants right now isn't it to get through the queue it doesn't work because everyone's a bit nervous about their passport getting nicked and keeps in a really safe place that's harder to take out on the right time what the psychologist managed to do is anticipate that the principle of feeling in system would change that behaviour which basically means you know sometimes you get that small piece of carpet by the checking desk they extended that carpet by about six feet into the queue so essentially the first one, two, three, four people were stood on that carpet and it made them feel next when you feel like you're next you get your tickets out, you get ready so just pulling the carpet out into the queue solves the problem by quite a chunk because it makes you feel like you're in system like you're next and you actually do the right behaviour now nobody I don't think without having behavioural science even people that sell carpets don't know that they are sat on a behaviour changed gold mine ultimately and so that's what's amazing about behavioural sciences it shows us so many more possibilities of what we can do the challenge is then finding out which possibility is the right one great story, I'm keeping my eye on the time because speaking to everybody who's with us here today of course we do want you to put your questions to Dan so we'll chat for another few minutes and then start putting your questions in the chat box and I'll bring you in to put them to Dan so the other question I wanted to ask you Dan is you did mention that Dilip Simon had spoken at Nudge Stock for those of you who joined us today Nudge Stock I'm sure you all know is the annual behavioural science festival hosted by Ogilvy the last two or is it three years that you've co-hosted Dan last two years last three years you're co-hosted now by Dan and the super Tara Austin who for some reason last night when I had a complete mental block on Tara's name I was then I was saying Austin power in my head I was like why am I thinking what it's super Tara Austin is there a particular talk from down the years that you've really liked or that really always sticks in your mind as being something that meant something to you whether you really learnt from or even just really enjoyed yeah that's such a good question because we've had so many talks over the years I mean it'll be our 12th Nudge Stock this year during the pandemic we streamed for 15 hours so there's been a lot along the way I mean the cop out answer is I always rewatch Rory's talks about 20 times I've worked with him for 11 years over and what's amazing is he manages to speak so many languages at the same time to people but if I was to pick one that wasn't my boss I would say there's a professor Blay Whitby is an expert in the psychology of plane crashes and he gave a really interesting behavioral science we all know kind of is and isn't new and what's really interesting is kind of since the 30s behavioral science might probably wasn't called that has been plugged firmly into the aviation sector to kind of reduce the amount of fatalities that we have to make sure that the industry prospers and so and human beings but I think he managed to tell some really compelling stories and one of the key things was that within air crash investigations they don't usually they talk a bit about pilot error but as a concept it's not something they like to it's not something that's going to really help things they often talk about cockpit error so they really put the onus on the context for not being right rather than just kind of the fact the human factors on the pilot and I thought that was really really helpful you know those familiar with the model you can clearly see the links between kind of the environmental opportunity and and cockpit error and I think it just brings a really nice perspective on that humans you know flying at 2 a.m. with a poorly labelled lever are always going to pull the wrong lever so actually the job is to make a better lever for the pilots not to try and change the human too much and I thought it was a really nice thing that I realised that really filters into a lot of the work that we do within UX user experience and a lot of work in advertising and it kind of meant a lot to me because it kind of connected a lot of dots back many decades and you realise that you stand on the shoulders of giants with lots of things and you don't actually invent a lot yourself you just notice things forward a little bit Super, Steve there in the chat just before we leave airports which seems to have all become very aviation themed today Steve there in the chat saying that at Edinburgh airport when you're queuing for the security trays there was a screen telling people that if you don't unpack correctly it might take you six minutes longer to get through so again a very simple prompt now before I come into the questions I see that Herbert's raised the awful subject do you think the whole topic has been damaged a lot by the whole fraudulent study news with Dan Ariely etc and I think it would be remiss of me to not sort of talk about that subject I mean replication crisis now that I've looked into it a lot actually is nothing new and I thought it was something new so it's nothing new and in a way I do understand that we shouldn't be able in a way to replicate because we're always changing we're humans so in many ways we can't look at it in that way but what are your if you don't mind sharing your views about not necessarily just that case but the concept in general so that we don't have to be too pointed exactly I can't let down my fellow Dan no no I mean it's a really interesting subject if I'm honest I haven't dove into the details too deeply on this one so I haven't gone down kind of the Twitter rabbit holes and looked at all the details and watched all the YouTube videos on it because I'm pretty certain the behavioural science works and I feel like I've practiced for 11 years worked with on thousands of projects with hundreds of brands and done lots of execution and got lots of results and it does work and at a kind of a theoretical level it really partners well with creativity to create impact at a kind of a project level it really when you put it side by side with the traditional methods we often kind of have traditional method AI and then behavioural science with humans how by AI and all that kind of stuff and we tend to come out on top most of the time so kind of I haven't dove into it too much because it felt like a distraction on the and you know the house I'm in is built with thousands of bricks if two of those bricks aren't right doesn't invalidate the concept of a brick and thank God but I would say that obviously we all have a duty to tell the truth and and it's not good to and like I said I don't know I haven't looked into the case but it's important that we tell the truth and it's important all the cases that we share are based on the truth not least because that's the right thing by the clients that pay us lots of money and the industry that gives us all a life to be honest but actually people borrow rightfully borrow each other's ideas so you know we do lots of actual category analysis and we'll look at successes in other categories and when we borrow those techniques and fix for our own categories and if we're borrowing things that aren't true then we've got a very big problem you know so that's why I mean the importance of testing is key to make sure that your principles are working in your environment but ultimately I don't really think that behavioural science rests on one study or one person that's a lovely diplomatic answer thank you very much Dan and it is actually what I think and it may or may not be the truth I'm joking we are maybe biased ourselves to only focus on behavioural science examples that have been successful obviously they're the ones that we hear about and if you don't mind if it's not too much of a little bit of a tender subject do you mind at all talking about the reception to the recent Ogilvy campaign done with the mayor of London the mate campaign which had a little bit of a kickback which was actually equally interesting to see the response to it and of course we learn again from response to these experiments so would you like to just tell everybody just very quickly the basis of what I'm talking about and then how the reception was a little bit mixed absolutely yeah we launched the campaign during a culture war about culture so there was going to be some things but for the past couple of years we've worked really closely with the mayor of London on a really important topic on misogyny and knowing that many women in London and beyond have suffered the negative effects of that we thought it was important to try and tackle that and to bring behavioural science working hand in hand with the advertising part of our business to do what we can on that subject and we're a very small piece of a very big problem but we're kind of happy to play our role there and the first campaign that we did was called Have a Word so basically you can see the clips online, see the clips on the films that we created and it was all about how it's really hard to tackle the perpetrator it's much easier and more effective to tackle the people around the perpetrator tackle their mates so really asking men to kind of the friends of perpetrators to step up in the moment and say this isn't right ultimately really really killing that bystander effect and we had some good success with that and then we realised that after the first year of kind of launching that awareness we got into the UN curriculum it was really successful we then had to give people that word that we told them about and anyone who's kind of behavioural science fans in the room which I'm sure everybody is will know about the designated driver case study about how you can seed language into the the milieu of culture not by telling people exactly what to say all the time but actually just by kind of getting that language to you so the terms designated driver was popularised by Canadian PR firms not necessarily straight away by explicit comms but by kind of writing into TV and soap scripts and all that type of thing I think it was Fraser I can't remember so we really loved the technique and we were kind of simply thinking that that would be a helpful way of doing it so we had different comedians we had Ron with Frank and Nathan kind of use the terms that we created to kind of really seep it into culture which was then confirmed by some campaigns that were launched later on we actually didn't have much kickback until it was tipped as the mayor of London so I do think the messenger of the campaign but rather than the campaign can really change things and politics is not an easy space I was presenting this at the Babel Insights team a couple of about a month ago now and a full agreement that politics is not an easy space to play it certainly doesn't come without kickback now the word that we came up with was mate because that is the word after doing many observations we've been kind of undercover in gyms and barbershops across London finding out what language people actually use in quite male dominated environments and the word mate was the word that we found after testing and researching it was going to be the most powerful to really saying getting that sweet spot again sweet spots between kind of not ostracising the man from the group but educating the guy and keeping him in the friendship group for kind of that long term benefit it can be tempting to just chop and cut but the smartest thing we think is to really kind of help the people grow so we can have a better society so we launched mate with an elongated A because it kind of had the effect that we wanted to have and the reception was we had some amazing reception and we had some bit of kickback as well so we had kind of Caitlyn Moran saying this is one of the one of the most powerful campaigns you've seen in the area we had the spectator taking the word mate but having a go at the mayor of London about other other issues but in general there was a mixed debate about it because everyone has, it's a very emotionally charged area and some people would rather see different techniques but ultimately we're quite certain that we went through a big process of due diligence this wasn't kind of just, we didn't think of mate overnight and get it out there this was based on a lot of psychology and a lot of testing with a lot of customers and the proof is in the product, right? I think that the proof is in not necessarily in commentators but the proof is in the research and evaluation criteria we have now set up for that, it's a couple of years so I think we'll figure that one out in 2027 Brilliant, thanks so much for sharing that Dan as I say I think it's equally important isn't it to talk about things that do have these mixed reactions and not just for like the 100% gold cases and is that particular case in the 2023 annual I think it is, so just to tell everybody if you go to the Ogilvy website there's a free download of the Behavioural Science annual I've actually got the 2022 one here which I think you can still access online as well and it has case studies that Ogilvy have worked on it's really interesting you can download that for free so I do advise you go and do that and then that case was that Behavioural Science project was discussed during NUDSTOCK this year which again you can access it online on the Ogilvy YouTube yeah so I do want to as I said bring everybody in that you can find more about Dan's work in our Applied Behavioural Science course that he is strongly present in and of course I only learnt this this morning Dan I didn't realise you wrote basically the framework of the original Behavioural Economics course our very first course so you're very present through all of our work so if Samantha has the bandwidth to turn on her video and join us I know you're still with us Samantha I'll ask you to unmute if you don't mind would you like to ask your questions about the framework which is really interesting yeah I guess Easter's used a lot and it makes it easy for people to use and think about Behavioural Science so it's using it in and of itself isn't it and it's great from that point of view and I think it's a really good starting point but I guess the question is maybe it's just me but I find it a bit too reductive and a bit vague because obviously it's naturally collapsing a lot of different principles and biases isn't it so actually yeah it's good to get the concepts at a very high level but I find that it can be a bit limited and so yet it seems to endure so much and everyone's still banging on about East and I just think can't we be a bit more sophisticated without having to be you know academics about it so I guess I find like mind space is a nice balance but any thoughts lovely thanks very much Samantha you might very quickly touch on how you use ocean at work as well Dan whilst we're on this subject yeah absolutely so I mean it's such a good question and from a kind of Behavioural Science movement perspective I'm really happy that there's kind of models of different levels in this kind of East mind space I mean there's tons aren't there there's more that being published that are quite specific to industries too which I think is ultimately where the most help can be and so you mentioned East which is yeah four components mind space which is nine components and I still find mind space can be quite a helpful memory jog it doesn't if we're dealing with a very big sticky challenge we tend to go a lot deeper but sometimes you know if we're doing something really helpful and helpful to co-create with others because you can kind of teach it quite quickly and people get people get it and what we tend to do it over be consulting is to would be a lot more rigorous than that on the projects that we have so we would have lots of different data feeds that come in and that would help us to select the right Behavioural Science principles and then we would kind of use those to ideate for the solutions so for example we do a lot of work with cognitive profiling which is essentially looking at people's personality profiles like Ocean that Louise is saying their cultural world views and then also their cognitive thinking styles the kind of three buckets of ways that we can differ in the field of psychometrics so rather than just looking at demographics and rather than just looking at different behaviours that people do we're looking at how they really think because we can then infer for different segments of mindsets how they would best respond so for example on the personality profiling that Louise talks about if we take extra version and introversion because that's one that we all get some of us are extroverts some of us are introverts some of us are bit of both some of us kind of change a bit depending on the context but we tend to kind of have one way where we kind of rest if you're an extrovert so if a segment overindexes on extraversion against other segments we'd be more likely to use a principle known as social proof which I'm sure you know because extroverts just like to do what other people are doing there's that social comparison thing that's really important if we have a segment that overindexes on introversion we'd be more likely to use a principle or test the principle with them of loss aversion pointing out what you stand to lose rather than what you stand to gain so there's a match making exercise to be done between the cognitive profile that you have and the behavioural levers that we would pull now they're not as simple and as fixed as that often we would do the research to find out what one match is the best but once you have that it's much easier to know that you're dealing with the behavioural science palette of principles that are going to be most affected than that rather as you were saying Samantha on the east where it's kind of just the same for each time Brilliant, thanks so much for talking that through Dan and I know that the more sort of advanced market research agencies are very much adapting now to that profiling technique rather than using standard demographics as they would have done in the past that's really interesting now I'd also like to bring in Corinne if you have the bandwidth Corinne to join us and put your question to Dan you were talking about people able to unpick their behaviour would you like to put your question to Dan Corinne? Yeah We can Corinne, it's lovely to see you Hello Dan Nice to see you I wonder whether there are people out there who are so tuned in to themselves that they can actually pick apart their behaviour what really is motivating it whereas we kind of David Ogle will be saying people don't say what they think can anyone short circuit that and actually not and like could we use those people, could they help us to try and understand new biases and characteristic That's a lovely question thanks Corinne, a very core human basic question so I don't know if you'll actually have the answer to that Dan but do go ahead No it's wonderful, my perspective on it would be that we can all do it at a time at any point you can switch into your kind of, no it's an abstract concept isn't it a system on system 2 but if we want to introspect on a particular moment of what happened during a day a coach or a friend or a mentor can help us zoom into that situation and kind of deconstruct it and we can look at all the factors and a therapist might help you understand the different factors involved, it might be against a model it might not be, maybe it's just mine and you can really start to deconstruct a moment what we can't do is do it every day all of the time so I think people vary on their kind of ability to introspect definitely and then every moment of the day is not equally introspective upon so I guess if that person did exist who could kind of introspect all the time they'd be dedicating a lot more of their processing power to that actor introspection and not doing other things so I don't think they'd be very interesting or they'd be very interesting because there were a lot about a lot of stuff but you know I think introspection and being aware of the biases at play is a muscle and the wonderful thing about behavioural sciences it's a lattice work of which you can hang your ideas upon you know you can use the language and the terminology of behavioural science just think through things and to understand the different concepts at play having words for the intangible helps us talk about the intangible and that's often where a lot of progress can be so yeah I think against current and I'd love for the perspectives but I think it's kind of we kind of all can introspect but we have to turn it on and off all the time Lovely thanks Corrin so now I'm going to ask Trevor if he's able to join us to unmute yourself Trevor you had a lovely question on brand purpose something we would like to chew on which hopefully will turn the corner away from but would you like to put your question Trevor to Dan Thanks Louise and hi Dan it's been in the press this morning growing back from brand purpose so it's not suitable for all their brands and the marketer Mark Ritzen has been on this for some time we know you know the the off-quoted consumers don't think how they feel why do we still use market research that tells us people are going to go for the latest sustainable thing the latest vegan thing when we know it's not true That's a very very good question and I think there's probably a couple of things swimming around in my head the cynical answer is because there's million billion dollar market research firms that exist and want to keep existing the less part of myself would say that sometimes it can be interesting to understand why people think what they think, why they think now so what they say is interesting but why they say is more interesting so even if it isn't quite right it's still kind of helpful to know where their heads are at so we can do that from to exercise but absolutely I think that's why behavioural science as a movement is taking making so much progress is because we're understanding that kind of mixed methods adding complementary methods to that process is really helpful I think one of the challenges with behavioural science is we don't yet have all the answers so we're not able to stop the incumbent if we want to frame it like that because we have all these different mixed methods and they make progress and they add to the picture but for me it kind of goes back to that beginning of behavioural science is often the missing seat of the table but isn't necessarily should be the only seat in the table it's a great question thank you, thanks so much so I'm going to bring in Andrea Redfern if you are able to unmute yourself Andrea a very general question I'm really enjoying this would you like to put your question Andrea to Dan about his challenges unmute and come on video somehow if it works morning everyone good afternoon, good evening in another market as well a bit more general but still really intriguing to hear what do you think is your biggest challenge in your role and also how you tackle it thanks Andrea not unfound in the day as in that it would be the challenge and the ability to answer the question I think the biggest challenge is that behavioural science the matured people are at such different places on the maturity curve and so we have to be able to shape shift quite quickly during the day to having quite sophisticated conversations with people that are quite quite deep and already we'll be doing cognitive profiling and already we'll be doing quite sophisticated paper science pieces and figuring out how we stretch there and then also still having that mode of being able to introduce new minds and the curious into behavioural science and making sure that we position our products and services in ways that can help people of that maturity curve ultimately so it's been able to speak lots of languages and the exciting part of the role definitely is being able to figure out how to work with so many different organisations and what would work for so many different departments we remain quite broad practice in terms of all the different parts of the business that we touch we don't particularly specialise in just digital transformation or anything like that it's quite broad and so that's certainly the exciting part but also has a lot of shape shifting every day and learning lots of people's languages I think some people have the luxury of going into just one industry and learning all the jargon and living off that but I feel like I'm constantly googling things while I'm on phone calls to understand what's been said sometimes and lots of deep deep jargon but definitely worth it that's how we break new ground that's lovely Dan and of course we are all very much in favour of constantly learning so that's obviously what you're doing I did want that to be the last question we're getting close to time now but I've just seen that Steve has put a very good question there in the chat if you're able to join us Steve to put that question to Dan if not I'll read it are you still with us Steve I'll start the question he might take over Steve has just asked there any advice or thoughts he's a creative director with an interest in behavioural economics no others in this is a question I often hear no others in the agency that have knowledge how is it you know that you can introduce this subject in your company without people thinking you're the nut job at the top of the table I mean as we when we opened this event today you know we were talking about experiments going on in the background to then present and say look you didn't even know this was going on so I mean that is one approach but what would be your comment on that in introducing it into your agency your company etc mmm that's a really good question and I feel like the more I learn about introducing behavioural science to organisations the fewer answers I have on kind of simple fixes do you know what I mean like it's a complex there's there's a big ultimately takes diagnosis to figure out what is kind of the missing piece of the puzzle you know is it that they fundamentally don't believe the kind of the creative aspect of it or that they have had a mental model that's based on an engineering led way of thinking rather than a psychological way of thinking is it that they don't think they're superiors in the organisation they're going to buy into it isn't that is it that everyone's actually just really busy and don't have time to experiment and try new things is it that you've tried to bring in three new things before that have absolutely failed and they don't believe that this one's going to be any different there's so many different reasons why it wouldn't work there's also lots of reasons why it would work and so often if I was to leave you with anything it would be that painting that future state is often really helpful and because people are often very good at visualising the things that you've visioned in your head so kind of concretely painting that future space is really helpful and the other way is as you said that Jezz and Rory so cleverly did in the early days Louise you just kind of just do it find a way to just do it and then once it's done be kind of is it intrapreneurial act like a pirate all that stuff I think kind of just do it secretly and then help people afterwards I think that's a super answer to the question Dan because as you say it's a question that often comes up but actually maybe what you should do is step back and start to ask your unique questions for your situation and why it is you think there's resistance I think that's a very good answer well just before we wrap up and I don't thank all of you for joining us today it's been fantastic to see so many joining us and have your great question see all the chat going on at the side and I'm going to ask Chris to unmute himself and I'm going to add him into our chat here hi there Chris I'm sure you have a lovely wrap up question for Dan and would like to also thank him for joining us at this event there's anywhere to have a wrap up question I want to chat with Dan for about five days and never run out of questions but yeah thanks so much for joining yeah I mean you're a huge part of our founding story of the company so yeah thank you and yeah I mean do you ever have like a sort of a favourite go to behavioural science experiments or a favourite bias and then I saw someone else ask something in here which I was also kind of intrigued about is when you're trying to look for interesting things like where do you go to find those with your curiosity like is there a few particular websites or podcasts or something that you listen to that you're always like oh yeah must listen to that because then I'll get my next breakthrough can I be really honest I think by the first eight or nine years of my career I listen to everything everything and then lately I find that I just want to listen to kind of comedy in the evenings and things so I don't know if I and there's not falling out of love with behavioural science it's I think it's kind of I'm so lucky to work in a large network with a large team but people send things to me all the time always saying and knowing you Chris and Louise and people send very interesting very interesting research just to the day some raw we sent through actually and a great piece of research and I won't quote this exactly right but your glucose levels react to when you see you're about to eat a sugary food so if the packaging said it's high in sugar your body gets ready for as like an anticipated response so it can be as bad to see that it's bad for you that is actually bad for you so like if it says high in sugar and it's actually not then your body still reacts as if it's high in sugar because that's what you see so I'm so lucky to be to be around people that just share lots of interesting things hopefully I'll get back to reading again soon but I find that the job that I'm doing is quite he's be quite high-paced and so actually my reading time is to relax me rather than to interest me it's so funny that you say comedians I think Sorcha if I pronounce the name right has said the same thing she said lots of comedians are very tapped into human behaviour I think it's fascinating they often have these insane insights about human behaviour which we end up laughing at so it says probably secretly a wonderful thing to look at to be inspired for behavioural science insights I really want to bring comedians into the agency to just give us their take because yeah as you say undercover we did when I was at Ogilby before I left I got comedians into come and talk about observation it's brilliant definitely do it I can help with the secrets yeah lovely well that's lovely place I think to call a close to this thank you so much everybody for joining us thank you so much Dan it's been fantastic talking to you thanks everyone for joining us and do go on to the shameless plug here but do go on to the 42 courses website to explore the courses but secondly more importantly sign up for the newsletter because then you'll hear about talks like this with Dan that we have you'll hear about podcasts that Chris has just recorded and we will share with you all of these curious things that have entertained us links to interesting articles so we'd love if you'd all join us there by the newsletter do join us again for one of these talks and thank you very much everyone for joining us today in our 42 courses speaker series thank you very much Dan thank you have a fantastic weekend