When Anger is a Force for Good

Last Wednesday I attended “Anger: A Force For Good” event held at the wonderfully hospitable ad agency BMB. The event explored what made people angry, how they channelled their anger (tellingly the talk was held on the anniversary of Trump’s election and the Russian Revolution centenary) and whether anger could be used positively.

Haras Rafiq, the CEO of counter radicalisation think tank Quilliam, talked about the dark and destructive side of anger: islamist, far-right and far-left extremism. I learned that people became radicalised when they had real or perceived grievances and were fed partial truths.

Anthropologist Nazima Kadir illustrated what we unfortunately knew too well (think Brexit, Trump, AfD, etc.) – people get angry when they are ignored.

To lift us out of the darkness of anger’s destructive forces was a presentation by Ian Murray the founder of consultancy house51 and BMB’s own Head of Planning Jamie Inman. A stat that I took out from the research was that almost as many people in the UK (45%) got angry about the injustice of something that happened to other people, as about something that affected them personally (47%). If empathy is key to a more peaceful and happy world, than empathetic anger is nothing less than a driving force for good.

On the day of the event there was hopeful evidence that anti-Trump anger started bearing fruits, as Democrats swept to victory in governor, state legislative and mayors’ elections across the US.

In media and advertising it’s widely accepted that emotive content and marketing perform best.

Top shared media stories are emotional. In case you are wondering which emotions dominate, well, it varies by media. In the last 12 months the top shared story on The Telegraph “Redhead emoji finally on the table after campaign for ginger equality” is 59% joyful (IBM Watson Tone Analyzer). Whereas the Guardian’s top shared article “Frightened by Donald Trump? You don’t know the half of it” is 59% fearful. While The New York Times‘s “Trump’s Lies” is 72% angry.

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising found that marketing underscored by emotion performed twice as well as campaigns based around rational thinking.

Traditionally, marketing has been dominated by two emotions: happiness and fear. In the first episode of Madmen Don Draper calmly tells his clients: “Advertising is based on one thing: happiness, and do you know what happiness is? … It’s freedom from fear.”

According to BMB/house51 research 60% of the UK population got angry in the past week. So there is a lot of anger out there, and it is important for marketers to be ‘in tune’ with how people feel.

Forget the John Lewis ad, my current favourite is Jigsaw’s pro-immigration campaign. It starts boldly with “British style is not 100% British. In fact, there is no such thing as 100% British”, and finishes with “Fear, isolation and intolerance will hold us back. Love, openness and collaboration will take us forward”.

A great campaign targeted at Jigsaw’s liberal educated target audience, which addresses their anger with Brexit and anti-immigrant climate.

Tesco’s mass-market positioning means that its similarly-themed Christmas ad provoked an angry reaction from the far-right for featuring a Muslim family. Its yet to be seen what it would mean for Tesco’s sales but the ad has worked generating priceless publicity.

Both Jigsaw and Tesco have managed to either chime with existing anger or provoke anger, and both campaigns carry a positive message of love, openness and happy co-existence. So, perhaps the most successful campaigns are three-part dramas that take us on a roller-coaster of a range of different emotions:

1. Set-up: anticipation;

2. Jeopardy: anger;

3. Resolution: joy.

And after more than a year of anger, I can only hope for a joyful resolution to the Trump/Brexit saga.

5 steps for turning good intentions into good behaviours

Being Human

AI, robotics, the internet of things, machine learning and predictive modelling are the signature topics of 2017.  It is however helpful to remember that most things are still driven by human nature, imperfect and largely irrational.

Human decisions are not the results of perfectly constructed algorithms but habits, emotions and cognitive biases, which make a less rational choice seem more appealing. I am always amused to see people who run in to work taking lifts or escalators rather than the stairs to reach the office. Or my favourite: people work harder for free if it’s for a cause than for money if it’s purely for a commercial gain. This is because when money is mentioned, people apply market norms and evaluate how much money is involved and if it’s a good deal or worth their time. If the money is too little, they will actually work less than normal because they feel they are being taken for a ride. However, when no money is involved, people apply social norms to the situation and work harder.

We judge ourselves by our intentions, but other people by their actions

Most people want to be good, live in a way that treats other people, society and the environment with care and respect. In surveys, 81% of people say they would make personal sacrifices to address social and environmental issues. And 67% say that it’s important that the brands they choose make a positive contribution to society.

However, sustainable brands don’t yet have the largest market share, and we all find ourselves engaging in unsustainable behaviours that have negative impacts. So, there is an intention-action gap. Why is it happening?

Social desirability and wishful thinking

First of all, when people respond to surveys, they suffer from social desirability bias (wanting to be liked), virtue signalling (they are good!) and wishful thinking (they have good intentions and ignore constraints). To overcome this, researchers need to use implicit research techniques, conjoint analysis or observational methods, rather than straight questions on attitudes and intentions.

I often use intent scale translation techniques, such as Juster’s probability scale to convert stated intent to likely action. For example, only 83% of those who state that “they would certainly purchase” an FMCG product actually do so, this diminishes for durable goods.

Decision-making is not linear

Thanks to the work of Daniel Kahneman, we now know that most decisions are not made by our rational brains. Two systems of reasoning, the rational and the intuitive, work in parallel. The rational system is slow and makes decisions based on careful consideration of facts and evidence. The intuitive system, on the other hand, arrives at a decision much more quickly and responds to subtle sensory cues such as familiarity, emotional reaction and mental images. Often, especially when we are multi-tasking, are distracted or under stress, the intuitive system takes over completely.

Decision-making is not a rational, linear, sequential process. It looks more like a path of a bee with a multitude of simultaneous questions arising and being answered within a second.

A good strategy to promote desirable actions or products would be to make them appealing to both, rational reasoning and the intuition.

Closing the intentions – actions gap. Let the fun begin

Apart from contextual and social barriers, there are many things within us that make it difficult for us to change behaviours:

– Existing habits: 40% of our actions are driven by habit

– We can’t immediately see how what we are asked to do is personally relevant

– We think that there is no point doing something if the others are not doing it

– We have a “present bias”, prioritising present benefits over future

– We find the ask too difficult and can’t follow through

To encourage behaviour change, start by making it fun, and follow a mirror image of the barriers – enablers of behaviour change.

I applaud the London Mayor’s initiative to clean up the city’s air through introducing toxicity charges for the most polluting vehicles and establishing an ultra-low emissions zone. It’s all very needed.

However, behavioural insight shows that people are conditionally co-operative. In experiments most people choose a smaller incentive to adopt a good behaviour vs a larger incentive for themselves, if it means that those not behaving in the right way are penalised.

Following our behaviour change model, the Mayor could:

1. Incentivise walking and cycling through deals with employers, retailers and entertainment venues to offer facilities and discounts to people arriving on foot or by bike.

2. Make walking and cycling fun. For instance, VW’s “The Fun Theory” campaign turned stairs into piano keys, resulting in 66% more people opting for stairs rather than escalators. Could we have cycle routes that make the best use of London’s creative talent?

Show that cycling is fun. To-date most use of behavioural science has been directed at showing how dangerous cycling is!

3.Make it personally relevant. Don’t talk about air pollution in London, but the “air you breathe”, “health in your area”, “safety in your street”.

4. Make cycling and walking a social norm: instead of pushing the message that ”most short journeys are done by car”, say “this year X% more people in your borough are walking or cycling instead of using their cars” or “your neighbours are driving less, are you?”. Introduce competitions between the boroughs, people are competitive by nature.

5. And finally, provide regular feedback, communicate small gains and achievements.

Recent advances in behavioural science mean that delivering change does not have to be daunting. Let the fun begin!

How to achieve behaviour change with ease

I absolutely loved this morning’s Social Innovation Breakfast Club (all my favourite words in one title) at Cancer Research UK. I met incredible people from Cancer Research UK, Kin&Co, TSIP, National Voices, KindLink and Parkinson’s UK – all driven by purpose and desire for social change.

Amazing guest speaker Hannah Behrendt from “The Behavioural Insights Team” think-tank introduced their EAST model for behaviour change. The key principles of EAST are to make it:

Easy

Attractive

Simple

Timely

Make it Easy

Remove hassle and simplify messages. Make the desired outcome a default option (e.g. pension auto-enrolment, automatic organ donor register, healthy meals at school). I always thought that walking rather than driving should be the default option in Google Maps. Defaulting is the easiest (if somewhat paternalistic) option to achieve behaviour change, unless we want people to switch from their current default (e.g. switch energy tariff or not use a smartphone at breakfast – my default behaviour). In which case,

Make it Attractive

Attract attention through impactful design, emotional communications and personalisation. I love speed indication displays on Green Lanes in London, which flash a sad face if a driver exceeds the 20 mph speed limit.

Offer incentives that trigger an emotional response. Financial incentives can backfire, whereas free food (always, always works for me), special perks and charity donations work a treat.

Make it Social

Introduce social norms – let people know that most people already do it (e.g. pay tax, donate to charity, recycle, etc.). Encourage reciprocity and doing something for somebody else. My personal favourite is Unicef’s Kid Power fitness bands and app, which encourage kids in the US to exercise: every 25,000 steps are converted into a food package for malnourished children in the developing world.

Make it Timely

Identify moments when people are most receptive to change, e.g. around major life events or geopolitical changes.

There is also a huge gap between intentions and actually doing something. Help people convert their intentions into a plan with timings – that way they would be more likely to follow through.

I like the EAST framework, it is simpler and more memorable than its predecessor MINDSPACE. And perhaps, they could change “Timely” into “Expedient”, so then EAST becomes EASE.