Nudge nudge wink wink!

Greetings. And welcome back. .

I would like to apologise in advance if you were tempted to read this by my title because you thought that this week Cicero might be a wee bit naughty. You are going to be sorely disappointed.

I bought a book last week. I am sure that this will not come as a great surprise to you. There must be some source for my great wisdom and enlightenment. I bought it online and before you could say Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ I was being presented with a list of other books I might like to read given the subject of my initial purchase. Brilliant.

And then I went on to the music section of said dotcom survivor and having purchased my recording of the latest beat combo, I was presented with another list of recommended titles I might like to acquire. Again brilliant.

A day or two later I was induced to make a donation to some charity or other in support of some person or other who was undertaking some totally pointless, daft or dangerous activity to raise money Still it was in a good cause. I knew how many bawbees I wanted to invest but was then shown a list of donors who had donated substantial sums, and not wishing to be thought mean (heaven forbid,) I invested a few more bawbees in this charity. Now that is not bad going for a Scotsman. It was interesting that I was not shown the details of those who had made nickel and dime donations

Whether buying books or CDs or making donations, I had just become a serial victim of nudge marketing and damn clever it is too.

So what exactly is ‘nudge marketing’ and how does it work? Well I am now going to tell you.
None of us want to be very different from those around us. Instead we want to belong to our social norm. We want to be on the side of the good guys so if we can provide proper information to consumers about the acceptable norm plus a gentle push in the right direction then they will be persuaded to change their behaviour. Just like me and my donation. I wanted to belong to on the side of the rich donors. I did not want to be seen as a Scots meanie even if I am one of those. I wanted to belong and to be seen as belonging. And by the way I like to think that my social norm is Brad Pitt.
We are all strongly influenced by those around us, even though we may think we are not. To prove it there is an experiment in which people are shown a number of lines and asked to identify the two that are the same length. The answer is clear, and on their own, people make the right choice. However, if people are told that a majority before them has made another choice, in many cases they will give the same wrong answer. Now that is really worrying.
Let me give you a practical example from another sector of nudge marketing at work. In an effort to satisfy the eco- and enviro-mentalist, the people who put mental into the environment, one American utility company introduced smiley faces on customers’ bills if they used less energy than the norm and a sad face if they used more. The result-high users reduced their consumption by even more and low users kept their consumption down.
Even supermarkets are getting in on the act. I got an extra reward point the other day for eschewing my free plastic bag. Seemingly my eco-mentalist friends have persuaded the supermarkets that plastic bags are bad for us. I’m not complaining for an extra reward point I was nudged to change my behaviour.
And perhaps if the EU adopted similar practices we might still have 100 watt light bulbs. Instead we have to grope around in the dark, our eyesight fading fast, just so we save enough energy to allow one or two eco- or enviro-mentalist to have two baths a years. I always think that if a government has to ban something it is because they don’t have enough good arguments to persuade.
I am sure that in your business with a little bit of thought you can find ways to nudge your customers to buy more or to behave as you would like. But there is a downside and our marketing nudges must be used sparingly and with caution. We are not trying to be pinball wizards here and too many nudges will leave customers feeling manipulated and second-guessed, in the same way that I now want to say “nudge off” when Amazon dares to presume what books it thinks I will like. Get it right and the world can be your lobster.

So let’s get nudging.

Is it only me?

I was talking last week with a health worker. I don’t mean the kind of health worker you go to when you are ill but the kind of health worker in a suit who manages and measures the people we go to when we are ill.

Anyway it now seems that we no longer have accidents as in road traffic but incidents. I guess that means that when you accidentally drop or spill something or bump into someone you incidentally do it. I don’t know why this has been changed or who changed it but I bet it was some state employee with too much time on his or hands who woke up one morning and thought ‘I know what I will do today. I will abolish accidents and replace them all with incidents. Should keep me busy for a day or two’.

It might only be me but I know what they mean when they say accident. We all do. So why change the meaning of a perfectly good word. Unless of course it was an incident and the change was a typo.

If anyone can enlighten me and explain this change or come up with a theory for the change, please do share. Sounds to me like another example of regulation gone mad.

Have a great week.

Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.