Nearly 70 years ago, the first ever modern randomised controlled trial (RCT) was conducted in the UK 1. The 6-month long investigation took place in hospitals in London and Middlesex, and tested the efficacy of treatments for pulmonary tuberculosis – streptomycin versus bed rest 2. By the end of the trial, 7% of patients who […]
‘There’s nothing wrong with A/B testing‘. This statement is both true and not useful; better is, ‘there’s nothing wrong with A/B testing if you’re A/B testing the right bits‘. But how do you know what are ‘the right bits’? Applied psychology is your answer. Often we’ll speak with clients about their attempts to create change […]
We’ve had a great year of improving – and proving – behaviour with our communication at The Hunting Dynasty, where new-breed insight meets sparkling behavioural strategy and refreshing behavioural communication. Our insight & communication in 2018 stretched from capturing mental models, to tweaking single words to entire re-writes and re-designs, and in-field experiments: a. Live […]
In a collection of personal items we found a letter sent to one of our grandfathers by a bank in the middle of wartime Britain. It’s an extraordinary good bunch of nudges – amazingly over 75 years ago, in 1943. We can be sure that The Surety Trust weren’t *explicitly* trying to use nudge techniques […]
A mental model is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality or the mental imagery of things that are not actually present to the senses. What that means is we see the world around us as a structure. And everything relates to everything else. Mental models are simplifying ‘small-scale models’ of reality (Craik, […]
We all do it. We look at the star ratings and read the online reviews before we buy. Of course, we do – it’s good. Helpful, even. But do you ever go back online to leave a review after buying and using it? Yeah, not so much. Me neither. For brands, in today’s world, online reputation […]
You’ve been having the same nightmare, over and over again – the one where, all of a sudden, a big, bad monster won’t allow you to contact any of your customers. You can’t reach anyone with news. Or special offers. Or anything. Ever. That monster is called GDPR. The majority of business owners and marketers […]
Email marketing has the highest ROI of any marketing tactic. $44 for every $1 spent, say Campaign Monitor: Email marketing is a tactic that’s hard to ignore. But how do you make sure you get good conversion rates? There’s plenty of blogs, articles, and user-guides you can download – but how do you separate the folk-law […]
Personality traits have been used and abused by Cambridge Analytica1, but those traits offer positive benefits – especially when mapped to brands. Personality traits are relatively stable in humans2. They are organized by the Big Five3: extraversion agreeableness conscientiousness emotionality open-mindedness The model owes much to its many critics, each of whom tried to replace […]
You’re about to launch a brilliant, innovative product and everyone is going to love it. Of course they are – they told you so! This is what many companies tend to think, but unfortunately the gap between expected and actual consumer behaviour is often big. In fact: Only 3% of new consumer packaged goods reach […]
An RCT (Randomised Control Trial), an online survey (e.g. a Semantic Pairs survey, or Comprehension-Motivation Test©, or Implicit Attitude Map©), or on-street sampling are insight work ‘at scale’ that require large numbers of people to get solid data. It must be large numbers of people. It must be so. Large. Larger. More is better, right? […]
‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’ 1. AN ITALIAN OFFICER Vittorio was under attack. Ethiopian tribesmen had pushed him back up the hill of Daga Roba, near Galla in Ethiopia. They asked him to put down his weapons. He refused. As an Italian army officer and gentlemen explorer he’d got into (and […]
You don’t know who your customers are? You don’t know who your customers could be, what they want and how to seduce them? A common problem for many companies in today’s consumer society and here’s everybody’s all-round solution: But do you really need to track and save all this private information about so many people […]
The excellent behavioural scientists, Ingrid M. Paulin (@iwmelvaer) and Aline Holzwarth (@alineholzwarth), from The Center For Advanced Hindsight (@advncdhindsight) pulled off what looked like a trick, but was really an opportunity to present a serious behavioural science message. April Fools As part of a consortium of behavioral businesses and people, The Hunting Dynasty supported and […]
