A farewell to Rory

It was a sad moment last Thursday when Rory Sutherland chaired the last IPA Council meeting of his Presidency. But it didn't take long for the event to swing into party mode, with mojitos and champagne, to celebrate his many achievements.

Rory wouldn't be Rory without leaving a strong legacy; a third IPA BE publication - " Let's get practical" - featuring case examples from 13 agencies, and the announcement of a strategic partnership between the IPA and Warwick Business School.

Dean and Professor Mark Taylor and Prof Nick Chater were present to endorse his plan and flesh out the detail: a FastTrack exec programme in BE for agencies and their clients; a BE Incubator for lab trials; and a BE FastStream for WBS students with agencies.

Changing client/agency behaviours

Monday evening saw a record attendance at the IPA's event on the topic of 'applying BE to client/agency relationships'.

With Rory Sutherland in the chair, David Wethey, of IAA, as keynote, and panel contributions from Chris Hirst (CEO, Grey), Alison Wright (Strategy, Engine Group), Colin Fleming (COO, AMV.BBDO) and Richard Woodford (Procurement News International) it was bound to be a big draw.

The old chestnuts were revisited: remuneration models, PBR etcetera.
But there was some new inspirational stuff in the form of new ways to address the main issue which David Wethey cleverly defined as
"the system is stopping the cleverness coming through":

1. Changing the 'setting' of client agency relationships
- Overcoming 'frame' blindness - answering the wrong question
- Insights upstream
- Solving 'mysteries' not 'puzzles'
- Outcome-based/'best' not 'best priced'

2. Treating strategy as a 'flexible guideline'
- relax control structures
- set clear objectives and high ambition but allow individual team players to interpret it freely
- adapt in real time
- use creative to guide strategy
- make decisions emotionally not rationally

There has been a good deal of feedback and you can see the tweets about the event here

End of year report!

We've just put together a summary of Rory Sutherland's Behavioural Economics activities to try and gauge what impact his agenda has made on the industry so far. Relative to other presidential agendas it makes impressive reading:

- 160 out of 270 IPA member agencies have been involved in IPA events with over 2000 visits to the BE section of our website

- in addition Rory has spoken on 25 other industry-related platforms including TED and the Marketing Society and written copious articles and columns

- 15 major clients are now pursuing Behavioural Economics with IPA roster agencies

- the Behavioural Insights team in Government have called in IPA member agencies to help

- 3,500 copies of IPA BE publications have been distributed or downloaded.

By Spring of next year it looks like Behavioural Economics will be embedded in the way leading agencies think and work and we'll have live case examples to talk about.

When is £3000 not £3000?

Ask Rory Sutherland. What's more motivating? £ 3,000 off a new car or £3,000 for your old car?

In economic terms they're the same. In behavioural economic terms they're worlds apart.

Check out the IPA's Behavioural Economics pages for more information.

One's relative, three's a crowd

Forget the theory of crowds.

According to Nick Chater, Professor of Behavioural Science, Warwick Business School, testing large groups of people does not guarantee you an accurate answer to a problem.  Herd instincts get in the way.

Take a jar of jelly beans. Ask people to guess the number inside. Prime one big group of people with numbers significantly lower than the real number. Prime another group with numbers significantly higher. We'll all stick close to the number first specified. Whether it's true or not. Our natural tendency is to make relative rather than absolute decisions or choices.  We're only human, after all!

Click here to view details of the IPA's Behavioural Economics programme

Behavioural Economics: Brain Teasers

Brain teasers, put to participants at the IPA's BE event, in order to test their endurance: try them out!

What is a bedswerver (noun)?

a) a bed on castors for easy moving
b) a nurse on skates
c) an unfaithful spouse
d) a crank handle for turning a bed around

Tabula rasa means?

a) blank plate
b) blank slate
c) blank expression

Which of the following is a reflex response?

a) adaptation
b) constipation
c) salivation

Another name for learning is?

a) reinforcement
b) conditioning
c) associationism

What corporation aired the first commercial on television?

a) Microsoft
b) Bulova
c) Hanes
d) Ford

Mail me with your thoughts: janethullmarketing@yahoo.co.uk

IPA Behavioural Economics summit

What do Camelot, P&G, Mini, Halifax, Sainsbury's, Birmingham Airport, EDF, Birds Eye, Aviva, VW, BT, Unilever, COI and Lloyds have in common?
They were all involved in IPA President Rory Sutherland's Behavioural Economics summit at Millbank Tower's Altitude on the evening of the 5th October.

We chose to call it a summit for two reasons: i) the spectacular 29th floor 360 degree views of London, obviously; ii)it was truly "a meeting of high-level leaders, called to shape a programme of action" - to work together with their roster agencies to take a 360 degree view of their business.

You can find details of our Behavioural Economics (BE) initiative on the main IPA site at http://www.ipa.co.uk/content/Behavioural-Economics-Site-Home