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.

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.