The Hunting Dynasty’s founder, Oliver Payne, was interview by Ali Morton, a Planner at JWT advertising agency, as part of their report The Future Quotient: 50 Stars in Seriously Long-term Innovation

Launched on the evening of 12th October 2011 at JWT London, this report concludes that it is time for transformational (not incremental) change – and that the way forward involves scanning wider, diving deeper into the emergent realities, aiming higher and thinking and acting over significantly extended timescales. It forms part of the ongoing Future Quotient project.

Oliver and Ali spoke about Inter-generational equity, and the role The Tragedy Of The Commons plays.

The report tackles sustainability strategy in business – being rather critical of efforts to-date – in a way that’s future focused.

The Future Quotient, co-authored by Volans and JWT, is our take on the emerging agenda. It is a pitch for the introduction of a new concept-the Future Quotient, or FQ-designed to measure the ability to think and act along intergenerational timescales.

It’s an incredibly comprehensive piece of work, and I recommend it to you.

The article I put together uses a study to show how calorie numbers next to meal choices in short-order restaurants intended to help people make informed food choice, but in practice made no difference to behaviour at all. None. I the go on to show how the choice about food consumption is driven by the conflict between system 1 and system 2 thinking. (some say Type 1 and Type 2). Have a read over at The Guardian Sustainable Business blog.

There were some comments about the piece, both below the article and on twitter. The title, as many will know, is written by the subs not the author, so I ended up with a more pejorative title than I would have liked (Can a change in portion size transform our bad food habits?) which, along with my line ‘We need to find something universal, persistent, and inexpensive…’ in relation to food choice, spurred TurningTide to to comment:

Who’s the “we” that should apparently have more control over people’s eating habits than the people themselves? How about governments just accept that what people eat is none of their business, and that there’s no “correct” weight that everybody should be? “Problem” solved.

And it’s a good point. The cause of confusion is mine: the ‘we need to find…’ referred to looking for a solution that genuinely allows people to reduce (or increase) their calories as evidenced by their behaviour, because calories numbers on menus did not allow people to increase or reduce their calories as evidenced by their behaviour (despite claiming they had been influenced). However, TurningTide drives at an interesting point applicable to the entire catalogue of cognitive-behavioural communications; Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, or ‘who guards the guards’. Certainly understanding out hidden quirks and judgmental bias can lead to covert manipulation of actions at the expense of constituents. The responsibility weighs heavy.

cariad8 makes a cogent argument, but bases it on an assumption:

“This makes the assumption that people eat the whole (full) portion of rice. In my experience and observation, anecdotal I know, people tend to leave at least half the portion either in the dish or on the plate.”

The truth is we do eat what’s out in front of us, and perhaps I should have alluded to those experiments despite pressure to edit to fit the word-count. This link between vision and satiation is a psychological quirk proven by the ‘never-ending’ tomato soup bowl, where respondednts ate over thirty percent more in one sitting before declaring themselves full with a soup bowl that was linked to a larger hidden reservoir so it emptied less quickly than normal.

The relationship between our stomach indicating satiation and our eyes telling us how much we’ve eaten falls in favor of what we see: Feeling ‘full’ is relative, not absolute. Indeed the entire article is about our assumptions at odds with reality, which is why the whole field of cognitive-behavioural communications exists. We must be careful.

REDLAN1 comments that only a small proportion of our food comes from restaurants.

…it’s not going to make much difference to obesity rates overall is it?
How much of our food consumption comes from restaurants?

This is true, so the critique that the solution I describe is a busted flush is correct in the narrow sense in which I illustrate the point. I don’t propose a direct read-across into other food choice architectures (how would you implement half-rice/half-price/full-price at home anyway?), and I don’t have a meta method for using portion size choice ahead of eating outside of restaurants, but I do illustrate how making commitments for the future (which evokes System 2 thinking exclusively) avoids our imprecise and impulsive decisions made in-the-moment (run by our System 1 thinking which overrides System 2).

Persianwar dislikes the broadly free-market/Capitalist notion that because the full-rice and half-rice portion options were chosen in a 60%-40% split when the half-rice portion was at half price *and* when the half-rice was at the full-rice price the restaurant owner might as well price the options at full price and take the extra revenue.

The obvious solution of pro-rata pricing needs the owner to sacrifice some profit. Can’t have that can we – got to rip-off the customer.

This opinion contrasting with a twitter user who critiqued the nature of psychological led menu presentation as nefarious and manipulative and ‘Commie pinko’ in nature. The desire from this reader was to ‘leave us alone’ to make free choice. Again, a vital and fundamental point, as there is no neutral, odourless, and colourless way to present choice; we are all choice architects whether we know, or like, it. The responsibility is heavy, and one we all have to bear.

There are other comments based on the big levers of ingredients, manufacture, and all the things outside the control of cognitive-behavioural comms. Commantary from readers is interesting, informative, and very welcome. What do you think?

Read: ‘Can a change in portion size transform our bad food habits? Including calorie numbers on menus has little effect but changing portion size and price could have a surprising result’

of crediting anthropomorphic influence as the driver of climate change.*

But does disproportionate billing really matter?

Yes, as it turns out. Unrepresentative information continually presented is not without consequences – it’s partly explained by The Mere Exposure/Measurement Effect. It sounds like a terribly twee, insipid little weasle of an effect described by an equally spineless formulation of words. But don’t let that fool you. In Morwitz & Fitzimonds’ (PDF instant download) study of the effects of The mere exposure effect they asked 40,000 people a simple question about their intention to purchase a new car. The actual rates of car purchase for the following 6 months increased by over 35%.

And 35% is a lot of percent for such a small question.

There’s some evidence this effect might be responsible for killing people by questioning heavy and serious drug addicts about their drug use in order to pinpoint where help is most needed because it increases the propensity to indulge.

There are no innocuous bits of information – and there are no inconsequential ways of presenting them. A binary debate – while sometimes relevent – isn’t ‘one size fits all’. That is all.

Oliver was invited by Dr Nick Southgate, The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) Behavioural Economics expert who also chaired the session alongside two other speakers: Richard Wright, Discover Platform Director – Sensation, Perception, & Behaviour, Unilever, and Paul Kehoe, CEO Birmingham Airport.

The nomination is especially well received as “…the judges have all been to dozens of MRS Conferences down the years that’s a high compliment.” according to Dr Southgate.

“Oliver – thanks for making the ideas so engaging and showing people how much can be achieved in ways they recognise in the everyday”

If you want to know more about the presentation or any other speaking or workshop engagements call 0844 357 9072 or mail us at info@thehuntingdynasty.com

The workshop phase gave each speaker part of the audience for 15 mins to work up ideas based on the speaker’s presentation. Oliver use The Hunting Dynasty’s ‘Behavioural Elevator Pitch’ which uses 6 of the most useful and understandable behavioural techniques to generate lots of communication ideas quickly. Each speaker presented the outcome to the entire audience.

“great night at the #danacentre y’day with @matt_prescott & @oliverpayne on an amazing panel talking about promoting #climatechange behaviour.” Peter Harrison, Brainjuicer

If you want to know more about the workshop structure call 0844 357 9072 or mail us at info@thehuntingdynasty.com

In fact, not so much an opportunity as a given – it’s up to you to do something with it. Or ignore it. (But do that at your peril.) So what about loss aversion and price structure?

In some coffee shops you can get a discount for bringing your own mug. Most people who do this prefer a Thermos cup. But this isn’t going to drive behaviour efficiently, because we know we don’t work hard to secure gain. The price structure should be turned on its head by embedding the discount in all prices (as if the bring-your-own-mug brigade were the norm), and add extra for those that want a disposable cup.

Instead of: £2 for coffee (£1.70 with your cup)
Flipped to: £1.70 for coffee (£2 with disposable cup)

No one gets charged any more, or any less. It might look like a tax on paper cups, but it’s not. Simply, the pricing is positioned differently. One could derive this conclusion using Query Theory or Anchoring but Loss Aversion tends to drive the most concise and precise solutions.

Its discovery did win a Nobel Prize, after all.

Janna Schnuer (One+, blog) interviewed The Hunting Dynasty’s founder, Oliver Payne, about creating sustainable actions with behaviour techniques for One+ magazine in an article called The Power of Influence ».

Jenna asks to consider behavioural change as part of a CSR scheme, and consider implementing change for more sustainable business and more sustainable meetings. There are some obvious ways to do this, including using the power of fitting in—even when nobody is there to watch.

“Nobody wants to be the weirdo in the group”
Oliver Payne

The second half of the interview discusses Best Behavior Placement Practices exploring what behavior placement can do to up the sustainability ante at your meetings. Oliver describes behavoural techniques to be used, along with other contributors.

Also interviewed:

• Derek Rucker, associate professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
• Douglas Rushkoff, media theorist, author of Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age
• Kelly Haws, assistant professor of marketing at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University
• Mark Bolino, associate professor of management at the Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma
• Stephen Harvill, founder and president of Creative Ventures
• Mary Boone, president of Boone Associates
• Sarah Pappas McCabe, CMP, manager of meetings and events for UNIFI Companies
• Vikas Mittal, professor of marketing, Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University in Houston
• Scott Sonenshein, professor of management at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University