The ethics of using behavioural science in marketing
As more and more marketers wake up to the power of nudging, behavioural science expert Richard Shotton offers his reply to Lazar Dzamic, former head of brand planning at Google ZOO, who believes the practice should be regulated.
In February of this year my book, The Choice Factory, about how behavioural science can be applied to advertising, was published. Since then I’ve been spending my evenings giving talks about the findings. At the end of most talks there’s normally a question about the ethics of these tactics. Since the questions comes up so frequently I thought I’d post a more detailed response.
Rather than attack a straw man, I’ll respond to this impassioned article by Lazar Dzamic, former head of brand planning at Google ZOO, which sums up many of the arguments.
Agreed, especially given the advertising industry has intuitively used aspects of nudging since it married the picture of a smiling face with a message to sell a product. Meanwhile…
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/21/opinion/sunday/facebook-patents-privacy.html
An infinitely more powerful read than The Advertising Effect by Ferrier. Who used outside wisdom rather than his own. Of youre going to write a book, write it yourself. Well done Richard.
If an ad induces a behaviour in someone, it works due to behavioural science. Whether or not the people putting the ad together had ever heard of the term “behavioural science” (or even the supersets “psychology” and “economics”).
This is not to say that there are not new techniques that modern behavioural science has unearthed. But they do not exclusively make up “behavioural science”.
Once simply being mentioned on radio was an exceptionally powerful way to change opinion. This response to stimulus was well understood by regulators.