Behavioral Science For Brands: Leveraging behavioral science in brand marketing.

Les Binet makes the case that two-thirds of price promotions lose money, and that cutting them could fund the bigger budgets brands need. He joins MichaelAaron and Richard to explain why volume is a cost, how discounting erodes pricing power, and when promotions can actually pay off.

All "social proof" isn't created equally. Richard and MichaelAaron unpack studies showing it grows stronger with uncertainty, fear, youth, and collectivist cultures, backfires with wealthy tax debtors, and works best when implied, from Aperol's unmistakable orange spritzes to labeling products 'sold out.'

Richard and MichaelAaron unpack Novartis' campaign 'Relax Your Tight End', winner of the Pharma Grand Prix at Cannes Lions. They explore why present bias lets a moment of embarrassment outweigh long-term health, how humor sidesteps the ostrich effect where fear fails, and why a mix of messengers can beat one big celebrity.

After 12 tons of KitKat bars vanished the week before Easter, the brand turned a supply chain crisis into a Cannes Grand Prix winning campaign. MichaelAaron and Richard unpack the scarcity, Zeigarnik and IKEA effects behind it, and how brands can turn spectators into participants in a story.

Polish law requires every club to identify each fan entering the stadium. Wisła Kraków's Football Club turned that compliance database into the Lucky Fan Index, a metric for how much luck each supporter brings, and game attendance rose 42%. MichaelAaron and Richard dissect the superstition research behind it.

MichaelAaron and Richard revisit William Poundstone's Priceless to unpack why price feels relative, not absolute. They cover anchoring in courtroom and Williams-Sonoma pricing, why a $5 saving matters more on a $15 item than a $125 one, and how visible costs and higher prices signal quality and fairness to buyers.

MichaelAaron and Richard unpack Writing for Busy Readers by Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink: six evidence-backed principles for readers who skim rather than read. Why a 49-word email beat a 127-word one, why subheadings doubled newsletter clicks, and why making a task easy beats making it exciting.

Charles Spence's book Gastrophysics argues that taste is built by every sense, not just the tongue. MichaelAaron and Richard work through the evidence: classical music lifting restaurant spend 10%, heavy cutlery raising willingness to pay 16%, rounder chocolate read as 50% creamier, and what brands should do with it.

Guinness made you wait, Avis was second, VW was small. Andy Nairn and Richard unpack why owning a flaw beats hiding one, and how the same instinct led Lucky Generals to raise its own size in pitches before a prospect could ever hold it against them.

MichaelAaron and Richard explore why charity donations are especially resistant to typical marketing tactics. They unpack behavioral studies on anchoring, present preference bias, reciprocity, and overhead aversion that show small shifts in framing and timing can raise donations by double digits.

Courage strategist Rami Dudin joins MichaelAaron and Richard to discuss why distinctive often beats different, using SickKids' $1.3 billion fundraising turnaround, CIBC's no-fee campaign, and neobank scarcity tactics like Monzo's golden ticket to show why owning one idea can perform better than chasing novelty.

MichaelAaron and Richard explore why half of chronic-illness patients skip their medication, and why scaring them into compliance backfires. They cover a study on avoiding bad medical news, a simple diagram that cut medication errors in half, and two studies showing doctors are swayed by menu order and time of day when prescribing.

Harvard professor Michael Norton, author of The Ritual Effect, joins MichaelAaron and Richard to explore why identical actions feel meaningful to one person and trivial to another. They cover how Oreo, Stella Artois, and Guinness turn consumption into ritual, and what marketers should watch for when customers improvise their own rituals.

MichaelAaron and Richard unpack a new Behavioral Insights Team report on why most companies fail to get employees using AI, covering how social proof lifts adoption, why removing small points of friction beats motivational pitches, and why framing AI as something to lose outperforms framing it as a gain.

In this special finale to the Inside Influence series, MichaelAaron and Richard are joined by Dr. Robert Cialdini to revisit the principles behind his landmark book Influence. Together, they explore ethical persuasion, authority, AI, and the practical behavioral insights that continue to shape effective marketing

In part three of the Inside Influence series, Richard Shotton and MichaelAaron Flicker explore Cialdini’s principles of commitment, consistency, and unity - revealing how small commitments, shared identity, and group belonging can dramatically shape persuasion and behavior.

In part two of the Inside Influence series, Richard Shotton and MichaelAaron Flicker unpack Cialdini’s principles of social proof, authority, and scarcity - exploring the psychology behind popularity, trust, exclusivity, and why small shifts in perception can dramatically change consumer behavior.

This week, MichaelAaron and Richard kick off their miniseries “Inside Influence” on Robert Cialdini’s classic book Influence. They unpack the principles of reciprocity and liking, exploring how gifts increase spending, why similarity builds trust, and how brands can ethically shape persuasion and behavior.

In this episode, MichaelAaron and Richard challenge some of marketing’s biggest assumptions about consumer research. They explore why people often can’t explain their own decisions, why A/B tests outperform surveys, and how observing real behavior leads to stronger insights and better marketing decisions.

In this episode, we speak with Richard Chataway, founder of Communication Science Group and author of The Behaviour Business. Richard reveals how he used behavioral science to help people quit smoking, why diversity has both a moral and commercial justification, and how interacting with AI changes our behavior.