A pink prison.
That little four letter word in the centre of that phrase, seems to automatically dilute the harsh ideas you associate with a prison. Say it a few times and you’ll actually want to visit one. Maybe. In 2014 I worked for a charity that rehabilitated prisoners, so my first interaction with one came only a year ago and it certainly was not pink. HMP Brixton along Jebb Avenue in South London, was humble in size, eerily quiet and chillingly brutal in architecture. Feeling very much like the home of criminals. No, sorry — ‘future ex-offenders’ as my colleague often corrected me on. Unfortunately, HMP Brixton was yet to get the behavioural economics memo on being more…pink. It still employed uniform wearing, key-jingling men and women and taught anger-management classes as a means to calm its prisoners down.
..So why pink?
Drunk Tank Pink or #f394ac is being used across the world to paint prison cells, in hope for a calmer, more… relaxed set of inmates. People with GBH convictions and murderous pasts are in fact being placed in these cells with the aim that they'll be less likely to engage in violent actions throughout their sentences. To mine and your surprise. It’s actually working.
Now the science behind Drunk Tank Pink is that the colour is associated with femininity. Of course, right. The culturally subjective anthesis of testosterone fuelled males, physical strength and aggression. Now when I heard this from ‘Adam Alter’s Big Think’ talk series I was not surprised, what I was more interested in was how behavioural economists failed to speak about the cultural and societal stereotypes that shape our irrational behaviours.
Rory Sutherland from Ogilvy Change said ‘behavioural economics deals with how people actually make decisions in the real world.’ Speaking comparatively against the conventional economic theory that human beings are entirely rational and thus, the self-correcting, free markets must exist. Furthermore, he goes on to say that behavioural economics is in line with our psychology, so if you design choice badly for example you may end up making your advertising redundant. So knowing this, my next question is, who has informed our psychology and how will that impact advertising?
A little bit of history. You may not know this, but the colour pink only became an identifier for the female gender in the late 1940s. Yes, not that long ago. Following World War II advertisers wanted to re-imagine the fashion and beauty industry and used bright clothing and make-up to bring it to life. Pink became the colour du jour. Advertisers used provocative imagery that emphasised various shades of pinks, reds and oranges to suggest flirtation, attractiveness and femininity. Or more profoundly, that appearances matter.
Across the world, little girls bedrooms are now being painted pink, their dolls and toys are lathered with pinks ranging from bright, pastel, Peppa and champagne. So in the battle of chicken and egg, marketing and advertising won this one. Sorry B.E.
So why does behavioural economics matter to marketing?
In a number of cases where we see behavioural economics at the forefront of good decision-making for advertisers and marketers, what we’re actually seeing is the culmination of advertising and marketing’s past, simply being played out in today’s reality.
Of course, human beings are not entirely rational. We’re an imperfect creation, with an imperfect amount of information. What we see around us and the images that society projects cultivate what we know to be normal and what we essentially live by.
So on thinking about why behavioural economics is so important to marketers, I’m going to take a few examples to demonstrate how advertising and marketing effectively use BE and will end on how they can survive without knowing how many items to stock on one shelf or how many people to put in a poster.
Here’s why.
Proactively, understanding the behavioural economics associated with your target consumer can dramatically increase the sales of that product, for example; a recent study pitted Hershey’s Kisses and a Lindt Truffle against one another, offering the Kisses for $0.01 and the Truffle for $0.15. The results found that people recognised that the Truffle by Lindt was an exceptionally good deal and overwhelmingly chose that option. On another study they made the Kisses free and the Lindt Truffle $0.14. You can imagine what happened. Kisses all round. Promotional marketing seems to have a harmonious relationship with behavioural economics, in more than just this example. Marketers can be smarter, in-tune with the future and better at targeting the right people.
But I wonder what would have happened if you pitted that same Lindt Truffle against a completely un-branded one for $0.01 or for free. Now I haven’t conducted any exciting chocolate studies but I know myself that Lindt Lindor Truffles are delicious, incredibly smooth and just about melt-in-the-mouth enough to take my $0.15 cents, or..10p.
Can’t remember the last time I had one but I’m pretty sure it’s true. Why? Well I think that European looking man in the white chefs hat, pouring chocolate off a whisk, must have told me. It’s a brand I like. A brand I trust.
So in relation to my earlier point, it’s fascinating how consumers behave, on a large and a small scale. Behavioural economics has a huge role to play. However, to me this role is a large component of a marketing and advertising journey, but not the driver. What stands the test of time and what actually creates these irrational beliefs, are stories, feelings and a sense of belonging.
Great marketers are known to be great story makers, not just the tellers of these stories but the authors themselves and without this unrelenting creativity and freedom to influence, society would look very grey. Not a pink prison in sight.
So to end, I’m aware I haven’t exactly addressed why behavioural economics matters to marketers (Sorry!) but I wanted to look at their relationship and answer the question; ‘will behavioural economics save advertising and marketing.’ Of course understanding the fluid and irrational decisions made by people will increase the reach or sales of your product. However, it’s important to remember that although understanding consumers is entirely necessary, the element of freedom in creation is what makes advertising and marketing, the most dominating force of influence in society today and it might be worth remembering, if like me you easily get bogged down in how large or small the text should be in your customer communications.
