To help advertisers drive changes in consumer behaviour whilst outdoors, Kinetic and #ogilvychange have teamed up to launch an out-of-home behavioural economics planning tool.
The tool – dubbed ‘The Alfresco Labs’ – is the outcome of 18 months’ worth of research, which has revealed key “nudges” for OOH creative and planning and utilises behavioural change theory.
“By bringing attention to accepted social norms, we allow people to challenge them,” Jennie Sallows, head of insight at Kinetic, explained to Newsline.
“People like to think they eat when they are hungry, but in reality, mealtimes are determined by what is ‘normal’, or socially acceptable.” This led the team to one experiment, carried out at Lakeside shopping centre, that explored the theory that by drawing attention to the norm of eating lunch only after 12pm, people would be prompted to acknowledge the norm, question its validity, and feel comfortable breaking it.
“We created a poster that showed a woman eating a burger, and the line ‘Who says lunch has to be after 12?'” Sallows said.
“Just through this playful messaging, we found that by bringing an inherent societal norm into conscious consideration, footfall increased by 25% to the food court before 12pm, compared to baseline food court visitors.”
The research also showed how “social proofing” amplifies the impact of a message.
“In trying to nudge people towards an earlier lunchtime, a second creative was also tested,” Sallows continued. This showed the same message, but with a group of people eating, rather than one woman.
“This effectively layered two behavioural economics principles, provoking people to both challenge the norm, while allowing tacit social approval for an earlier lunchtime,” she said.
“The results were astounding. Compared to baseline figures, the single-person poster increased footfall by 25%, but by adding the element of social proofing we saw an incredible 75% uplift in footfall to the food court before 12pm.”
Jez Groom, chief choice architect at #ogilvychange, added: “Having started my career in media buying, it’s been fascinating to carry out real world experiments into the psychology of OOH media – and the results from our first Alfresco Labs in a shopping centre have shown that small changes can have demonstrable returns.”
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