Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Do you ever use the ‘I’m feeling Lucky' button on Google? Unlikely. It's there as Google’s way of saying that its primarily concern is to serve your needs as a user - rather than its advertisers.

That subtle message is estimated to cost as much as $100m per year in lost ad revenue (even accounting for under 1% of searches).

📖The Behaviour Business: How to Apply Behavioural Science For Business Success 📖 from Richard Chataway is full of interesting applications.

Here are some takeaways:

🤯 The head of anti-smoking policy at the UK Department of Health, once told the team that it could potentially save more lives in a year than many surgeons do in their entire careers.

The team moved from giving rational reasons to leveraging behavioural biases. For example, an app developed to help people quit smoking was updated to make it easy for people to share on social media how much money they had saved and how long they had been smoke-free.

This successfully leveraged commitment bias (making a public commitment makes people more likely to stick to things) and social proof (showing how popular the app was encouraged others to use it).

💰 If humans were totally rational beings who only acted based on self-interest, all of us would be committing certain low-risk crimes on a daily basis.

🧗‍♂️ Every inspirational speech by someone successful should have to start with a disclaimer about survivorship bias (when an individual mistakes a visible successful subgroup as the entire group).

💷 There’s nothing that changes behaviour as quickly as taking money out of people’s pockets.

🤖 The efficiencies delivered by automation are not necessarily matched by corresponding improvements in effectiveness.

🍻 One advertising agency in the US installed a company beer tap that can only be used once staff completed their timesheets on Friday. #Gamifying a task no one likes.

🎨 A particular hue of pink has been shown to be effectively used by prisons and sports teams for its calming (Norwich City Football Club painted their away dressing rooms in the colour).

➡️ Rather than engagement, conversations or participation, people's actual buying behaviour is about reducing complexity, reducing choice and making easier, good-enough decisions.

🚂 When speaking to customers, much of what they tell you will be post rationalisation (it's better to talk to train station staff about commuter behaviour than commuters themselves).

♻️ “Imaginative reputation” and consistent brand assets are really important (but rare given the average ad agency - client relationship has dropped from 86 months to 30 months over the last 30 years).

🐨 When the Australian Bureau of Statistic released their annual census data they highlight the typical Australian. In 2015, that person didn’t exist - there was not a single person in the country who fit the criteria.

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