Government champions direct marketing – £millions could be saved.

By February 13 2012, 9:06 am 2 Comments
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Direct marketing champions come in the most unlikely of guises. This week, for instance, BBC NEWS reported trials suggesting, ‘millions of pounds could be saved by using “nudge theory” about how people behave to encourage them to pay taxes and fines’. Indeed, the Cabinet Office set up a “behaviour insight team” to study the matter and they’ve just reported their findings.

The report looks like a ‘how to’ guide of direct marketing – with a whole host of amazing techniques being cited. Simpler language, highlighting of key messages and the stressing of “social norms” have all boosted compliance. There was reverse psychology… rather than asking people to fill out a form saying their circumstances hadn’t changed, it was now asking them to directly state that they were still eligible. There was also a letter to doctors and dentists about their outstanding tax liabilities. They were told that, ‘failure to pay in the past would be seen as an oversight, but if they did not respond in the future it would be seen as a conscious decision’.

What’s interesting is that these techniques are being touted as radical and new. For a start, this approach has already been tried and tested a few years ago in Minnesota. Here, instead of threatening people to complete their tax returns, they simply told them a fact – most Minnesotans had already filled in their returns. You guessed it, there was a dramatic and almost instantaneous turnaround in submission figures! Even the Obama administration has started to dabble with the techniques as a way of combating the, ‘poor financial decisions people make unconsciously’. Good luck on that one Barack!

What’s great is that marketing professionals and politicians alike are finally recognising that people are ‘predictably irrational’. The old rulebooks no longer apply. Dorothy Donor, Baby Boomers et al are all outmoded labels that in no way capture our audiences in all their messy, illogical glory. It’s thinking that TDA has set at the very heart of what it does – with an emphasis on both challenging and changing behaviour. How about you?

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  • Carol Fisher

    I think it is extremely unlikely that the Cabinet Office’s “Behavioural Insight” group contains anyone with a DM background, or indeed that all of this team have decent marketing experience. Instead they will take months to come up with ‘insights’ which COI knew already. The key objective of this Cabinet Office Team is to find ‘stories’ that the press people can feed to their favourite journalists; it is NOT to change things. The Cabinet Office has no authority in the Whitehall departmental structure to change anything at all which does not fall directly under its remit -and believe me, the relevant Departments will fight tooth & nail on a ‘not invented here’ basis, to ensure that these ideas go nowhere.

  • Mark Tomkins, TDA

    You’re probably right Carol – which makes it a real shame. However, if these kinds of stories ‘break through’ to national news, they’ve served some kind of purpose. Taking the debate beyond the confines of our own industry.

    If the masses start discussing behavioural economics down the pub, we have cause to celebrate. Or, perhaps, worry because they’ve discovered all our tricks of the trade!

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