Don’t listen to this podcast

Summary

Nudge Podcast Episode Summary

Episode Title: Don’t listen to this podcast
Host: Phill Agnew
Guest: Adam Ferrier, Consumer Psychologist, Co-founder of Thinkerbell
Date: December 15, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of Nudge explores the psychological power of reactance—the urge to do precisely what we’re told not to. Phill Agnew and Adam Ferrier dive into why telling people “don’t” (as in “don’t listen to this podcast,” “don’t fly Jetstar,” or “don’t buy this jacket”) can be a powerful marketing tool. They dissect the behavioral science behind reverse psychology, share compelling campaign case studies, and discuss practical insights for marketers seeking to capture attention and drive action.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Jetstar Challenge: Embracing the Negative Narrative

• [01:07] Adam Ferrier introduces Jetstar:
  • “Jetstar is a low cost carrier. It’s the EasyJet of Australia. … There was only two reasons why people would write about Jetstar. That is, you could get a $1 Air Sydney to the Gold coast or Jetstar just left a dozen people stranded in Bali and they couldn’t get home.”
• Jetstar faced reputational challenges, especially in New Zealand where Air New Zealand is beloved.
• Key Marketing Brief: Make Jetstar more likable in a market that favored its rival, and introduce some fun.

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2. The Power of Reactance in Human Psychology

• Reactance Defined:
  • “A sense of reactance is when you…take away somebody’s free will to do what they want.” (B/Adam, [05:19])
• Adam recounts the impact of reactance, referencing anti-smoking campaigns:
  • “The only thing that hasn’t really worked is the graphic images on the labels…for some people, …they say, no I won’t smoke. But the heavy smokers…it creates a bit of a fuck you, don’t tell me what to do. …they end up smoking more.” (B/Adam, [04:07])
• Supporting Research:
  • Phill discusses studies indicating direct persuasion creates pushback, including:
    • The 1972 “Romeo and Juliet effect” study: parental disapproval increases teenage romantic attachment. (A/Phill, [05:26])
    • Preschoolers eat less of foods when told of their benefits—inference that persuasion signals something undesirable. (A/Phill, [07:02])

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3. Implementing Reverse Psychology in Marketing

• Classic Social Experiment:
  • Cialdini’s “for adults only” book ad at Purdue University boosted interest purely by restricting access. (A/Phill, [08:21])
• Modern Examples:
  • Bumble: Signs on campus forbidding app use piqued student interest and grew adoption. (A/Phill, [09:28])
• Jetstar’s “Don’t Fly Jetstar” Campaign:
  • “We developed a campaign that challenged people not to fly Jetstar and it’s just called Don’t Fly Jetstar.” (B/Adam, [10:09])
  • Examples included: don’t scan the QR code, don’t read this press release, don’t pick up this orange bag, don’t book $29 fares.
  • In a YouTube video, luggage tagged “don’t pick up the orange suitcase” awarded free flight vouchers when ignored. (A/Phill & B/Adam, [10:39])

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4. Results and Effectiveness

• Engagement:
  • “People [were] approximately five times more likely to click onto or engage with the content than…equivalent types of content.” (B/Adam, [13:03])
• Host’s Own Test:
  • Phill ran Reddit ads:
    • Direct (“5 Reasons Why You Should Listen to Nudge”) vs. Reverse Psychology (“5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Listen…”)
    • The reverse-psychology ad had a 400% higher click-through rate (0.47% vs 0.09%), generating 500+ new listeners. (A/Phill, [13:38])

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5. Why Negative Messaging Works (The Negativity Bias)

• “There’s a thing called the negativity bias where we pay more attention to negative messages and negative stimuli than we do positive stuff.” (B/Adam, [15:30])
• Example:
  • Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign urged thrift, but boosted brand and possibly sales. (B/Adam, [16:39])
• Marketers are typically afraid of negative messaging, but it can draw outsized attention if used wisely.

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6. Limitations and Final Advice

• “I don’t think it’s a sustainable long term strategy for a brand. But if you do want to do a spike of attention, then yeah, sure.” (B/Adam, [17:03])
• Phill wraps by noting that in a world saturated with positive, persuasive messaging, the occasional reversal offers something fresh and attention-grabbing—but shouldn’t be overused.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Adam Ferrier, on reactance and his anti-smoking story:

  • “My dad was…a marble red smoker and he had his coffin painted as a box of marble reds when he died…he wanted to be cremated so he could light up one last time.” (B/Adam, [03:29])

• Phill, on parental resistance and romance:

  • “If the parents viewed the couple critically…the child ended up feeling a greater love and desire for marriage. …The Romeo and Juliet effect.”
    (A/Phill, [05:26])

• Adam, on the campaign’s impact:

  • “People approximately five times more likely to click onto or engage with the content than…equivalent types of content.”
    (B/Adam, [13:03])

• Phill, on his Reddit ad experiment:

  • “The reactance variant…was four times more effective. …Almost a 400% uplift from telling people not to listen.” (A/Phill, [13:38])

• Adam, on the dangers of overusing the tactic:

  • “I don’t think it’s a sustainable long term strategy for a brand. But if you do want to do a spike of attention, then yeah, sure.” (B/Adam, [17:03])

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00–01:07: Introduction; why telling people not to do something works
• 01:17–02:00: Jetstar’s negative reputation and the core marketing challenge
• 03:29–04:45: Adam’s personal experience with reactance; anti-smoking campaigns
• 05:19–06:29: Reactance defined; psychological and behavioral science studies
• 08:21–09:28: Cialdini & Bumble examples
• 10:09–12:00: Details of the Jetstar “Don’t Fly Jetstar” campaign and its mechanics
• 13:03–13:38: Campaign engagement data
• 13:38–15:30: Phill’s Reddit ad experiment; comparison and results
• 15:30–16:39: Negativity bias and the Patagonia example
• 17:03–18:11: Adam’s practical advice on using reverse psychology in marketing

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Further Resources

• Adam Ferrier’s Books:
  • The Advertising Effect: How to Change Behaviour
  • Stop Listening to Your Customer: Try Hearing Your Brand Instead ([18:11])
• Check out Nudgevault for more insights and research compendiums, as recommended by listener David Mead ([18:41]).

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Closing Thought

If you want people to do something—sometimes, just tell them not to. But don’t rely on this as your only trick; save it for when you need to stand out.

“Don’t listen to Nudge, don’t tell your friends how great this episode was and definitely don’t leave me a five star review.”
– Phill Agnew, [17:11]

Transcript

[A]

You were told not to listen, yet here you are. It's odd, isn't it? Being told not to do something. Not to listen to this episode. It tends to make us want to do that thing. But why? Today on Nudge we find out being a knowital used to be considered a bad thing, but in business, it's everything. Because right now, most businesses only use 20% of their data. Unless you have HubSpot. HubSpot transforms data that is buried in emails, call logs and meeting notes into insights that can help grow your business. Because when you know more, you grow more. And I think that's an example where being a know it all isn't so bad at all. Visit HubSpot.com today to learn more. I told you not to listen to this podcast and yet here you are. You even sat through an ad break to listen. But my guest on Nudge today didn't just tell people not to listen to a podcast. He told 5 million Kiwis not to fly with their second favorite airline.

[B]

I'm Adam Ferrier. I'm a consumer psychologist and co founder of a creative company called Thinkerbell.

[A]

Thinkerbell has worked with the airline Jetstar on what I think is one of the most interesting campaigns I've heard about this year. But before we get into all of that, what is Jetstar?

[B]

Jetstar is a low cost carrier. It's the EasyJet of Australia. Before we came along and before we started working with Jetstar, There was only two reasons why people would write about Jetstar. That is, you could get a $1 Air Sydney to the Gold coast or Jetstar just left a dozen people stranded in Bali and they couldn't get home.

[A]

Thousands of Australians have been stranded in Bali after Jetstar cancelled multiple flights to and from the tourist destination.

[B]

So the narrative of the airline was quite, quite negative. Even though what they were doing was a really positive thing for the world in terms of democratising low flights, our brief was to make the airline a little bit more likeable, make people feel better about choosing a low cost carrier and put a bit more fun into what they did.

[A]

This wouldn't be easy because in recent years, Jetstar has built up a bit of a rep. The airline didn't just leave passengers stranded in Bali.

[B]

Hundreds of Jetstar passengers are stranded in Vietnam.

[A]

They left customers stranded in Thailand as well. Passengers on a Jetstar flight from Thailand to Melbourne were left stranded after a medical emergency forced the aircraft to land in Alice Springs. And in Japan, frustrated Australian travellers have been stranded for days inside a Japanese airport. Adam had his work cut out.

[B]

We had a particular summer sale. This is for. In the New Zealand market. In the New Zealand market, Jetstar suffers even more than they do in Australia by having a carrier that every competitor that everybody loves, which is Air New Zealand. And Air New Zealand is a premium airline. It's a pride of New Zealand. And everyone loves Air New Zealand. And so everyone often says, why are you flying Jetstar? Don't fly Jetstar. Fly, you know, Air New Zealand. That was, that was the kind of narrative that we thought it'll be fun to try to lean into that and see what would happen. And we didn't have to overly think about what to do. We just thought what would happen if we just embrace that thought of encouraging people to not fly Jetstar.

[A]

That's right. Adam wanted Jetstar to run a campaign where they actively told people not to fly Jetstar. This hardly makes any sense. Jetstar want you to fly with them. Surely telling people not to fly won't work, but Adam thought it might because of a psychological bias called reactants.

[B]

I learned about reactants years ago. My dad was pachido marble red smoker and he had his coffin painted as a box of marble reds when he died of cancer. And I carried his coffin down the aisle. And then before he died, dad said to me that I could say the eulogy and I could say whatever I wanted but let everyone know that he wanted to be cremated so he could light up one last time. And that's what he did anyway. I've never had a cigarette in my life and I've been a passionate anti smoker ever since. But then when they started putting graphic labels on the cigarette packs, I was fascinated by the impact of all the different things that smoking cessation activities have done. And you know, things like raising the taxes, taking the logos off the cigarettes, putting behind closed things behind on the counter. All of those things have worked. The only thing that hasn't really worked is the graphic images on the labels. And what those graphic images have done for some people, it turns them off and they say, no, I won't smoke. But the heavy smokers, what it creates is a bit of a fuck, you don't tell me what to do. I know it's gross. I don't need you to tell me it's gross. And they end up smoking more. So medium to heavy smokers seem to end up smoking more because of the graphic labels, because of his sense of reactance.

[A]

In the book Behavioral Science in the Wild, authors Nina Mazar and Dilip Solman write that for reactants to occur, two conditions need to be met. First, people have to perceive that you are attempting to influence them. If individuals feel they are being influenced, they'll feel an urge to push back. And the second condition is that people must value the behavior you are targeting with your intervention. The graphic images on packages are clearly designed to influence smokers, but heavy smokers value cigarettes highly, so this causes reactance.

[B]

A sense of reactance is when you take away somebody's you seemingly take away somebody's free will to do what they want.

[A]

Researcher Richard Ryan from the University of Rochester in 1982 discovered that even simple phrasing like the word should can trigger reactance. He found that telling people you should do X is less motivating than saying you could do X. In fact, One study from 1972 looked at Reactant's effect on teenage love. 140 Colorado teenage couples were monitored over the course of a few years. The researchers measured the amount of time the couples spent together and the parents view of the couple's relationship. Specifically, the study found that if the parents viewed the couple critically and reported a greater number of problems with the child's partner, the child ended up feeling a greater love and desire for marriage. Interestingly, the researchers found that when the parental resistance weakened, the romantic feelings between a young couple started to cool. The researchers aptly named this the Romeo and Juliet effect.

[B]

The other area I learned about it was in Robert Heath's work around low involvement processing and how advertising works. And this is going back many years. But Robert Heath used to talk about low involvement processing was better than rational persuasion because emotional advertising, as he put it, kind of tend to seep around the edges and as soon as you go too fast and too hard into a rational persuasion message and again, it creates a sense of reactance where people say I don't like being sold to and they switch off.

[A]

I hadn't heard of Robert Heath's work before, but it backs up something I'd heard previous nudge guest Ayelet Fishback talk about in one of her studies with Michael Mimaran. Preschoolers were read stories where a girl ate carrots and crackers for different reasons. Some were told the girl wanted to become strong and healthy. Others were told it was to help her learn to read. Some were told it was to help her count to 100, and some were given no reason at all. Instead of motivating the children to eat more, these instructional messages had the opposite effect. Kids who heard about the benefits of the food ate 50% less. The researchers found essentially that when the parents or teachers tried to persuade the kids, framing the food as serving a benefit, like making you strong or smart, children just assumed it must taste bad. In other words, direct persuasion undermined enjoyment. Kids inferred that if parents needed to push the food, it probably wasn't that tasty. And this backs up Robert Heath's findings.

[B]

His work was all around low involvement processing, that is seeping through it at a subconscious or emotional level was more effective rather than hard persuasion messages because that created again, that created a sense of reactance or a sense of people being sold to and their free will was being in some way diminished.

[A]

Directly trying to persuade backfires. This creates a problem for brands. How can you promote your product if the act of promotion causes reactance? Well, you could try doing the opposite. Tell people not to use your product. On page 270 of his book Influence, Cialdini cites one study at Purdue University. Here, students were shown ads for a novel. Half of the students were shown ads which included the statement, this book is for adults only, restricted to those 21 years and over. The other half of the students read no such age restriction, otherwise everything was the same. When the researchers later asked the students to indicate their feelings towards the book, they discovered that those who learned about the age restriction wanted to read the book far more and believed they would be more likely to enjoy it than those who thought their access to the book was unfiltered. This was the case even for students that were older than 21 years old.

[B]

And, you know, it's also just simply reverse psychology. But sometimes when things become so familiar and so simple, they get dumbed down and people kind of forget about the power of it.

[A]

Some very successful brands have applied this. When Whitney Wolf launched Bumble, the dating app, she put up official looking signs outside lecture theatres at the university campuses. She was trying to promote the app. The signs said something I believe, very smart. They forbade people from using Facebook, Twitter, Tinder, and Bumble Inside. So she told people not to use her app, but it did the opposite. It was, of course, an incredibly smart way to make the app seem more popular than it was by comparing it to the likes of Facebook, while also avoiding reactance by telling people literally not to use it. And Adam wanted to do the same for Jetstar.

[B]

We developed a campaign that challenged people not to fly Jetstar and it's just called Don't Fly Jetstar. It came to life in a whole lot of different kind of challenges, if you like, to people. So don't you know, scan this QR code. Don't read this press release. Don't take this $29 sale. Don't pick up this orange bag.

[A]

You can watch that last version of the campaign on YouTube. It's titled Don't Watch this Video published on Jetstar's official YouTube page. Here's what it showed.

[B]

Well, we had a conveyor belt with various bits of luggage on there and then just signed saying, don't pick up the orange suitcase. And when people did kind of come up to it and a few people kind of did open it, when they opened it, they got a voucher for a free flight. And those vouchers are various size, and then that became social content and so on.

[A]

The video performed very well with half a million views. It's jetstar's fifth most popular video of all time.

[B]

But then that whole concept, we took a little bit further and took into advertising where we said, do not scan the QR code. And then people who did scan the QR code were taken to the website or taken to a place where they could get discounts and so forth. Then we took that a step further and we said, you know, we started to advertise the prices of the actual sales. And so we had things like don't book fares from $29. So we had this whole language of don't do this, which went right through the whole kind of the campaign period. And so it's everything from QR codes to the suitcase to affairs and so on and so on. We put all of this kind of work out into the world to see what would happen. And lo and behold, people's sense of reactance clicked in. They didn't like being told what to do. And so therefore, they did book that flight, they did scan that QR code, they did pick up that orange bag. And it kind of worked pretty well.

[A]

But what were the results? Did it actually increase sales? And perhaps more importantly, can you and I use this tactic? What would happen if I told people not to listen to Nudge? We'll find out after this break. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Land, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Listen and you'll hear from leading AI creators who are your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to the Next Wave wherever You get your podcasts. Hello, welcome back. You are listening to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. Adam has walked through the now widely known don't Fly jetstar campaign. It's a campaign that's built on some reliable behavioral science. But did it actually work? What results did it bring in? I asked Adam.

[B]

So the campaign, and this is going to be annoying to you, but the campaign hasn't been live for that long. Airlines are also incredibly hard to get and don't like to share. The results of too much social media sentiment was incredibly positive. People approximately five times more likely to click onto or engage with the content than kind of the equivalent types of content. So we know that much more people were interacting with with this message online and in socials than they were with the equivalent message. More click through, more engagement with the messages. But we don't have the hard data after that.

[A]

But fortunately I do have some hard data because I ran a very similar experiment a few years back. Some loyal listeners of Nudge might remember an experiment I ran on episode 70 of the show. For this experiment, I created two Reddit ads to promote this podcast. The first was textbook marketing. I wrote about the benefits somebody would get from listening to Nudge. It is titled 5 reasons why you should listen to nudge and includes 5 bullet points. It says you'll learn the science behind great marketing. Guests include Rory Sutherland. It has 100,000 downloads and 127 five star reviews. Episodes are 20 minutes long with no fluff and you'll learn marketing science that you can replicate. Now, I'll admit that this is not the world's most creative copy, but it's what all textbooks tell us to do to talk about production benefits. The second version was a reactance inspired variant. It was titled 5 reasons why you shouldn't listen to Nudge and then had five bullet points which said you'll realize how useless your marketing degree is. Episodes are packed with so many examples you'll get a headache. You'll piss off your colleagues with your great new ideas. It's only 20 minutes long, which isn't ideal for long car journeys. And you'll learn marketing science. Not LinkedIn Guru Wizard. I spent $110 on both of these ads, targeted them towards the same group and measured the results. And all in all, that reactance variant where I literally told people not to listen to the podcast was four times more effective. The click through rate on the control was 0.09%. For the variant it was 0.47%. That's almost a 400% uplift from telling people not to listen. Over 500 new listeners came from the show from that one ad. And at the time it was my most effective bit of marketing. It seems this reverse psychology does work. And Adam says it's partly down to a second bias. Not reactance, but the negativity bias.

[B]

There's a thing called the negativity bias where we pay more attention to negative messages and negative stimuli than we do positive stuff. So in other industries, in entertainment or newspapers, we know that negative imagery really works really, really well and we're kind of hardwired pay attention to it. So newspapers, as they're saying, if it bleeds, it leads and so on. In advertising and marketing, marketers are very, very protective of their brand image. So they don't want to necessarily say anything too negative or do anything too risque. So although the power of reactance is kind of strong, there aren't that many kind of hardcore parallels I can make or good examples. But there is one very famous example which was Patagonia, which had a campaign about 10 years ago which was don't buy this jacket. And it was a campaign imploring people not to buy new clothes, but to buy second hand and well worn clothes. I think at the time Patagonia run that they were, they just opened up a reselling arm of their business. So even then they were saying don't buy this new, but you know, grade the sub copy and buy it secondhand.

[A]

Telling people not to fly Jetstar, not to buy Patagonia or not to listen to Nudge really does seem to have the opposite result. It makes people more interested in doing that thing. It circumvents reactants, captures attention with that negativity bias, and leaves customers with their autonomy intact. But Adam has one final bit of advice. He doesn't think you should start telling everybody to stop buying your stuff all the time.

[B]

I don't think it's a sustainable long term strategy for a brand. But if you do want to do a spike of attention, then yeah, sure.

[A]

I told you not to listen to this episode of Nudge. Yet here you are 20 minutes later, still here. In a world where every brand is trying to persuade you to buy something, every ad is trying to tell you what to do, and every influencer is telling you how to act, There is something refreshing in a company doing the total opposite. And although it might seem a little silly, a little naive, there is some hard evidence behind it. The reactant's bias highlights how we don't like being told what to do and brands like Jetstar, Patagonia and even my Reddit ads, well, they show us that occasionally saying not to do something might have greater effects. So don't listen to Nudge, don't tell your friends how great this episode was and definitely don't leave me a five star review. Okay, that's all we have time for today, folks. Adam's a wonderful guest. He's incredibly interesting to talk to. His blend of applicable marketing with evidence backed science I think is just wonderful. So if you want to learn more from Adam, I recommend checking out his two books.

[B]

I've written two books, the advertising how to change behaviour and stop listening to your customer. Try hearing your brand instead.

[A]

I've left links to both of those in the show notes, so go there if you want to pick up a copy of one of his books. Now, I like to finish these episodes by telling you to go and check out my new product, the Nudgevaults. But I can't really do that today because we've just done a whole episode on reverse psychology. So rather than me telling you why you should go and check out Nudgevault, here's an actual Nudgevault customer explaining how much he's enjoying the platform.

[C]

The Nudge Vaults are an absolutely world class treasure trove of new, cutting edge information that participants can apply and employ straight away. My name's David Mead. My primary career was as an academic BBC broadcaster. What's wonderful about it is Phil has done all of the hard work. He has sorted and sifted through the guff and crystallized it all down into a sentence or two. Every once in a while I find myself even on a train, logging in, having a wander and finding a piece of research either that I've never encountered before or that I did learn about and I've forgotten. And the Nudge Vault is hands down the best investment that I've made in 15 years.

[A]

Head to nudgepodcast.com vaults if you want to learn more or click the link in the show notes to go to the website to read more or preview 50v for free or don't do that at all. Cheers.