Phil Agnew (0:00)

I've just spent four hours watching 300 TV ads. It wasn't easy. Oh my God, this. Wow. I thought ads were better than this. So why did I put myself through this TV torture? Well, it's to answer a question I've had for years. I've probably seen close to 100,000 TV ads in my lifetime and I've spent years studying behavioural science, but I really have no idea how many TV ads use behavioral science. Are these ads packed with nudges or is psychology largely ignored? To help find out, I watched 300 different British TV ads from the past 20 years. 300 ads. Well done. Today I will reveal what I learnt. I'll walk through how many ads use behavioural science, what persuasion principles they prefer, and which cognitive biases advertisers use time and time again to influence you. All of that coming up in today's episode of Nudge. The Ops Authority, hosted by Natalie Gingrich, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Every week on the Ops Authority, you'll hear transformational stories of powerhouse business owners who value business operations. You can't ignore the back end pieces that have to work together and flow smoothly to build a brand, grow a community, or disrupt an industry. If the operations side of your business is a mess, mess, putting out fires will always take priority, leaving no room for the behavioural science improvements that I think every business needs to make. So listen to the Ops Authority wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, you are listening to Nudge with me, Phil agnew. Back on September 2, 2024, I sat down one evening to watch hundreds of British ads. Now, before starting, let me make it clear that this is not scientific analysis. It's not as rigorous as an academic paper. I won't make any claims that my findings are at all reliable. I will certainly miss things and I will constantly make mistakes. But with all that said, I'm just fascinated by ads and I'm fascinated by behavioral science. So even with those warnings, I still wanted to go ahead. I still wanted to see what I would learn. So let's rewind back to September 2, 2024. Here I am, right before starting. Okay, so the goal of today is to watch as many ads as possible and to rank them not in terms of my enjoyment, but in terms of the behavioral science that they use or don't use. I've always been interested in TV ads and I've always been fascinated by behavioral science. And I've always assumed that the two must cross over that ads must be using behavioral science to try and nudge us. We know behavioral sciences is so effective. We know the studies that showcase it works surely adds a pact of them. But I'm actually not sure I really want to satisfy this. This question I have about whether or not these ads contain behavioral science. Do they actually use the nudges that I talk about on this show or do they not? Do they just use other forms of communication and storytelling? Is it a lot more maybe simple or non psychological than I might expect? So just to give you a bit of background into what I'm doing, I am on teleads.com fantastic website. They call themselves the Netflix of TV ads. I am on their site and they have over 30,000 ads. I think I'm only going to watch a couple of hundred, not quite sure at the moment. And I'm going to go through these ads in random order which means I could get given an ad. I'm starting with one very recent, the most recent ad on the site. But then I'm just going to go random. It's pretty much random. I'll go through all different years and I'm going to be basically just doing one thing when I watch this ad which is look to see if there are any obvious cognitive biases, nudges or behavioral science principles being used. If there are, I will note it down, I'll explain how I think they've used it and then I will give it my own personal rating and that'll be a rating based on how well I think they've used that behavioral science principle. So this isn't going to be my ratings on how good the ads are. We've got no way to measure that other than my personal view which I don't think is very interesting. Instead we're just going to be looking at these ads and trying to figure out do they use behavioral science principles and let's see what we find. I really have no idea. I honestly don't know if we'll go through 100, 200 ads and see loads of different principles being used and this could be a really interesting show about all of the different principles that have been used over the years or it could be quite a dull one and it could be basically no principles being used. We'll find out. So it is, it's about 8:30pm here. I'm going to just start watching ads until I'm so tired that I need to go to bed. Let's start with the first ad which is for Kinder Bueno and It's called Coffee Shop Coffee for Ben. Ben. Crispy wafer filled with creamy hazelnut dipped and drizzled in delicious chocolate. Ben. Actually, it's pronounced buen. Why be basic when you can be bueno? Oh, golly, this is going to be a long couple of hours. So that ad wasn't using much, I don't think. I think it was using a bit of alliteration with that saying at the end. Why you? Why be basic when you can be bueno? So a bit of illiteration. There's some good psychology behind why that works and is more memorable. And it's obviously using a bit of humor as well with the buen joke. So I put those two nudges, those two biases into my system and I will maybe I don't really have any notes to add on that, so I'm not going to notes. I'm going to give it a score. How well is it using behavioral science? I mean, it's very basic. I'll give it to. I've got a five star scoring system, I should say that. So I'll give it two out of five stars and I think it's time to just keep watching ads. I'm not going to be giving commentary like this for the next couple of hours. I will edit this down and hopefully cut back to a more succinct version of me explaining what I've discovered. All right, time to get going. Hello, it's back to the succinct version of Phil here. I'll cut between clips from the day and clips of me analyzing results like this throughout today's episode. So let's start by looking at alliteration. Alliteration is something that popped up in 13 of the 300 ads I watched. Sky believe in. Better new Lynx bullet pocket Pulling power Home base Make a house a home. The more you mess with cannabis, the more it can mess with your mind. Burnt, bitten, banged up. Get over it. This week, the celebs frolic on the beach. Heat makes life worth living. Oh dear. It's used a lot and for good reason. There's solid evidence to suggest it works. Bromley, Stanley and Shotten in 2022 ran a study where participants viewed alliterating proverbs like sleep softens sorrows versus non alliterating proverbs, which mean the same thing, like sleep lessens worries. The study revealed that the alliterating proverbs improved believability by 7% and were 22% more memorable than the non alliterated counterparts. That's why so many ads use alliteration, but this is fairly basic. It's hardly the smartest use of behavioural science. In fact, you could argue that it isn't really behavioural science. Listening back to the recording from the day, I'd say that I didn't really spot a smart use of behavioural science until the 12th act. I viewed Ryvita multigrain crisp bread with two layers of red pepper hummus. And now I'm going to demolish it. Britain Loves Ryvita. That's my favourite ad so far. 10 seconds long and it contains, I mean, this shows the age of the ads 2007. But it's a TV presenter called Fern Britton who's I think for a joke, dressed up as a, as a builder. She's eating her Rivitas and there's a really nice plant word because her name's Fern Britton. They can, they can call this ad Britain Loves Rivita. So you're triggering a bit of social proof, you're triggering a bit of herd mentality or giving the impression that the whole of the UK loves Rivita when in reality it's just Fern Britain. And what's funny about this is there's a serial called Surreal who are doing this exact tactic and what, almost 20 years on, 15 years on. So Rivita, they were there first. That's a good ad. That's the First AD above 2 stars we've had so far. So nice to have a good one. All right, let's keep going. Social proof was something that kept coming up in these ads time and time again. Can you solve the UK's number one piles treatment? Join the thousands of businesses who have taken out a vast, affordable funding circle loan. More people prefer the taste of Flora Buttery. Some social proof ads went to even greater lengths to prove their popularity. We asked a bunch of people to try New Chicago Town Takeaway Pizza. A great tasting pizza fresh from your oven whenever. And guess what? More of them preferred it to Domino's or Pizza Hut. Takeaway pizza. Yeah, classic use of social proof there. What's funny to those of you who heard that ad? Well, two things. They visualized it by actually showing the amount of people, but when you read the small, small point, it's just 88 pizza. 88 pizzas, 88 people. Which is obviously, you know, not very much and crazy. When you actually think about the fact that Chicago Town and a company of that size is only using 88 people, when they have as much resource as they do, you probably actually start to think, well, they Must be using those 88 people because they're a small sample size on purpose. Maybe they did this 50 times with 50 different groups of 80 people and that was the best result they got. So it is suspect. But it's a really good use of social proof, isn't it? The majority of people prefer Chicago Town. That would have probably been a quite successful ad. Telling viewers that the majority of Brits, pizza eaters, margarine lovers or funding hunters prefer your brand will make viewers likely to follow. This is social proof. We like to follow the herd. In an experiment by Duke and Peking University, researchers found that indicating which dishes were most popular in a restaurant chain's menu increased those dishes demand by up to 13 to 20%. According to the book TuneIn McFlurry's sales increased 55% after it was named the most popular dessert. I'm not surprised to see social proof used in ads. But right after hearing the Britain Loves Ryvita ad, I watched the first ad, which I thought contained four different principles of behavioural science. Here it is. It's a classic ad for Walker's Crisps, containing the well known former football player and general celebrity, Gary Lineker. Oi, oi. The builder's breakfast. What a treasure. Dig into bacon, sausage, egg and beans. Yeah, just heartbeat it. Try the six new Walkers flavours and vote for your favourite at walkers.co.uk. this ad uses a few biases. First, it has a celebrity in it, so it benefits from the halo effect, which, as we'll see later, is a very common tactic. Secondly, it's using social norms. It's suggesting that builders love this certain flavour of Walkers. There's humour in there as well, which I'm loosely defining as a behavioural science principle. And finally, there's the IKEA effect. Walkers are asking customers to vote for their favourite of the six new flavours. The one with the most votes will win and will stay in the shops. It's an intelligent use of the IKEA effect, which, for those of you who don't know, suggests that we value items more when we've been involved in creating them. Results from Professor Norton's study showed that participants were willing to pay 63% more for IKEA products they had built than for the same product built by an expert. If Walker's fans vote for their favourite crisps, they'll be far more likely to buy those crisps in the future and they'll even pay more for those crisps as well. I only saw two other ads using the IKEA effect out of the 301 was another one for Walkers, part of this same campaign. And another was an old Red Bull ad asking viewers to create animations with the Red Bull logo. Whatever your style, use a can of Red Bull as inspiration for your animation. The Ikea effect is rarely used in ads. Even Walkers discontinued it fairly promptly. The builder's breakfast flavour in the ad that we listened to earlier that won the vote, but the crisps were discontinued just a year later, so it really is hardly used. And surprisingly, the same was true for another cognitive bias, a really popular one, loss aversion. This was hardly used in ads, except for a few particularly good examples. So you've made up your mind who's getting your vote? The only thing you forgot to do was register. If you're not registered by 18 April, you can't vote in elections in your area. This may register at aboutmyvote.co.uk. it's your vote, don't lose it. Very. I think the biggest use of loss aversion we've seen so far, it's your vote, don't lose it. You know, really not talking about the benefits, really talking about the losses and the visual on screen. There was some bodybuilders attaching a man who's just walked into a polling station to a bungee cord which is attached to a dustbin outside and it's flung him outside. So not only has he lost his vote, he's been through a bit of trauma. Really? Yeah, I guess. Quite a good ad. Loss aversion popped up only a few more times, like in this ad for the dvla. If you haven't renewed your car tax, your car could be clamped, towed or even crushed. And this for Norwich Union. You could be gone without life cover. How would your family cope? Only 6 out of the 300 ads I watched used loss aversion. And this really surprised me. In a study By Aronson From 1988, 404 homeowners received information about insulation. One group was told about the potential benefits of insulating, so you'll save $75 a day, while another was told of the losses they'll incur if they didn't insulate. The loss framing led to a 56% improvement in sign ups compared to the benefit framing. It is a powerful persuasion principle, so I was very surprised that it's rarely used in TV ads. Some principles, however, were far more common, like the Barnum effect in this advertisement for pims. Ten of you, one of me. You don't mind sharing glasses, anyone? For pims. First use of the Barnum effect, which is the idea where if you use a question in an ad, it's rated more favourably. Famous Burkrank study found that ads with a question a 22% more rated 22% more favourably. So the Anyone for PIMS ad is a good use of that. Good use of humor as well. Yeah. Okay, we're seeing quite a few behavioural biases here. I don't know if PIMS knew they were using that, but I know that it's a very successful term for them, so maybe it worked. Loyal listeners will know. I've tested the Barnum effect myself. I created two Reddit ads. One with a question, it read Bored of boring business podcasts. And then another version of that ad without the question, which simply read Ditch boring business podcasts. The question variant received 15% more clicks than the control, which contained no question. It seems that TV advertisers have cottoned on as 12 of the 300 ads I watched contained questions like, can your business insurance do that? Do you get enough vitamin D? When was the last time you could go camping for just 95p a night? Bothered by unusual odor and discharge? Know the helpless feeling of watching a glass of red wine tumbling towards your carpet? Relax. Advertisers seemed to know about the power of questions. And at this stage, I was getting quite excited. Slowly and slowly I was seeing more and more ads using behavioral science. But for every good ad, there were probably two or three pretty bad ads, even some that I thought were quite ethically questionable. TK Maxx has famous brand fashion, but always for up to 60% less. So the line there is always for up to 60% less. So it sounds like sort of a bit of skin in the game. Consistency principle. We always offer something which I think is quite smart. You know, if somebody's able to say we are, we always guarantee that we serve cookies made within 10 minutes. That'll be a very popular advert for a cookie store. But T Max have used this very unethically here. So they've said always up to 60% off, which could mean up to 60% could be 0% off. So it's a totally irrelevant term. I'm amazed this ad was allowed. This is 2007, so pretty naughty. But yeah, you can see that they're trying to use a bit of, I guess a bit of a behavioral bias there of the word. Always triggers feelings of trust and consistency. All of those principles costs as well. You're more likely to invest in something if you if they make trustworthy claims, but very unethical. So yeah, probably I'm not ranking these on how ethically valid they are, but probably the worst one we've seen from that regard. That was a pretty bad ad. And slowly as the night wore on, I started noticing more and more ads that didn't seem to use behavioral science at all. Hey, this is moo. At moo, we take what makes you and your business so amazing, whether you're big or small, and turn it into the perfect OSO premium paper version of you. Looks like someone likes their new cards. Visit moo.com and get a free sample pack. Oh it's so bleh. Power free I guess because they offering a free sample pack but oh one of my least favorite ads. There were a lot of ads like this. Extremely positive, just showcasing the product benefits, very textbook and quite boring. The only thing this MOO ad did from a behavioral science perspective was offer a free sample pack of business cards. In fact, the power of free is a very common tactic. I saw it in 22 different ads in total. Buy and collect any one pizza from Domino's and we'll give you another pizza absolutely free. The Legends collection. 13amazing CD albums from the all time greats. All free with the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror including up to six months free Apple music, free limited edition Coca Cola can glasses at McDonald's, one free with every large meal or premium salad. Use from rewards like free evening and weekend calls on Canary Pay as you go. We are drawn towards free items. That's why so many of these ads talk about three things. There's a famous study where customers were shown two chocolates. The first was a Hershey's Kiss for one cent and the other chocolate was a Lindt chocolate for 50 cents. The Lindt chocolate chocolate is fairly objectively the better chocolate. And despite costing $0.49 more, 50% of people picked the Lindt chocolate. In this scenario, when asked to choose between Hershey's Kiss and the Lindt, 50% picked the Lindt. But something very interesting happens when you reduce the price of both chocolates by 1 cent. Now the Kiss costs 0 cents and the Lindt chocolate costs 49 cents. The Lindt chocolate is still 49 cents more than the Kiss. Just like with before, but customer behaviour changes dramatically. Now rather than 50% of people picking the lint and 50% picking the Hershey's Kiss, well now 90% of people pick the Hershey's Kiss. Why? Well, because it's free. We love free things and advertisers know this now. It was getting late in the day and I was getting quite tired and very bored of watching ads. So I decided to end it for day one. I think I'm going to end it there for the day. I've done 116 different ads. I'll try and do some more tomorrow. Definitely get up to 200, maybe 300 and then we can review the results. All right, see you tomorrow. Let's see how I get on in day two after this quick break. Once on holiday, a local asked me to explain what marketing actually is and I struggled. How do you even begin to describe marketing? You have to generate leads, you have to score leads, you have to contact leads, you have to create content, you have to gather data. And the next day you'll need to do it all again. And you wonder if it's even working. It's clear that marketers are spread far too thin trying to do so many different things. But HubSpot really can help. With the help of Breeze, HubSpot's collection of AI tools and features like Content Remix can really help. With Content Remix, you can turn one piece of content into a suite of assets. With HubSpot, you can also pinpoint the best prospects with a predictive lead scoring system. And you can level up your campaign's KPIs with a new analytics suite so your day to day becomes less busy work and more driving revenue through the roof. Even if all of that won't actually help me explain what marketing is, visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more. Okay, it is time for second day of watching ads. We got to 116 last night. Let's keep going. Let's see how many we can watch. I would watch 184 adverts on day two. Getting all the way up to 300. And pretty early on on day two I watched an ad I quite liked. I got AXA Car insurance. Go to AXA insurance.com where the more experienced you are, the more you'll save on your car insurance with up to 90% no claims discount. If you think your driving experience should be rewarded, join us experienced Drivers wanted@axerinsurance.com AXA redefining standards quite a smart add that. I like that a lot. Talking about how experienced driving is rewarded and then saying experienced drivers wanted so they're benefiting from the idea that all of us. There's this famous study which shows that if you ask 100 car owners if they think they were above average at driving, Obviously rationally, only 50 should say they are. I think 90 actually say they are. Something crazy like that. So they're playing off the confirmation bias here, which is the idea that people seek out information which they already believe. So people already believe they are experienced drivers, so they're more likely to act when AXA says we're seeking out experienced drivers because they feel part of that group, even though AXA smartly know that everybody feels part of that group, perhaps other than learners. Also a bit of unity bias here as well, which is one of Cialdini's, which is we. Well, we basically, when we share a belief, share an identity like this, identity of being an experienced driver, we'll be more likely to act when somebody references that identity. So yeah, that's one of the more interesting ads. I hadn't seen the confirmation bias used yet, so enjoyed that a 1980 study titled the Effects of a Matter of Salience showcased the power of the confirmation bias. In their study, some participants were arbitrarily labelled as above average citizens with an above average possibility of voting. In reality, they weren't above average, they were just normal citizens picked at random. Yet the individuals who received and saw that label were 15% more likely to vote than those who were labelled as just average citizens. AXA were probably benefiting from a similar approach. Most of us see ourselves as experienced drivers, so we're more likely to pick AXA because they can conform to our existing belief. So it was a good start to day two. But very quickly I began to watch a number of car ads, many of which were quite bad. Say yes to the city. Lexus CT Hybrid experience. Amazing. Say yes to the city. Whatever that means. Lexus Hybrid experience, Amazing. They just. It's just random word generators for these car ads, isn't it? Okay, let's keep going. Some of these ads were so vague that I thought they were failing due to a cognitive bias that advertisers hadn't considered. Another similarly bad ad was this one for Mazda introducing Skyactiv technology. Efficiency and performance together at last. Because you can't visualize that. What is SkyActive? It's not a good example of concrete phrases. Call it something like smooth ride and you can visualize that, or frictionless wheels. Or, you know, there was the last ad I watched which was about having an engine which didn't make much noise. That's something you can visualise. Skyactiv technology is so vague it's pointless, especially when it's not explained. So, yeah, I think actually quite a bad example of the concrete phrase is expected There, Mike Trehan and Richard Shotton's 2021 study found that participants remembered 6.7% of concrete phrases fast car, but only 0.7% of abstract phrases like innovative quality. That's a tenfold difference. Just with some phrases being concrete and visible, like fast car, and some phrases being opaque and impossible to visualize, like innovative quality. Mazda's Skyactiv technology will be forgotten because it's simply too vague. A good example of an advert that uses the concrete phrase effect properly is this Lotto ad. Win 1 of 50 Volkswagen GolfBlue motions with the car's cash scratch card from the National Lottery. It's Easy to visualise 50 Volkswagens. It's a concrete phrase and it'll make that ad a lot more effective. If they say, win the ride of a lifetime, it just wouldn't have worked as well. A couple of ads later, I watched an advert that I was particularly impressed by. This is Alpecin caffeine shampoo for men. Take a good look because it's moving fast. In fact, it sold over 2 million bottles in Germany last year alone. To find out why, get down to boots, leading supermarkets or pharmacies. Alpecin, caffeine shampoo. German engineering for your hair. Yeah, really interesting ad because they're advertising the fact that it's caffeine shampoo, but not actually explaining why. There's no, nobody, presumably, back in 2011 when this first aired, would actually know why you need caffeine shampoo and they don't tell you why. They say, get down to your local boots to buy it. So, German engineering for your hair. There's a few things that's really good about this, using social proof, using scarcity, saying they're running out fast, Literally they're disappearing off the screen. But the curiosity gap, it's a very good use of the curiosity gap because by not explaining what the product is for, you're actually going to be more likely to remember it. It's going to stick in your mind. I'm pretty sure most blokes watching that ad would probably be able to make the assumption that it's. It's for hair loss. Because German engineering for your hair, it's not going to be to make it voluminous and smooth, is it? It's going to be something hardcore like hair replacement. So it's a really smart ad. Social proof, curiosity scarcity. Yeah, Very, very packed with behavioural biases. There a good one. The curiosity gap is a very effective behavioral bias. One paper called the Teasing Effect, published back in 2018 found that people are happier when information teased compared to being directly given all of the information. You'll be happier if I told you that there might be something in this episode which will really excite you rather than if I say what that thing is. The experiment actually showed that the teasing increased the liking and willingness to try brands as well. So advertisers can benefit from hiding a bit of information about their brand. And I saw 12 other ads leveraging this principle. Some short like this ad for the unknown product called Buzz Buzz arrives September 18, 2010. And this smart ad for the supermarket Lidl. It starts by showing a butcher at a farmer's market selling cuts of meat. The viewer and the customers in the ad are unaware where the meat is from until the price is revealed. This is our Scotch beef lean steak mince burgers. Wow. We've got the sirloin here. The 28 day mature. These are outdoor bread pork medallions. 250 grams of this Lee mint steak is 1 pound 89. You're joking. Yeah. We'll take the two top quality with the kind of value you'd only expect from a shop like Lidl. Really? Absolutely. I love that. Hiding a bit of information, keeping the viewer guessing. Not saying these are Lidl's prices and these are Lidl's cuts of meats, but hiding that. Well, that made for a good ad. It kept viewers engaged. But one ad leveraged the curiosity bias better than any other. You can hear the ad in full here now on screen. The ad simply shows one long 60 second camera cut, slowly zooming into a woman's face who has a very visible scar on her cheek. We've got to get in there. Can we clear these branches? Female, mid-20s. She's really hurt with severe cranial and facial injuries. Step aside, please. Come on. My checks. Sally, can you pass me the plating set? I'm removing the throat pack now and I'm going to close with suit swabs. Needles and instruments are correct. Jenny? Jenny, can you hear me? Jenny? Just squeeze my fingers or blink if you can. How is she? Can I see her? She's in intensive care. Is she gonna be ok? You're finding that your speech is slurred at the moment and that's because your muscles have been damaged around your mouth. But this will improve. The dietitian's coming to see you today. Come on, get through this and I'll have a plate of chips waiting for you at the end of the day. When you first watch the ad, it's unclear what it's for. It's not clear if it's selling a product, a service, if. If it's an informational campaign. And this uncertainty draws in our attention, we can't help but want to know what the ad's about. So we stay engaged. Eventually it's revealed that it's an ad for NHS nurses. At the end of the ad, a visual pops up on screen and says, it put 74 people. To put a smile back on my face, 34 of those were nurses. This was my reaction when I watched that ad. I think that might be one of the best ads I've seen. Distinct. It's curiosity inspiring, it's leveraging biases, but still having that storytelling aspect. Yeah, really good. Not only did this advert use the curiosity gap, it also benefited from the specific number bias. The numbers on screen are very specific, stating 74 people and 34 nurses supported her care. Now viewers, when they see that, will probably be more likely to believe in that ad. This was shown in a 2006 study by Schindler at Reuters University and Yauch at the University of Washington. They found that ads stating that a fictitious deodorant lasted precisely 47% or maybe 53% longer were deemed to be around 10% more accurate by the participants, compared to generic rounded claims like saying this deodorant will last 50% longer. Saying precisely that the deodorant will last 47% longer is better and more believable than saying it lasts 50% longer. We believe in specific numbers and it seems that some TV advertisers know this. Or you could buy a Blue lion approved Peugeot 308 with CO2 emissions of just 120 grams per kilometer and 62 miles per gallon. What's more, we give over 96% of the turnover back to our players as winnings. Unibet by players for players. I remember finding that 96% claim quite interesting at the time because it wasn't just using specific numbers, it was using anchoring as well. That's a really interesting use of. It's a really good. Well, good use. Interesting bit of anchoring. And I. I think it works because it's distinct. So Unibet are saying here, they're a betting company, they say, we give 96% of our winnings back to our players and then they have a visual on screen of lots of coins filling a jar with the words player under it, and very few coins filling a jar with the word unibet under it. This is obviously anchoring. We're anchored to that's so close to 100%, we maybe almost think they give it 100% back. Which maybe makes you think, oh, the odds must be very good. It's a more trustworthy way because they're using anchoring in a specific number as well. So. But a specific number bias to say we give more money so you'll make more money on Unibet than you will elsewhere. And I think it works particularly because you don't see other betting companies saying that you'd. You don't have that as a figure to compare. It might be that every other betting company gives 99% back because there's sheer numbers of people on the site. That's enough. I mean, in a way, if you really scrutinize this, you think, well, is that actually very good? A roulette table probably gives the same odds. So it sounds pretty standard. But an interesting use of anchoring and the specific number bias there. Anchoring is powerful. One San Fran study cited in Blindsight found that the Average citizen donates $64 when asked to donate to a cause. But saying someone offered $400 increases that average donation to $143. So Unibet saying they give 69% of their turnover back to players probably has a powerful effect. It'll make the average gambler assume their chances of winning are high, even if they're not. I didn't see many other ads using anchoring. However, I did see 17 ads using another bias. It's rhyme. I mean chocky filly. Don't be silly. Anchor Butter the food, butter the mood. They say a problem shared is a problem halved. Give more, give cart door nationwide on your side they make a unique taste From a British place Filled with a happiness Just so pleased they're going to be squeezed Bursting with tasty berries Bursting with berryness Ribena. So what's smart about that is there's the rhyme's reasons effect, which means rhymes are more believable. So when the nasally fella singing along there talks about the fact that they're only British blueberries, it's supposedly more believable because he said it as a song and a rhyme rather than if, say, just Ribena said it. So I guess quite a smart use of that bias there. A 2013 study by Phil Kurkova and Klemp proved just this. 183 participants were shown a rhyming and non rhyming Sloan again. For brands like Ego, Better Life, the rhyming slogans increased brand trustworthiness by 22% and heightened the willingness to try the brands by 10%. Rhyming works and many, many ads use it. And honestly, by the end, I was getting fairly tired of all this rhyming. I was getting fairly tired of watching ads. But fortunately, after four very long hours, I finally reached the end, my 300th ad. Oh, 300 ads done. Well, that was, that was honestly quite difficult to watch 300 ads like that. But we've got it done and I don't need to do it again, so that's fantastic. Okay, well, I'll take a bit of time now and see what we've learned, so. So let's review the results. Now, at the start, I had three questions I wanted to answer. The first was how many ads contained a behavioural science principle? That's really what I set out to test. Do these ads use these principles or not? The second question was, what was the most common principle? And finally, what was my top rated ad? Let's start with question one. How many ads contained behavioural science principles? Well, of the 300 ads I watched, 210 contained at least one behavioral science principle. Only 90 ads contained no behavioural science, as far as I could tell. So that's 30% of ads with no obvious psychological principle at use. And honestly, I don't think that surprises me. I expected many ads to use behavioural science principles, but I certainly didn't expect them in all of the ads. I watched. Many adverts just talk about products and benefits, which is normal. I'm actually Fairly impressed that 70% of ads do contain a clear principle. However, if we move on to question two, we'll find that the reality is a little bit more complex. See, the most common principle I spotted by far was humour. Humour is used in 77 of the 300 ads I watched. Now, I really debated whether humour is actually a persuasion principle. There's obviously plenty of behavioural science evidence to suggest it works. It does really make an ad more memorable, but it's just pretty vague. The second most common principle was the halo effect. 49 ads used that. And that's not surprising. Lots of ads use celebrity endorsements. In my analysis, it was one in six. After those principles, the next most used behaviour behavioral science principles are the power of free. That was in 22 ads. Rhyming was in 17 ads. And the von Restoroff effect, or isolation effect, or distinctiveness, whatever you want to call it, that was also in 17 ads. Humor is fairly commonplace, but it's still only in 25% of the ads. I Watched. What stood out for me is that there's no common principle that every single TV ad seems to use. While most ads do use some principles, very few use the same ones. And that was quite an interesting takeaway. Now, finally, my last question was, what was my top ranked ad? Well, two ads took the top place. The first one is one you heard a bit from earlier. It's an ad for Norwich Union. It starts immediately by grabbing your attention. It's the celebrity Ross Kemp walking out onto the road and immediately getting hit by a bus. Life, it's a funny old game. One minute you're here, the next, next you could be gone. Without life cover, how would your family cope? For around a tenner a month, Norwich Union can help protect their future. What's more important than family? Find out how much it could cost to help protect them. Call 0800-685674 or visit norwichunion.com what are you waiting for? A bus? Here's what I said about that ad at the time. Okay, I think that is the best ad so far from a behavioral science perspective. I think it's using five different behavioural science principles in just that 30 seconds. So you've got Halo effect. This is a celebrity, British celebrity. It's ross Kemp from EastEnders, I guess at the time, back in 2007, there's distinctiveness, there's Von Westeroff, bit of shock, he gets run over by a bus. Within the first five seconds of that ad, you have loss aversion by saying, what would you do if you lost your family? And a picture of your family. When he opens his wallet, you have anchoring. By saying for around ten pounds a month you could have cover and then you have consistency right at the end where it's cool to find what you could say. What's smart about that by asking people to call is once they have done that call, they'll be far more likely to sign up because they've made the first step, they want to stay consistent with those actions. So five different principles, some quite well known ones there. I think this is an example of this I know is not the best ad I've seen. I've seen about what, 60 so far. Definitely not the best ad, but it's used the most behavioral science nudges and that's actually what I want to know, what ads use the most. So this one is the first one that's got five. And the second top ad, also with five nudges, was by Aviva, who weirdly were the same company behind the first ad. Maybe there's some behavioral scientists in hack. Anyway, here's that ad followed by my immediate reaction. Go to Berry Smoothie. Had a little browse on those comparison website things. Apparently these chaps aren't on any Aviva give you their best car insurance deal direct, bang on. Now see if I can't Google out a cup of tea. We're not on comparison websites. Go direct, get the Aviva deal. I'd forgotten this ad existed, but it's kind of. I mean, I really don't know if it worked for them, but there is an element of it which is quite smart. So there's a halo effect in there because there's a celebrity in the ad comedian. I guess you could also say it's humor as well because he's cracking a few jokes, but this is actually leveraging a few different biases. So they are advertising the fact that they're not on comparison sites, which, you know, rational thinking would say, well, that's a. That's bad, you're losing exposure to customers. But weirdly, and I know they ran this ad for a while, so it must have worked. There's something extent. There's this flip side to it which makes them more likable. First, it's sort of prattful effect, you know, showcasing a weakness, a flaw can. Can make you more likable. And then you have basically a bit of labor illusion, sunk cost, a consistency, this idea that if they're not on comparison sites, well, they're incurring a cost and that cost must mean that they are. I guess you believe the fact that they are getting benefits that maybe they're passing on to the consumer. So they're losing out on extra. On extra profits, but perhaps they give those back to the consumers. So a bit of labour illusion there. And obviously it's consistency as well, because what this is going to encourage people to do is go to aviva.com and find the deal. You get there and once you've gone to the effort of actually doing that, there are just fewer people who are actually going to go check the comparison sites either after to even see if there is a better deal elsewhere. So it's a smart, basically quite a smart ad in that sense. So interesting ad. Yeah. Again, probably one of the better ones we've seen in terms of applying lots of different nudges. I've got five in there. Prattful effect, consistency bias, labour illusion, halo effect and humour as well. Now, like I mentioned at the start, I don't really think either of those are the very best ads. I doubt they'll win many awards, yet I think they're some of the most effective. They leverage a number of different biases to persuade viewers I've satisfied a few niggling questions today. Firstly, most ads do use some behavioral science printing principles. These principles aren't ignored by ad men and women. They are used pretty consistently, but there's no preference for one ad over another. Many use humor, many use celebrities. There's lots of rhyming, alliteration and freebies advertised. But there are dozens of other principles used as well. In total, I counted 35 different persuasion principles used across these 300 different ads. And let's face it, I probably missed many more. TV ads use behavioural science principles maybe because they know they objectively work, or because the advertisers intuitively feel they need to include these things. Whatever the reason, there's one thing I know for sure. I'm not watching any ads for another month. Ok, that's all for today folks. Thank you so much for listening. As you can imagine, this episode took me weeks and weeks to prepare for. If you enjoyed it, please do share it with a mate, a colleague or a friend. Or if you'd rather not do that, just please do make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen and perhaps leave me a nice review while you're at it. Now, I would love to know what you think about this episode. This episode is very different from anything I've done before. So do you like it? Do you want me to do more like it? I thought I could repeat this experiment only with ads from this year, or perhaps only with ads from the 90s. Or I could try it with just radio ads instead. What do you think? Would you like to see more episodes like this? The best way to let me know is via email and if you sign up to my newsletter, you get my personal email address and you you can email me whenever you like. To sign up, just go to nudgepodcast.com and click Newsletter in the menu or click the link in the show Notes. Please do sign up and once you do, send me an email to let me know what you thought of this episode. I respond to every single email I receive. Ok, as always, I've been your host, Phil Agnew, and I will be back next Monday for another episode of Nudge. Thank you so much for listening. Bye.