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- [00:01]
Matthew O'Neill
Once a year I sit down and listen back through the episodes published in 2025 and this year has been fantastic. Nudge has consistently topped the marketing charts in the UK. 275,000 of you have listened to the podcast. The newsletter has hit 10,000 subscribers and Nudge YouTube has 30,000 subscribers. I'm very, very grateful. Thank you. And a lot of it is down to the insights, stories and behavioral science examples that guests have shared on the show. So today I will top insights these guests have shared in 2025. You will hear from world renowned professors, best selling authors and award winning behavioral science practitioners. All of that coming up. Being a know it all 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. Back in early 2025, I spoke with Ava Van Der Brook and Tim Denhayer who wrote the fantastic book the Housefly Effect. In the book, Ava and Tim write how pineapples were extremely rare. Because of this rarity, these pineapples became a status symbol. Their scarcity made them more sought after and expensive. Those who weren't in the position to buy their own pineapple would actually hire one. And they wouldn't hire one for consumption, but just to display at the dinner table. People literally rented pineapples not to eat, but to prove their status. And yet today, a pineapple on my kitchen table wouldn't impress anyone. It is the scarcity, not the pineapple, that made the fruit so impressive. When an item is scarce, we value it more. And Ava and Tim say that smart marketers can use this principle to ethically increase their sales.
- [02:09]
Tim Denhayer
Yeah, it's very interesting when you just announce in the supermarket, no more than four or no more than six bottles of well, or packs of Tropicana per, per customer, people will buy a little bit more. They won't buy four, but if they were planning to buy one, they will buy two. In a lot of cases you see like these house fly effects sort of accumulate. So there is, there's the anchoring point. Oh, apparently people are buying a lot of this stuff. Apparently it's normal to buy several packs rather than one pack. Then there's the loss Aversion. Well, why are they limiting this? It might be scarce, it may be running out, so I better get a little bit more. I think reactance may come into it where it's like, oh, I'm not supposed to buy too much of this. Well, I'll be the judge of that and I'll buy as much as I want to buy, thank you very much. In many cases, just making clear that something is an option and that is an option that other people are choosing will lead people in a certain direction.
- [03:06]
Matthew O'Neill
Limiting the amount you sell can counterintuitively boost your sales. It's a great insight, but it's not the only insight Tim shared on the show. He also explained why Ikea sell cheap ice cream right as you leave the furniture store.
- [03:21]
Tim Denhayer
The other thing is at the end of IKEA's customer journey. Some time ago, this used to be a very bad ending of a customer journey because we know something called the peak end rule. Part of which rule is that that the very end of an experience will really influence your recollection of it and will also really influence your intonation to repeat that experience. IKEA had a problem that right at the end of their customer journey there were some very unpleasant experiences because you have to pick your own stuff out of the big cupboards or what do you want to call it? Then you have to pay and then you have to find your car and get out there. Your kids are getting so annoying and your kids are very annoying and maybe you're probably because they're very good at upselling or cross selling. You probably bought some more stuff than you want and sort of were scared at the price or startled at the price. So what they could have done was re engineer that complete journey, not have you pick out your own furniture, do something about the price, lose a lot of money, hire more people. That would have been a huge transformation. Instead they offer you a very, very cheap ice cream or sausage hot dog at the end. So now you have fat and sugar and a discount, which is like the best you can offer a consumer, I suppose. And people leave happily because of that little order effect that they engineered a high point at the end. What fascinates me about this issue is this has been known for 20 or 30 years.
- [04:47]
Gert Gigerenza
Yeah, even lower.
- [04:48]
Tim Denhayer
This is the. The old Kahneman colonoscopy study, I think. I'm not sure Ikea read about colonoscopy and retailers and many people know this example or they understand why the ice cream is there because it's really weird. You don't buy furniture at an ice cream store. So why should you buy ice cream at a furniture store? But okay, we accept it. And still very few retailers are actively trying to influence those last minutes of a visit, whereas there are so many opportunities there to have people return and have a better recollection of their visit.
- [05:19]
Matthew O'Neill
Kahneman's colonoscopy study is really worth re sharing. I know some of you all have heard it before, but it is such a good one. So for the study, patients were divided into two groups. One underwent a standard colonoscopy while the other experienced an extended procedure with the colonoscopy scope left in place for an additional three minutes without movement which caused significant discomfort but not a significant amount of pain. So one group of patients underwent a normal procedure which was slightly shorter. Another group of patients underwent the same normal procedure but slightly extended by three minutes. Patients who underwent the longer procedure actually rated their experience as less unpleasant and were more willing to return for future procedures compared to those who had the shorter procedure. Why was this? Well, those who had the longer procedure had a final three minutes which was just slightly less uncomfortable than the rest of it. And this was the peak end rule. In play, the final experience outweighs the overall experience. In a follow up study, Kahneman and Ziv Kahlman examined patient satisfaction while waiting to be served by a computer program. They discovered that participants who experienced dissatisfaction during most of the wait but had a satisfying final few seconds rated the overall experience far more positively than those who waited for less time overall but didn't have a satisfying end. IKEA do the same. They end their experience with cheap ice cream and that changes the perception of ikea. It makes IKEA not seem overwhelming, expensive and tiring, but cheap and fun. So that was Ava and Tim. Now let's move on to Professor Gert Gergarenza. His episode on Nudge was all about intuition and on the show he shared that if you're in a highly skilled job, you shouldn't take your time. Here's why.
- [07:04]
Gert Gigerenza
There are a number of psychological experiments done. For instance with golf players, where you have two experienced golf players and amateurs. If you ask both groups, pay attention to your movements when doing a putt. What happens? Are the beginners getting better? Yes. Are the experienced players getting better? No. It disturbs their intuitive play. Another experiment gave them only three or so seconds to do their putt. What happens if the beginners have only three seconds? Are they getting better or worse? They're getting worse. If the experts only have three seconds, they're getting better. It's like in the experiment with the handball players. If they have too much time, on average, they get worse.
- [08:02]
Matthew O'Neill
The famous 2004 study found that accuracy for experts dropped by almost 10% when they had more time. The researchers conclude their paper with a compelling for real time execution by experts. There may be truth in the Nike motto. Just do it. Now let's move on to a tip that almost all of us can apply. It is about simple questions. Back in spring, Dutch behavioral scientist Bas Wouters explained how a simple question can trigger your audience to pay attention.
- [08:31]
Bas Wouters
So the simple question technique, every child in every culture, all around the world is taught at a certain thing. If an adult asks you a question, what do you need to do as a child? You need to answer that question. So ask something simple. And simple question wants people to answer that question. It's also a presentation technique. If you're a keynote speaker and people are a little bit talking to each other, you just throw a question in that area and they are suddenly paying attention.
- [09:03]
Matthew O'Neill
Simple questions aren't just for capturing attention during a presentation. They, they can be used online as well.
- [09:08]
Bas Wouters
What my co author Joris did, and he won the first CRO award with this case in the Netherlands was for bull.com and bol.com is basically the Dutch Amazon. They do, I think approximately $8 billion in revenue here. And like any other web shop, they wanted to collect reviews for their product. So in one case, twas you bought something, you get an automated mail, do you want to leave a review button, Write review. Then they changed that email and they started with a simple question and the question was, how did you like it? And then they gave three answers. Better than expected, as expected, not as expected. And this is an important element in the simple question. If you ask a simple question, make it also simple to answer. Anyhow, they changed it and then something interesting happened. There were 200% more clicks to the actual survey of the review.
- [10:06]
Matthew O'Neill
Asking a simple question like how do you find ordering with BOL increased clicks on their surveys by two times. But that wasn't all.
- [10:14]
Bas Wouters
So in the end they collected 400% more reviews because also more people finished the survey.
- [10:21]
Matthew O'Neill
Four times as many people left a review compared to the control. This is the foot in the door technique. Ask a simple question first before you make your large request. Instead of pitching a gym membership straight away, first ask you know, what is your ideal workout routine. Instead of immediately offering a new car model, first ask what features matter most to you and a car. These simple questions increase the likelihood that People will take action. That is the foot in the door technique. Now let's go on to Niall Daly of the Behavioural Insights team and hear about the endowment effect. In particular, framing a vaccine as being reserved for someone or reserved for a person in your career has been found to be particularly effective in high income countries. And I think we were excited to try and test that in a country where this kind of literature hadn't necessarily a lot of coverage. In this episode, Niall and Julia referred to the research conducted by behavioural scientists Katie Milkman, Angela Duckworth, matish Patel and 17 others. Before the pandemic, this big group of behavioural scientists ran a study testing 19 different text messages aimed at increasing flu vaccination rates. One message shared a simple joke about the flu. Another said, the flu shot makes you more healthy. A different version said, getting the vaccine helps protect your loved ones. However, the most effective message, the one that was most persuasive out of all 19, simply said, this vaccine is reserved for you. Just adding that line reserved for you boosted vaccination rates by 4.6 percentage points compared to the controlled group. So why did it work? Well, the researchers believed that the word reserved made people feel like the vaccine already belonged to them. It triggered a sense of ownership and a reluctance to miss out on their dose. Niall and his team tested this same tactic in Georgia. They sent thousands of young girls a text message saying their vaccine was reserved for them and it made those girls 45% more likely to get vaccinated. On a different episode of Nudge, I spoke with one of Niall's colleagues at the Behavioural Insights team. This was Toby Park. Toby showed a really interesting example on how the language you use to communicate your product or service can change the way that product or service is perceived.
- [12:36]
Toby Park
Language, as you say, can do a lot. Language can evoke different values that may resonate more or less. For example, there's a famous case study of anti littering campaigns in Texas based on the slogan Don't Mess with Texas, which has been credited as very successful in large part because it didn't rely on the sort of lefty green environmental messages, but on this image of state pride, toughness, civic respect and so on. Language can also influence a lot about the choice you're trying to encourage. So, for instance, we've done some work promoting sustainable diets and found that simply changing the names of the dishes can have large effects. So calling a vegetarian breakfast field grown rather than meat free roughly doubled the number of people who said they would choose it from the menu.
- [13:18]
Matthew O'Neill
This 2018 study was conducted with 727 Brits who already ate meat. Reframing meat free breakfast to field grown Breakfast made diners 200% more likely to pick the plant based option. Similarly, renaming meat free sausage and mash to field grown sausage and mash made it twice as popular. The paper makes it clear that this was still clearly labelled as a vegan option. It wasn't that people thought it was meat, it was simply the change in the words to describe the product which made it more popular. The paper went on to find that a veggie burger will be more popular if it's called a loaded burger. And gnocchi is 31% more popular if it's renamed to melt in the mouth gnocchi.
- [14:00]
Toby Park
I think what's particularly interesting about that, you know, not just the size of the effect, but the term meat free is kind of very lossy in its framing, right? We know people are loss averse, we're sensitive to things we will lose out on or miss more than we are positively affected by things we gain. And to say something is meat free, you're just highlighting what is missing, not highlighting anything that's positive about the meal. So that's not a good term.
- [14:24]
Matthew O'Neill
The same is true for healthy foods. A 2018 study which renamed carrots with sugar free citrus dressing to twisted citrus glazed Carrots found that the sales for the carrots increased dramatically when you switched to that twisted citrus glazed carrots variant. Now, what's important about this study and the others we've covered so far is they are randomized controlled trials. In each of these studies, there are at least two different populations and they see two different variants and you're able to compare the results between those variants. This allows researchers to see how effective their variant is. For example, they can see if it is really effective to call sausages field grown rather than meat free, because you're comparing like for like. This is different from simply asking customers, would you eat field grown sausages? If you ask customers that, you probably wouldn't get reliable results, at least not according to Philip Graves, the author of the brilliant book Consumerology.
- [15:20]
Philip Graves
Timothy Wilson, who's a psychologist in America, set up a study where he had four pairs of tights, A to D, got shoppers in a store to come in and just evaluate them, touch them, feel them, say which ones they thought were best. And as it happened, DE1 got 40%. So statistically, clearly the best performing pair of tights. And when he asked people what it was they liked about them, it was Their sheerness, the elasticity, the knit, you know, very tangible qualities that these tights had. All well and good, apart from the fact they were all the same. So a lot of people would look at that and say, well, that's fine because we randomize the order when we do testing and we can negate that. And they would all come out the same if we randomize the order. But that's missing the point. The point is people make up reasons and those reasons are not driven by what really drove their preference, because the only thing that could have driven a preference was the order effect in which they experience them. Or, you know, maybe something to do with their own pressure in touching them or something. But the fact, the reality is, what they then do is make up what seem like highly plausible justifications for the preferences. But those justifications cannot be true because they were the same thing. So again, you've got this problem that exists where we are brilliant post rationalizers, we're brilliant storytellers, but we've got no connection to, and this is why technically it's right to call it the unconscious mind. We've got no connection to the parts of our brain that can be hugely significant in determining how we're making decisions and what we're ultimately doing.
- [17:04]
Matthew O'Neill
We're awful at explaining exactly why we behave the way we do. For example, if you ask me if I like AI art, I'll probably give you a very detailed answer which sounds highly believable. But if you actually watch my behavior, you'll probably notice something completely different. That's not because I'm lying. It's because we're all very bad at vocalizing exactly why we behave the way we do. And you'll hear why after the 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 to 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 and welcome back to nudge. Now, in September 2025, Professor Matt Johnson, author of Blindsight and Branding that Means Business, came on the show and announced that AI art probably won't move you. He shared a study from Duke University to explain why.
- [18:18]
Matt Johnson
Yeah, it's a fantastic study which was done a few years ago at Duke University, where they really tried to perception of AI generated art relative to human art. So there's two different studies here within this published paper. So the first is that they just had human participants evaluate pieces of art. They didn't tell them where these pieces of art came from or how they were created, whether it was human or AI. Just do you like the piece of art? Do you think it's beautiful? Do you think it's valuable? And what they found there in this kind of simple study was that people actually preferred AI art to human generated art without knowing anything about it, just on the painting alone. People actually preferred AI generated art.
- [19:04]
Matthew O'Neill
But what was interesting was how the reaction changed once the researchers revealed that the content was AI made.
- [19:11]
Matt Johnson
The interesting result here is that when you think it's created by a human, you think it's gorgeous, you think it's beautiful, you think it's a 9 out of 10 or a 10 out of 10. But if you're led to believe it's created by an AI, these rankings go down in half. So you think it's maybe a five out of six. You think it's maybe not so beautiful. You maybe notice flaws here and there, but this is not having anything to do with the actual art itself, but to do with the perception of AI. So the same piece of art looks much more beautiful when we think it's created by a human than when we think it's created by an AI.
- [19:46]
Matthew O'Neill
So, for example, participant John sees a painting of a bridge and he's told it's a human creation. While participant Jane sees the same painting of that bridge but is told it's an AI creation.
- [19:58]
Matt Johnson
The interesting result here is that when you think it's created by a human, you think it's gorgeous, you think it's beautiful, you think it's a 9 out of 10 or a 10 out of 10. But if you're led to believe it's created by an AI, these rankings go down in half. So you think it's maybe a five out of six, you think it's maybe not so beautiful. You maybe notice flaws here and there, but this is not having anything to do with the actual art itself, but to do with the perception of AI. So the same piece of art looks much more beautiful when we think it's created by a human than when we think it's created by an AI.
- [20:33]
Matthew O'Neill
When participants read that the art was AI generated, they didn't like it as much. Fascinating. All right, let's go on to the final insight of this episode and the final insight of the year, it is one of my favourite guests, Richard Shotton. Richard is author of two of my favourite books, the Choice Factory and the Illusion of Choice. But this year Richard has published his latest book with co author Michael Aaron Flicker. Titled Hacking the Human Mind. The book details how some of the world's most successful brands have applied behavioural science to succeed. The book starts covering the history of the fast food restaurant Five Guys. Richard writes how Five Guys built its business on focusing on fewer products but delivering higher quality. He writes, and I quote, Five Guys prides itself on offering the best burger and fries. When they first opened, there was no vegan or fish option, no chicken, no salads, no ice cream. The focus was squarely on high quality beef patties served with a generous portion of top notch fries. This specialisation worked. The first store thrived. CEO and founder Jerry Murrell quit his day job. And in 2002, as the brand grew, they began offering different franchises. Since then, five Guys has grown to become one of America's favorites in the better burger category. And the brand is taking off globally with 1,800 stores worldwide and 1,500 more on the way. And Richard says that keeping it simple really did help five Guys grow.
- [21:57]
Richard Shotton
Now, from a kind of, I don't know, economic or logistical point of view, there are benefits to doing that. But what's really interesting is there is also a psychological benefit. Now let's say there's an alternative universe where there's five guys and there's six guys and they're competitors and five guys do brilliant burgers, nine out of 10 and six guys do brilliant burgers and they score nine out of 10 in terms of taste. Well, if six guys offer pizza and chicken and Chinese, even if the physical quality of their offering is just as amazing as Five Guys, people will not perceive it that way. We have this idea, we have this assumption that those who specialize are higher quality.
- [22:44]
Matthew O'Neill
And Richard has a study to prove it.
- [22:46]
Richard Shotton
Now that's not speculation. You mentioned this idea of the gold dilution effect. So that's a study back from 2007 by Zhang and Fishbank, the University of Chicago. And they did this beautifully simple study. They recruit a group of people and then they split them into two subgroups. And half the people hear about the benefits of tomatoes. So you eat tomatoes and you have a reduced cancer risk. And those people are then asked, how good is tomato consumption at reducing cancer? They get their answer. They then get a new group, the second subgroup, they give them the same paragraph about cancer prevention, but then at the end they add on a bit about tomatoes being good for stopping the degeneration of the eye.
- [23:36]
Matthew O'Neill
So group one is told one benefit to eating tomatoes, while group two is told about two benefits to eating tomatoes.
- [23:43]
Richard Shotton
That second group are then asked about how good are tomatoes at preventing cancer? And even though they have exactly the same information regarding cancer, they score it about 12 13% lower.
- [23:56]
Matthew O'Neill
This is irrational. People rated eating tomatoes as 12% more effective at preventing cancer when this was given as the only benefit compared to being listed alongside another goal. It's not logical, but we are more confident when just one advantage is presented. To Zhang and Fishback, this suggested that conveying one clear benefit is more persuasive. Adding multiple benefits seems to dilute credibility.
- [24:21]
Richard Shotton
So the point here is if you add on extra reasons about why a vegetable is super healthy or a burger joint is really tasty, if you give people multiple reasons rather than those additional reasons adding to the appeal or the believability of the offering, they actually reduce it. Because people have a rule of thumb that we can't be all things to all people, that a jack of all trades is a master of none. And once we have this rule in our head, we apply it even in situations where it's probably not appropriate.
- [24:56]
Matthew O'Neill
To be brutally honest, I'm not sure that these are objectively the best insights shared on Nudge this year. There were hundreds of insights shared and I'm sure that I've missed many many that I really liked and I'm sure that you liked during this quick roundup. But when I listened back, these insights did stick in the mind. Tim shared that limiting the amount a customer can buy can increase sales. He said that Ikea offer cheap ice cream at the end to benefit from the peak end rule and dramatically improve the perception customers have of their experience. Professor Gerd Gigerenza explained how experts shouldn't overthink and how spending too much time can worsen your decision. Bas Valters used a simple question to increase reviews on an online site by 400%, and Nile Daly said the vaccine is reserved for you to boost uptake by 45%. Writing field grown rather than meat free doubled sales of veggie sausages, while Philip Graves explained how market research isn't always reliable. Professor Matt Johnson detailed how AI art won't move you, and Richard Shotten showcased that companies that offer too much will seem worse quality than those who focus. We covered nine insights in this episode, but there are 452 in the nudge Vaults, my subscription product that lets you apply behavioral science to your work. The most popular feature of NudgeVaults, according to current subscribers, is VaultsGPT. This is a chatbot AI powered assistant that can take all of the insights in the vaults and show you how to apply them to your work. I've got vaultsgpt open now and I can explain how it works. So I can ask Vault GPT how can I use the Peak End rule to improve the end of my podcast episode? When I enter that, it will analyze the dozens of peak end insights in the vaults and give me a number of ideas. So for example, it has said deliver your sharpest insight or summary right at the end. I'm not sure I did that today, but that's a good example. It says use a story beat or emotional twist or punchline at the closing moment. Again, good. Maybe not right for this episode, but good. Provide a bonus resource linked to in the episode's ending. I really like that one. And send listeners a follow up note or email or social post tied to this episode. Again, I like that one as well. So pretty good insights. I think eagle eyed listeners of Nudge will know that I've tested at least the bonus resource one quite a bit over the past 12 months and I can give it more context to give me better suggestions as well. Anyway, if you listen to Nudge and you think you'd like to apply some of the insights I talk about on the show, then the Nudge vaults is really built for you. To check it out, go to nudgepodcast.com vaults that's nudgepodcast.com vaults. You can find vaults in the menu if you just go to nudgepodcast.com as well and you can even preview your first 50 insights for free. That is all from me today folks, and it's all from me this year. Thank you so much for listening to Nudge, supporting the show and enabling me to do a job that I absolutely love. I'll be back on January 5th with a fantastic episode. It is with Cornell University's Sunita Saar and her best selling book Defy. You might have seen Sunita Sa on a number of BBC podcasts and news articles. She's gone quite viral over the last year with her fantastic book Defy and she's agreed to come on Nudge as well. We've recorded a cracking episode. It's a great one to start off the year. I've spent the past month working on it, so I really hope you do like it. That is all from me. Cheers for listening and I'll be back next Monday. Bye. Bye.