Throwback Thursday - The Behavioural Science Communications Firm That's Changing Everything

Doug Downs (00:08):

In his book, thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman describes an experiment he once conducted individually. He asked participants to listen to a radio editorial using new headphones.

(00:22):

People were told the experiment was to test the quality of the audio equipment and were instructed to move their heads repeatedly to check for any distortions of sound. Half the participants were told to nod their heads up and down while others were told to shake their heads from side to side. Those who nodded tended to accept the message they were hearing as factual and agree with it. Those who shook their heads tended to reject the message as false or disagree. This is one example of the human mind. Gradually, we are discovering we are not so conscious and autonomous authors of our own judgments and choices today on stories and strategies. What if we could understand those choices? Others make a lot better, better than they do for the greater human? Good. There are lots of companies saying they can do that. We meet one that's proving it. My name is Doug Downs. My guest this week is Shayoni Lynn, founder and CEO of Lynn in Cardiff Wales. Hi Shayoni. Hi

Shayoni Lynn (02:00):

Doug. Thank you so much for having me today.

Doug Downs (02:02):

And we are we're recording in August. Folks won't hear this until September, maybe October if they're listening a bit later. But we're recording in August. How are things in Wales today? You've been having a lot of heat. Hot.

Shayoni Lynn (02:13):

Yes, very hot. It is extremely hot. I've got a fan off, so we've got a good quality of recording. So start panting and I pass out

Doug Downs (02:21):

Glass of water by your side. It's very

Shayoni Lynn (02:23):

Hot. I do have the water. Yes, I'm well prepared. But yeah, no, we are not used to such consistent levels of heat. So yeah, it's going to get worse I think over the years. So yeah, in this for the long haul,

Doug Downs (02:38):

We'll bridge to that conversation on climate change within our discussion here too. Shayoni, you started in journalism, so you have a bit of my heart already. Kindred spirit started as a reporter, but you've now been working in public relations and we'll talk a bit more about that for over a decade. You're the chair for the Wales Group for the Public Relations Communications Association or the PRCA. You're also involved with the Chartered Institute for Public Relations, CIPR. And you've been recognized in the top 35 business and professional women in Wales under 35. Now, the awards your team has won are extremely impressive, fastest growing communications business in the world, which was provoked media, fastest growing communications business in the uk, which if you're going to win the one you're going to win the other, you should Sabre EMEA Digital Consultancy of the Year, also from provoke uk top one 50 consultancy in 2022. Number two, public sector consultancy, number one, new consultancy. And in PR week you were listed within their top 150 consultancies in 2022, and you received the mark of excellence at the CIPR Excellence awards in the new consultancy category. And I haven't listed them all just as a kindness to the listener, but let's start at the top. What is behavioral science consultancy? How is it different? Because you're not a PR or marketing agency, you are truly something different. How is it different from most PR or marketing firms?

Shayoni Lynn (04:15):

Yeah, good question. So I suppose before I answer how we are different, if we start with what behavioral science is, and as you'll know, there are many definitions. I tend to like Matt Wall's definition, which is behaviour as an outcome. Science is a process because we are talking about behavioral science, which implicitly is about changing behaviors. So what behavioral science really does, and I know your listeners have had exposure to behavioral science content, so some of this will not be unusual, but it's about unlocking why people do what they do. So it provides a deeper understanding on the conscious, the subconscious, the unconscious motivations and influences that drive our decision-making can really help explain why humans behave the way they do, very important for a communicator. And often it may also help us predict how to behave in the future. So in terms of how we are different, we don't see ourselves through any particular lens.

(05:14):

We are certainly not pr. We tend to define ourselves as behavioral science communications consultancy. The way we approach work is to look at what is the problem we are trying to solve, what are the behaviors we are trying to influence and therein work out the barriers proposed solutions and basically come at it from a perspective of can we help? And I think it's really important because when people hear behavioral science, they tend to flags get raised quite often, and I often get the ethics questions and now I've got a slide on my presentation text, which clearly outlines the position, which is that lane. We are about changing behaviors through education and persuasion, never through manipulation. So we always look to change behaviors for good. We look to change behaviors to improve and save lives, which is our mission statement. And also really important to clarify that at Lynn with the behavioral science frameworks and techniques that we use, we are all about preserving agency.

(06:14):

So we never look at taking away choice instead presenting choice in a way that audiences will actually pay attention. The audiences will actually understand the message and then they will take the action that's right for them. And that is up to the audience. And we hope that by creating an environment where their decisions and the impact of their decisions are made more salient, that they would take the decisions that are good for them and that end up improving and saving their lives. In terms of going back to the question of how we are different, useful to articulate I suppose how we are set up. So we have three specialisms within the business. We have the BS unit, LY name obviously behavioral science, and that particular unit looks at everything from research, design and experimentation. So within research we offer that analysis of if you've got particular problems, societal challenge or an organizational challenge of this is the problem we have, we come at it with, okay, so these are the things you need to do to be able to move behavior in a way that is good for audiences.

(07:24):

Again, clarifying that it has to be about audience good, but that will help you get there. So examples being public health. These are the things that we recommend from a communications perspective, from a policy perspective or a decision-making or what we call choice architecture perspective. We also then have the misinformation cell within the misinformation cell within offer a variety of intelligence services, particularly around reputation management, but also around inoculation from missing and disinformation for audiences. And then we have integrated campaigns. And integrated campaigns uses the Lin framework, which is a trademark framework that blends strategic communications with behavioral science methodologies. It's a consistent model we use across all our work to provide that robustness and rigor from that academic scientific perspective so that we can blend that with then creativity to create campaigns that have impact and ultimately do change behaviors. So hopefully that explains in terms of how we are set up. And just to also add point of differentiation, until someone challenges me and says otherwise, we believe that we are the only UK agency that has embedded experimentation into all campaigns. So when we look at testing campaigns, typically testing tends to be qualitative or quite basic generic AB testing. We go that one step further and look at field trials to really be able to prove our recommendations and hypotheses, why true or untrue, and give our client the confidence that our solutions are creative ideas will actually replicate once the campaign is activated.

Doug Downs (09:12):

That's going to attract more and more scientists to you as well because you're accumulating data.

Shayoni Lynn (09:16):

Absolutely. And we actually bring in more geeks into the business. I love saying that because for us, our heads of departments are subject matter experts. So we are built in a way where subject matter experts bring in that authenticity and rigor, but they are supported by a team of robust integrated communications practitioners. And that's how we maintain that authenticity to our services

Doug Downs (09:43):

Behavioral change for the greater good using today's science. And you have three practice areas, Lynn Health, Lin Planet and Lin Change. Talk me through a project. Tell me a case study in the beginning, the challenge or the pain points, what you did, what was implemented. I'd love to know about the experimentation that was involved and the ultimate outcomes.

Shayoni Lynn (10:09):

Yeah, so I'll talk you through one of our campaigns, which is one of our more recent award-winning campaigns. It's called Don't Miss Your Vaccine. And it was run for our client in the uk, the NHS Southeast London ICS. And so this was during July of last year. You may or may not recall, but we had in England a directive from the Prime Minister to release all restrictions. So things were going to go back to normal quite quickly and our client brought us in because contrary to the hypothesis, so once the vaccination program moves from the priority groups to mass vaccination that take up within younger age groups would be quite high. But what we saw was contrary to that in that there was quite high levels of hesitancy in young people. Young people were actually resisting and refusing the vaccine, which was creating a lot of concern in that run up to that restrictions being eased in England.

(11:17):

So our client brought us in saying we have a few weeks to get this done. We need to improve our take up levels specifically for under 40 year olds. So we segmented the groups into two 18 to 29 and 30 to 39 that was done to align with the vaccine data so we could see what the communications impact was through to the actual outcomes. So we were quite fortunate in a way because two things, we'd worked with a client for several years, so we had a real sense of that particular patch. We knew the audience really well, but also we were undertaking primary behavioral science research into that exact same issue across England. So we had cultivated quite strong data insights, albeit not in that particular location, but from a similar demographic across England. So we had a real sense of where young people were when it came to the vaccine drive.

(12:10):

We were able to turn this integrated campaign around in one week, which was madness and I never do that again. But we were able to do that because we had that research insight already. We also declined that absolutely trusted us and totally took our advice and went with it and we had that consistent framework to apply to a campaign. So we were able to turn it around and one of the key insights we had was young people were a feeling quite scapegoated because the media narrative here was the rise in infection was due to young people being selfish and them not protecting the community, et cetera, et cetera. So they were feeling quite scapegoated. Also, there was a lot of describe risk versus experienced risks. So lockdown one when we didn't really know what COVID-19 was, and the government tells you to stay at home to protect yourself from your family, very easy to be compliant because you haven't experienced that risk.

(13:06):

But as you experience that risk and you don't perhaps fall ill with COVID-19 or you don't see people around you falling ill, you start pushing those thresholds, those boundaries with risk. And so that had led to a lot more risk taking behaviors. And also you can look at hyperbolic discounting, for example, the trade-offs young people make, it's quicker for me now to go to a pub than think about what would happen seven days on. So we had the insight and we knew it was agency was going to be really important. So we changed the narrative from what was the norm at the time in the uk, which was protect yourself, your community, the safety and control message. And we knew that the big insight we had was freedom had to be framed in a positive sense. It needed to be about vaccination, needed to be reframed from being a threat to personal freedom to being something that enables you to go back to your life that you had pre pandemic.

(13:59):

So we leveraged personal benefit. So we were the first campaign in the UK that went from, it didn't go into the whole protected community because we tested that by the way, but it went into do it for frankly do it for the selfish reasons, do it for going to the pub, do it for senior friends, do it for going on holiday, so don't miss your vaccine, whatever the phrase was, whatever your reason. If you're over 18, don't miss your vaccine. And we pulled together some really creative imagery and narrative around all of the stuff you could do if you got the vaccine. So that was a four week campaign that we turned around and that delivered a really high real world outcome in that 18 to 29 year olds. We saw 77.8% improvement in vaccine take up in four weeks and a lower take up for 30 to 39 year olds, which was 10.8%.

(14:53):

But that was because they had access to the vaccine for longer. And we also saw very high levels of improvement with certain specific groups that were at risk at the time as well. So that campaign did exceptionally well. It's known its 10th iteration and we're still working on it is one of the most, I would say, well-known vaccine young people, vaccine front identities in the uk. It got commissioned by NHS England, certain assets got commissioned to go England wide. We had lots of discussions and continue to have discussions with very senior colleagues in government and civil service. And yeah, the campaigns, as I say now in its 10th iteration, it's won several awards. It's won awards in PR moment PR weeks, yeah, PR excellence awards, et cetera. So yeah, really proud of that one. I think that's a really good example of behavioral insights, behavioral science approach in action. But at pace,

Doug Downs (15:59):

I've got another podcast that I want to tell you about that I think you might like every week. The Global Creative Agency Gray brings you exactly what you need to know to sound smart when talking about social media on the podcast. Five things this week in social, the team at Gray have produced over 125 weekly episodes and were named Ad Weeks best agency hosted podcast for 2022. The hosts have partnered with some of the world's biggest brands and are experts in social media and emerging tech. They'll discuss everything from the next Instagram feature to how we shop in the Metaverse. Listen to five things this week in social, wherever you get your podcasts, search for it in your podcast app with the hashtag and the number five. That's five things this week in social. In a previous episode, well, two episodes actually we did with Rory Sutherland, we talked at length about nudge theory, which for you as a component of behavioral science, it fits in very nicely. Folks in the UK will be very familiar. Maybe the US Canada I still think doesn't quite Canada and Australia maybe haven't quite nudge theory isn't a daily thing. You go further though, if you want to hear about nudge theory, listen to Rory on one of those episodes. But you have something you describe as sludge theory. What is that?

Shayoni Lynn (17:29):

I can't take any credit for that. That started with, I hope I'm not wrong in saying this, cast Sunstein, the co-author of Nudge. Oh, they

Doug Downs (17:38):

Did? Okay.

Shayoni Lynn (17:39):

Yeah. So it started casted a paper on sludge, which then has been expanded by several behavioral scientists, including someone from Canada Soman. And what Sludges is the opposite of nudge. It is where there is a lot of friction or hassle, whether intentional or unintentional, that stops people from doing something that is good for them. And typically what you see in Sludges, you see in government, for example, where there's a lot of bureaucracy, there's a lot of complex information, lots of different points of entry that unwittingly and unintentionally friction and hassle is created to reach X action. So by having to go through that friction or that sludge audiences may be put off, they might go through inertia and they may differ their decision making. So it stops them from accessing something that's good for them. On the other hand, you'd have intentional sludge where you'd have organizations who know exactly what they're doing.

(18:43):

They know that by introducing friction into a journey will stop customers from say, unsubscribing or do X, Y, and Z. That is not in the company's benefit as opposed to the audience's benefit. Right? So a good example is when, and this is a very classic example, is a gym membership and you want to sign out of it and horror stories of how difficult it's to sign out, cancel a gym membership. I've seen people literally, I am trying to think of this, I think Dilip shared it on Twitter, but it was this experience of an individual who had to call a particular phone number and then fax a letter and then get that notarized. It is just absolutely insane. But likely it is that they know exactly. The organization knows that by introducing those friction points, you just give up because that's our human tendency to give up, especially if it's small amounts that doesn't really impact us.

(19:41):

And if it's like an X amount and you're like, fine, it's not worth the trouble, so I'm just going to, I'll do that tomorrow and you keep deferring it. So that's sludge. So what we do at Lynn is we provide a sludge audit. So where we go in typically in online environments where we help our clients understand that because we tend to work also in the public sector quite a lot, that the way they've set up perhaps their content, their calls to action, the user journey is not in the audience's interests and friction points and hassle is stopping individuals from taking that call to action that is good for them.

Doug Downs (20:22):

Perfect. Last question, misinformation and disinformation. One being accidental, the other being intentional, correct? All the rage, all the scorn right now. Correct. It's a key segment offering for you. How can you help governments and large organizations with misinformation and disinformation?

Shayoni Lynn (20:43):

Yeah, it's worth me just outlining the different types of information, just to be clear. So misinformation, as you say, is inaccurate information that is shared without the intent mislead to cause harm. Disinformation is organized, it's inaccurate information that is shared with the intent on mislead or cause harm. And there's also then to consider mal information, which is accurate information that is shared with intent to cause harm and also conspiracy theories. Not to forget the belief. The events are being controlled behind the scenes by a secret cabal of evil individuals for their own benefits. So the misinformation sale at the business, we are focused on providing a very different service than the other mis and disinformation services out there. We take a very human qualitative approach to being able to help clients build, as I say, either protect their own reputation. So by that we provide intelligent solutions where we are able to identify missed disinformation that are narratives that are springing up in the niche corners of the internet before it hits the mainstream of say the Twitter.

(21:57):

So we are able to provide that intelligence to help organizations be ready to respond back, should Miss Disformation hit their mainstream and be able to respond in a more strategic manner. We also offer inoculation services, which is about protecting the community and their audiences. So we offer, for example, a very strategic moderation service that protects digital communities. And it has been proven to reduce trolling and to increase trust in online communities towards, so this particular example was in public health where there was a lot of disinformation around vaccine vaccines for pregnant women. And we were able to intervene and build trust within that community and be able to demonstrate that the information that was being shared by other certain members of the community, and in some case organized IE disinformation, was with the view to spread bad information that it's bad for individuals to access, if that makes sense. So we offer those reputation, which is more preventative, so almost like an insurance policy the organizations can access to be prepared. And also then the more reactive when it's happening here and now it's affecting our communities, our messaging is not resonating, our content is not resonating, trust is tipping. How can we then build trust within the community? How do we then inoculate them against bad actors?

Doug Downs (23:22):

Shei, I love this. What a powerful episode. Thank you so much today.

Shayoni Lynn (23:26):

Thank you, Doug. I hope that was enjoyable for your listeners. Thank you for having me.

Doug Downs (23:33):

If you'd like to send a message to my guest, SHA Lynn, you can email her at contact at Lynn Global and emphasis on the global, just because you're in the uk, you are truly a global company and the world has changed. So if someone in the United States or in Canada or Australia wanted to engage your services, they can do that, right?

Shayoni Lynn (23:57):

Absolutely. We are having conversations on a global stage. As you can imagine. The services we bring to the table, specifically around our specialism of behavioral science and misinformation strategy are unique and can really help clients maintain a competitive edge. So yeah, we are very happy to have conversations and we'll go wherever the conversations take us.

Doug Downs (24:18):

And there are going to be localized societal preferences, leanings, but you're able to cover that as well. And that email, by the way, is in the show notes. We also have a link to the Lynn website in the show notes. That's absolutely worth about an hour of your time. Seriously, you're having lunch in front of your computer. Spend time on Shayoni's website. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcasts. We're hoping that you might just recommend this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.