Planting a change

 

Last year, I wrote about the (warning - horrible word) mainstreamising of plant-based/Vegan products, that I reckon is being driven partly via the connection to sustainability.

The trend doesn’t seem to be slowing, and there are plenty of start-up (ish) brands following Oatly’s example and being all activisty about farting (or is it burping?) cows.

But this is no way to go if you’re a mainstream brand that makes its money by churning out meat or dairy-based products at scale. On this note, it will be interesting to see how Ben & Jerry’s  develops in light of a potential clash between social and environmental activist factions. 

There are some examples in fast-food that get it right: Burger King, with its unapologetic Rebel Whopper.  McDonald's are hot on their heels with McPlant. And Dunkin’ Donuts, who seem to be introducing plant-based donuts at scale. At least in the Low Countries.

And there are a couple of useful studies I’ve come across that mainstream brands can use as a framework for encouraging people to eat more plant-based food, or any other aspect of healthy & sustainable living. There’s this recent one from Globescan, which describes 7 Unlocks (another ghastly word, but the idea is good) - make it:

affordable

credible

shine

yes ... and

easy

meaningful

big

This is all echoed in a report from last year, from the Behavioural Insights Team - Menu for Change which emphasised:

make it appealing

make it normal

make it easy

I’d add to all that: make it about choice, and treat people like the adults they are. Often a meal or eating together is about socialising, and can create common ground.

Although we may not want “what she’s having”, we can all agree to enjoy our burgers, donuts, pizzas or whatever without thrusting personal preferences (literally) down each other’s throats.

More airport ideas

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. Hot on the heels of my last post about airports, here's another super smart piece of advertising, this time from Samsonite.

Do you remember those 'My other car is a Porsche' stickers? I'd guess the creative people who thought this one up did. Samsonite suitcases are durable - we all know that if prompted, but is it really top of mind, outside the holiday season?

The idea, created by Publicis Paris, was to offer free luggage wrapping (SAMSO'WRAP) to people with other makes of suitcase at Palma airport. This was on the condition that they were prepared to act as ambassadors for the brand, as the wrapping carried the message 'I wish I had a Samsonite.' So this would be seen by all as they rolled their nicely-wrapped bags through the airport terminal and beyond.

What I like most here is the thinking. It doesn't start with budget or media. It starts with thinking about people and where they are likely to be receptive to the message. Brands today spend a lot of time on the internet - indeed, most of today's really big brands didn't exist or couldn't have existed pre-internet (amazon, Google, airbnb, Facebook, Uber).

But I think tangible brands, especially when they are talking about something physical and experiential, such as strength and durability, need presence in the real world, in exactly the right place at the right time. This cheekily provocative idea is worth so much more than a beautifully produced film featuring hundreds of tap-dancing elephants on a suitcase - because it is connected 100% to real life.

I think it's an open and shut case.

A big yawn

Sometimes you don't need deep philosophical insight for a great piece of brand communication, just a simple observation used in a smart way.

I love this promotion from Brazil for the brand Cafe Pele. From advertising agency Lew'Lara/TBWA, the idea uses a poster of a man's face on an underground platform in Sao Paulo. Sensor technology means that the poster yawns every time a commuter comes near. The more people approach, the more yawning, which, as everyone knows. is contagious. The result - a yawning epidemic.

At that point, Cafe Pele girls pop up with the solution - shots of espresso.

The Contagious Billboard is a super idea of what you can do to get attention for your brand, catching people in the right mood, in the right place, at the right time. Anything but a big yawn!

Shame Masks

I must admit that I don't worry too much about privacy. Maybe I should, but somehow I don't get the feeling that the NSA or anyone else is terribly interested in what I'm up to. But every now and then I see a piece of brand communication that makes me gulp.

Like this one.



What's going on here is a campaign from an initiative called Hong Kong Cleanup, whose agency Ogilvy and Mather has developed an undeniably clever campaign called The Face of Litter to deter litter louts on the streets of Hong Kong.

What they've done is to collect random litter samples and analyse them using Snapshot DNA phenotyping to create portraits of the culprits (or, presumably anyone that has touched that coffee cup including the friendly and responsible barista who handed it out).

There's not enough info to say exactly whodunnit, but enough to create a likeness on posters and online.

Hmmm.

My first thought was this might be just the thing for publicity-seeking extroverts to get their next kick. The ultimate selfie, all over town and all over the net.

And then my thoughts ran deeper to tarring and feathering, or the shaved heads and placards round the necks of wartime collaborators, or indeed the Schandmaske of mediaeval Germany.

Back to the future? I find it all a little sinister.

Insights or Insight? In which the singular is probably more valuable than the plural.

It seems popular in marketing circles to talk, in a kind of pseudo-scientific way, in plurals where the original word is better known in the singular. Learnings, behaviours and, of course, insights.

It didn't really occur to me until I read this excellent blog post by Martin Weigel (careful if you're at work - the accompanying illustration is rather more racy than the one above) that there's a world of difference between some people's use of the word "insights" and the general meaning of "insight."

Insight in the singular is one of the abilities, facilities or ways of thinking that a good planner - or in fact, any ad person - should have. Having insight is one of those uniquely human abilities, along with intuition, intelligence and empathy. It's getting behind the facts, the observed data, to the why. An insightful creative brief should lead to creative work that connects to people, giving the advertiser relevance in their lives.

However, there is a growing tendency to put "insights", in the plural, on a pedestal as an end in themselves, to fetishise them, if you like. And the "insights" referred to here are invariably Things, not an ability or way of thinking. These Things are sentences, phrases, whose wording is discussed ad infinitum and whose claim to wear the insight crown is debated hotly before they are included in a box on the creative brief. In the worst case, with a dictate that the Insight should be dramatised in the execution.

Equally worrying is the idea that these Insights can be "generated" via some kind of process.

I would far rather see a creative brief that is insightful than one jam-packed with these kind of "insights."

So, let's kick off that "s" when we are talking about insight. And let's not start talking about "knowledges" or "understandings" either!

Charity Past, Present and Future

My memories of charity giving from childhood centre around coins and things - collecting boxes for the Lifeboats being rattled in the town, poppies or Queen Alexandra roses to pin on your coat, my RSPCA and PDSA badges, the Oxfam cards my parents bought each Christmas, putting pennies into a life-size model of a Guide Dog for the blind, raffle tickets...

These days, giving to charity has become not just easier to do, but easier to shout about, too. Buttons on your browser instead of your coat, crowdfunding platforms, Gift Aid, posting your donation on Facebook, PayPal links, timely emails whenever a world disaster occurs and all the rest.

And then there are all those big behavioural campaigns where you can be a walking awareness-raiser, from Movember to No Make-Up Selfie to Ice Bucket Challenge. These have come in for criticism on one side from those who say such actions trivialise the issues that they are trying to create awareness for, and find something sinister in what they see as "branding a disease." And the critics, on the other side, are dismissed as cynical killjoys with a bah, humbug mentality.

It's difficult to tell whether people are actually giving more to charity these days, or whether they are just talking about it more. There are some interesting stats from the Charities Aid Foundation, here. I must say that I was surprised to see which country shares first place with the USA in the World Giving Index.

The World Giving Index is not just about donating money. It also include the elements of giving up time and helping a stranger. And this must be the future for charities - using the possibilities of technology to encourage people to donate not just money, but time, skills and other intangibles. There's a super article by Lucy Aitken of Contagious with some great examples of just that, here.

Rewarding or sinister?

In my psychology student days, I was always rather wary of Behaviourism, that school of thought that says that psychology should be all about observable behaviour rather than unobservable events that take place in people's minds. Perhaps it was due to an uncomfortable feeling that the richness of human experience could simply be compared to rats pressing levers in cages to get a reward or a shock.

The language and principles of behaviourism, such operant conditioning - the modification of voluntary behaviour through reinforcement and punishment - have found their way into many aspects of life today and this is not necessarily a bad thing if those involved are acting with everyone's best interests in mind. We use rewards frequently in parenting and for our own self-improvement ("if I manage to lose 5kg I'll reward myself with a new pair of jeans.")

From Green Shield Stamps to AirMiles, brands have long used the idea of rewarding purchasing behaviour to build loyalty. And technology today means that brands also have the potential to reward other behaviours via wearable devices and smartphones. Trendwatching have identified "Currencies of Change" in their 10 Trends for 2015. The trend is sub-titled "because good behaviour should no longer be its own reward".

Some of the examples cited, such as a brand donating to a food bank when users try low-calorie recipes, are laudable. But as I read on, I began to feel uneasy, as I did with Skinner's caged rats. Not only did I feel that some of these "rewards" were treating adult humans as children (or worse still, lab rodents) but there seems something sinister about people being "rewarded" - sometimes financially - for something that they should be doing anyway. For example, a bank was mentioned that moves money into a higher-interest account for every step taken while jogging, or cyclists and motorists being rewarded for not using their mobile phones while cycling and driving.

Behavioural methods can be useful in the treatment of phobias, addictions and other psychological problems, but it's not the place of a brand to do this.

It's another example of "just because you can do it doesn't mean you should."

An insight that rings my bell

For all the trivial jingles and frivolous apps that we get involved in creating in the ad business, it's always gratifying to see strategic and creative communication skills used for good. I don't just mean those brands that decide to leap on to whatever is the latest "issue" band wagon with some tenuous connection to their product, but agencies who get together with NGOs and grass roots organisations and combine their skills and knowledge.

One such partnership is that between Ogilvy and Mather, India and Breakthrough, a global human rights organisation that uses culture to change culture. Working together on a campaign to stop domestic violence, they created the Bell Bajao (Hindi for "ring the bell") campaign.

The challenges for tackling such a complex issue were many. But a simple and elegant solution was found - through the insight that a simple action from a bystander can break the momentum of violence and maybe deter it in future. In the film above, for example, the main character uses "can I use your phone?" as his excuse to ring the bell, even though it's clear he has a working mobile with him. Other spurious excuses included asking for the time or collecting a lost ball.

The campaign employed a mix of mass media such as the film above as well as community outreach. Its success is apparent in that the campaign idea is now being rolled out across the globe.

Sometimes the most effective ideas are the simplest ones.

Action Men (and Women)

I was chatting to an old pilot chum of my dad's the other day who was bemoaning the fact that everyone has become an collector and interpreter of data these days, to the extent that pilots don't pilot, teachers don't teach, engineers don't engineer and doctors don't doctor - we are all too busy trying to keep on top of the data. It's the same for those that work in Marketing and Advertising - we're so busy with KPIs and goals, justifying this expense and filling in that form, rating this colleague or informing that one that we don't have that much time to do what we're really paid for.

A new book has been published this week, by Adam Ferrier of cummins&partners, called The Advertising Effect.  In the blurb for the book, Adam asks those in advertising to do something that some may consider radical: forget rational messaging and creating an emotional brand connection and focus on affecting action and behavioural change.

And furthermore, he asks us to "get over and accept" a simple premise: we are in the behaviour change business.

This is all fine stuff, but I confess that I'm a little surprised. This is precisely what I have always understood advertising to be about. Early on in my career, we always had a part of the brief which was titled something like "what would we like people to think, feel and do as a result of this campaign"? And although these were laid out in this order, I don't think it was ever implied that the thinking resulted in the feeling which resulted in the doing.

In the end, advertising works in many weird and wonderful ways. The same campaign can have different effects on different people. One TV spot, say, can give one person a nice warm fuzzy feeling about the brand that's so strong that it's still around a year later when she's in the market for one of those. And for the next person, it may simply act as a catalyst for buying one of those (that he needs) tomorrow, and the ad is forgotten the next day.

What's important to me is that advertising is about change. Whether it's an emotional connection that leads to a change in behaviour or behavioural change that triggers a perceptual change isn't the point.

And it's a permanent change in how someone thinks, feels or behaves regarding that brand, not just change for change's sake.

Good Ideas that Do Good

I see plenty of ideas in my daily trawl through the internet - and in real life - and a fair few of these make my think, make me wonder, make me smile. But every now and then, I see an idea that does all of those but has an additional indescribable quality of just feeling good and right.

For example, there's the winner of the new D&AD White Pencil Award for work with a purpose beyond profit (a good idea in itself). This is idea from the agency Droga5 for their pharmaceutical client Help Remedies. The full name of the product is "Help I've cut myself & I want to save a life". (From the "I can't believe it's not butter" school of brand names!).

It's a super nifty idea to increase Marrow Donor Registration, which could ultimately save the life of someone with leukaemia. The idea is this: you make marrow registration part of an everyday act. And that "everyday act" is a minor household accident - you cut yourself shaving, or your nick your finger on a paper edge. You're already bleeding - all you need to do is take a couple of swabs, stick it in a pre-paid envelope and you're registered as a Marrow Donor.

There's a super little film about it here.

Brand Aid takes on a whole new meaning.

Snakes & Ladders

It's All About the Customer Journey from McKinsey Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Forum

I'm still in two minds about the Customer Decision Journey way of thinking: a model of how people make purchase decisions and what influences them along the way. Of course, the McKinsey model is a vast improvement on those funnels of bygone years. And it's good to see them adapting and updating the model to the digital world, and putting more emphasis on experience and advocacy.

But... as McKinsey themselves describe it, it's about "a series of interactions with a brand where a customer makes a decision or completes a task." This makes two assumptions:

1. It's about a sequence of events, where one follows another. Yes, I know that it's circular and not linear, and that feedback loops are probably implied at all stages but it's still about one thing following another in time. Experience comes after purchase.

2. Brand, product, communication, media, customer, company are all separate and clearly defined entities.

On real journeys, life's not like that. Unexpected events occur, things don't go in sequence and sometimes you end up back where you started - or lost. A wise research agency once compared the purchase decision process as being more like a game of snakes and ladders.

I'm not suggesting that the CDJ is not a useful tool - and I know many people find it a great method of clarify thinking and generating communication ideas.

But any kind of thinking should also be complemented by your own personal experience.

Paying for Attention

They say that women are better at multi-tasking, but I think it's an age thing, especially when it comes to media. If I'm watching a film on DVD, I sit and watch it, distracted only by a glass of wine. My son, on the other hand, flits from the big screen to a smaller screen (his laptop) to an even smaller one (his iPod) when he gets bored.

A study by Time Inc. in 2012 showed that Digital Natives subconsciously move between devices and platforms 27 times an hour.

The implication of all this is that some advertisers are finding new ways to grab their share of the attention economy.

And one way is to pay for people's attention.

Hitbliss is just one new service that rewards attention to branded communication with content. On Hitbliss, you can earn (viewing movies, TV shows) via "engaging with personalised brand messages" - that's watching ads, taking part in surveys and so on.

I'd be wary of this if I were an advertiser. It reminds me of those bogus serial respondents we used to get in group discussions: "this week, you're a mum of triplets called Julie who sews, darns and washes her babies' nappies but drinks 10 litres of full-sugar Coke per week."

Maybe advertisers should stick to the old ways of getting attention - through empathy and creativity, producing ideas that people actually choose to watch.

The A-Z of Commerce

I've come across a few articles recently that speak of "Pervasive Commerce" and, as we're going to be entering the age of it, probably as I type, I thought I'd better get smart about it.

E-Commerce (ordering stuff online in plain English) has been mainstream for almost 20 years now - I can't remember the first time I ordered something online, now, but expect it was a book from amazon. There's a whole generation now who have never known anything else. That represented a huge step-change in our perceptions of instant gratification. As long as you were near a computer, connected to the internet, you could order stuff 24/7.

Pervasive Commerce or U-Commerce where "U" is "Ubiquitous" refers to E-Commerce as well as this lot, some of which were also new to me:

M-Commerce (Mobile, and Verdict Research estimates that 80% of the population will use mobile for at least some part of the purchase process by 2016)

V-Commerce (Voice)

T-Commerce (Television)

S-Commerce (Silent-Commerce: you know the sort of thing - when your iPhone and the washing machine get together to buy a pack of Persil without you noticing.)

But, in all of this, I can't help noticing that the word "Pervasive" always has negative overtones. Is a pervasive smell ever nice? And however much commerce progresses in terms of time and space, there will always be the rebels who decide that they do want to go into a quaint little shop smelling of leather and shoe-polish, be measured up and wait a few weeks for a pair of finely-crafted, handmade shoes.

Even if they do end up paying for them via voice-activated online banking.

The mind moves in mysterious ways

Traditional market research has always been criticised on the grounds that, generally, people don't often do what they say they do. It's clear to anyone who has ever watched a group discussion that there are many motivators at play for each of the individuals taking part:

- social pressures, not wanting to appear socially undesirable
- intellectual pressures, not wanting to appear stupid or unknowledgeable
- pressure to be liked by the moderator, to say what they want to hear
- the fee and the spread of free wine and snacks
-and so on

Although group discussions seem to have gone out of fashion, especially here in Germany, I must confess to having found them useful on topics such as creative development or exploring brand image, especially when conducted sensitively with plenty of projective techniques. But they have never been that useful for uncovering the reasons, if "reasons" they are, why people buy one brand over another.

These days, a lot of "insight" is gleaned from listening into discussions on the internet, but, to be honest, this is just as full of the do:say contradiction as a typical group discussion, even if the people involved are doing this unpaid with no wine and snacks. In fact, I think there may be even more posturing and taking stances on the internet as you can hide behind anonymity.

I catch myself doing it. No, I never buy frozen processed meat products anyway. Yes, amazon is a big bullying company that puts little bookshops out of business. I have ordered from amazon yet again this week and last week I bought a 1kg pack of "beef" tortellini...

Getting underneath the do:say contradiction is a holy grail for marketers and another book, from behavioural psychology roots rather than the analytical psychology roots of qualitative market research attempts to throw some more light on the subject: Unconscious Branding, by Douglas Van Praet. Mr Van Praet is an ad-man turned behavioural therapist turned ad-man again (I think) and has looked at the way that behavioural therapists work with their clients. This he's turned into a 7-step process to change people's behaviour, via communication, with regard to buying brands:

1. Interrupt the pattern
2. Create comfort
3. Lead the imagination
4. Shift the feeling
5. Satisfy the critical mind
6. Change the association
7. Take action

The success of the viral sensation "The Force" for VW is explained in terms of the interruption in the pattern of how we view Darth Vader by introducing a cute version.

Hmmm.

I am very happy to believe that this process may well lead to success when working intensively with individual clients who consciously wish to make a behavioural change over a period of month. But applying it to mass communication for people who are probably quite happy with their current brand behaviour?

I'm not sure.  

You're the one that I want

One facet of modern life that we face several times a day as a result of the digital revolution is too much choice. Quite often, we don't even have to make a choice - compare your iPod on shuffle with a Sony Walkman for example, or think of amazon choosing the next book for you to download onto your Kindle. But when we do have to make a choice, it's sometimes difficult to focus. We've all heard about those behavioural economics experiments with flavours of jam - it's easier to choose from six than it is from twenty.

There are a number of ads and apps that have made something of the insight that perhaps, these days, people would like to be more selective. Be forced to be more selective, even. There's the spot for the VW Golf VII which broke this autumn. Although, if I'd been in charge of the music choice and it had to be of that 80s-early-90s era so loved by ad people, I'd have gone for U2 rather than the Style Council. But then I'm a planner and like to have my strategy showing.

And there are a couple of other examples on this theme. The One Momento photo app allows you to share one photo only, so you must be careful how you choose. And This is my Jam, a music-sharing service limits its users to sharing one track a week, so it has to be the one you really, really want.

Who knows, at this rate, maybe single-minded propositions might kick out all those stories, journeys and manifestos and make a comeback!

Context, context, context

I don't think anyone would disagree that the context in which someone sees a piece of communication - from a pack design to a cinema ad - plays a vital role in how well that piece of communication works. And it's not just the physical context, but the interaction between this and the viewer's internal mood state that can make a piece of communication top or flop.

But, for those of us who want to pre-test our communication - for whatever reason - is context important then? I would argue that it certainly plays a role. In qualitative research, where we're more likely to be doing creative development research rather than "testing" per se, we can at least try and approximate to the context - discussions conducted in pubs, or at the playgroup, or at least talking around the subject to get people in the mood.

But quantitative pre-testing doesn't generally allow us this kind of indulgence. Where and when the interview is conducted is usually not considered. For example, can you really expect people to respond in a highly motivated way to a TV ad for a Christmas offer when the research is done in the middle of July? Relevance is the holy grail that everyone is chasing in the world of communication - and surely relevance is a matter of being in the right person's attention span, in the right place at the right time?

I have an anecdote from my early days of working in marketing. It was the lead-up to Christmas and I'd rather over-indulged at one of the very generous and alcoholic shindigs that London agencies used to lay on. Around 10:30am I realised I wasn't going to get through the day without Resolve, which was my drug of choice in those days. However, my attempt to limp along to Boots was curtailed when a lady with a clipboard dragged me into a church hall to look at beer labels.

I still don't remember how I got through that interview without chucking my guts up. Having to look at beer labels and talk about them in detail was the last thing I wanted to do. If anyone else was feeling the way I was (which was likely), I don't suppose they got particularly useful results.

But then, what do you expect if you conduct research into beer labels at 10:30am in a church hall in the middle of the party season?

It ain't what you do...

Joanna Shields, MD of Facebook for Europe, Africa and the Middle East has recently drawn parallels between Facebook and the early days of TV and John Logie Baird. She's encouraged marketers to get involved in creating "big, bold and meaningful ideas the world will want to share".

She has a point - the potential of connecting billions of people around the world is quite something. I do think, though, that one trick brands have to learn is how to use Facebook and its like to get people to actually take action. I don't know - I've "liked" so many things and joined so many groups, but have acted on precious little.

I expect that one way for brands to get people to take action is to do something themselves. In the Cyber Category at Cannes, it's reported that brands "behaving" rather than "telling stories" won top honours, the brands in question being Nike+ FuelBand and Curators of Sweden, where the official Sweden Twitter account was handed over to Swedish citizens.

I suppose it's like the managers of these brands. Who gets on - the one who tells stories in the pub or the one who gets things done?

But, as the song says "it ain't (just) what you do..."

The Game of Life

One of the oldest tricks in the marketing textbook is getting people to do something boring or laborious but necessary by making it seem desirable, or fun...or a game.

It goes right back to Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence, or those tricks that Mary Poppins used to make clearing up fun. And generations of inventive parents who have turned the washing up or the weeding into an army to be defeated.

Leaps in technology have enabled the gamification of many mundane tasks, including a fascinating example from Cambridge Consultants, the T-Haler. It's a way of helping asthma sufferers get the optimum dose of the drug they need from their inhaler.

Using wireless technology, information is sent to a computer loaded with a "get the ball in the hole" game, so that inhaler users can optimise their behaviour to get the correct dosage.

In this case, a spoonful of sugar, in the form of a game, really can help the medicine go down.

Entertaining, Interesting and Useful

In these days of so-called "distraction culture", we are constantly reminded that for branded content to work, it must fulfill at least one - and preferably more - of the three following criteria:

- entertaining

- interesting or informative

- useful

Even in the days when we didn't have so many distractions demanding our time and our attention spans were slightly above that of the average butterfly, I think the same thing was true.

I can still recall many TV commercials from my childhood that were genuinely entertaining, probably more than I can from the last twenty years, although that's possibly a sign of age. Interesting or informative is a little more difficult, although I think many of the classic long-copy print ads fall into that category - there were some great ones on the London Underground platforms.

The useful category had me stumped until I started thinking beyond what was called "advertising" at that time. And then they came, tumbling back into my memory - those often subtly branded items that became part of of everyday life - and, dare I say it, improved it in some little way.

The Be-Ro cookbook, with its recipes for Fairy Cakes and Victoria Sponge. The National Benzole set of "touring maps" of Great Britain - a must for those caravan holidays in Wales or Scotland. And the Lloyds Bank "Black Horse" money box for young savers which apparently evoked many a Godfather joke amongst the bank staff at the time. But - I still hold an account with that bank to this day!

These days, of course, many of the "useful" ideas will be apps rather than something solid and tangible. But if brands can develop digital gizmos that are half as useful as the examples above, it's one way to keep people involved for more than the distraction culture's seven minutes.

Fuzzy Objectives

I'm sure I am guilty of it as the next person. I'm talking about fuzzy objectives when it comes to developing a brand communications strategy. It's often all too easy to resort to the vague, the wooly, to that that sounds impressive and "high brand" but is, on closer inspection, unspecific and probably not measurable.

Objectives like:

- to strengthen the brand image of being good quality and trusted

- to communicate the brand positioning of uniquely understanding the consumer's needs

- to consolidate perceptions of the value advantage over our competitors.

OK, I don't think I've ever been quite so fuzzy, but you get the idea. So it was very refreshing to read Charlie Snow's commentary on the recent IPA Advertising Effectiveness Awards and see that, even on a relatively small budget, if you think differently, ask the right questions and, most importantly, think specifically instead of in generalities, you can make a difference.

There's the campaign to demobilise Columbian guerrillas in which the right question was "can we change the medium?" and the answer was to bring Christmas to the jungle. And then, a simple idea - can we change the usage occasion? - which worked to get people drinking a traditional bedtime drink, Ovaltine, for a daytime break. Or - can we change the role for advertising? - the Marie Curie Daffodil Appeal did just that by advertising for collectors instead of for donations.

And another commonality between all these ideas is that it's not just about getting people to think differently, or even feel differently, but about behaviour. And as behavioural change is often the trigger to perceptual change, rather than the other way around, it's no wonder that these ideas create effects that are observable.

So let's consign the wool and the Fuzzy Felt to the needlework basket and think about the active, the specific, the behavioural - and not just when the budget is limited.