[INTERVIEW] Make Choice Rewarding: Behavioral Insights in Marketing with Matthew Willcox

Welcome to our series of episodes on Marketing and Employee Engagement. We’ll be sharing insights into how to apply behavioral science in business. And we’ve started the series off with award-winning marketer, Matthew Willcox. He understands the fundamental importance of using behavioral insights to help organizations align with how people choose. He is one of the pioneers of applying behavioral science in marketing.

In this episode, Tim and Kurt speak to Matthew about his book The Business of Choice – Marketing to Consumers Instincts. It was named the “Marketing Book Of The Year” and is the winner of the American Marketing Association’s prestigious Berry Book Prize. This book is full of practical tips for marketers. But what we truly love about Matthew’s work is that it lays out some fundamental insights into human behavior.

Matthew is also the Behavioral Insights Lead at The Curious Company, which focuses on social impact and uses anthropology, behavioral economics and human centered design to make beneficial behaviors easy and natural. And over the years, Matthew has worked with Levi Strauss, Electronic Arts, Unilever, Nestlé, Shell and GlaxoSmithKline to help them craft their brand strategies. He has also acted as an expert on behavior change for the US Food and Drug Administration anti-smoking programs.

“Make the behavior you need people to adopt an easy, natural and rewarding choice.” Our discussion with Matthew explores the idea of why marketing is more about choice, than consumption. Matthew describes the LENS model (Loss, Ease, Now, Social) that he uses as a framework to understand the behavior of choices. And a subject close to our heart; why context matters! And we learn more about Matthew through the list of music that he would take to a desert island.

As we continue to adapt our podcast to our listeners’ choices, we are publishing our interviews as a separate episode to our Grooving Session where we discuss how you can apply insights from our guest. Please tune in to the accompanying episode of Behavioral Grooves to listen to the practical applications of Matthew’s work.