Podcast: A Unique Behavioral Framework as the Key to Driving Growth

Matt Salem 

Hi, everyone. I’m your host Matt Salem. You have tuned in to another episode of our best behavior. A podcast brought to you by Behaviorally winner of the 2020 market research podcast. Behaviorally, formerly PRS In Vivo USA, helps brands improve shopper and consumer experiences by defining and diagnosing the behaviors that drive shopper growth.

Each month, we produce a podcast to share industry insights on trending topics designed to help you make better shopper marketing decisions. Today, we are joined by Scott Brill, Chief Commercial Officer at Behaviorally, who will be talking with us about behavioral science and its importance generally, and more importantly, in the world of research. Welcome, Scott.

 

Scott Brill  

Hey, Matt.

 

Matt Salem 

Yeah, my pleasure. How’s it going today?

 

Scott Brill  

Good, good. Starting to get a little warmer, I guess outside, but still not good enough for me.

 

Matt Salem 

Yeah, I hear you on that. Well, that in and of itself will probably change some behaviors—family outside a bit more. And I’m sure it’ll change a lot of things for us after, after the beginning of 2021. Coming out of 2020.

 

Scott Brill  

Yeah, absolutely.

 

Matt Salem 

So, in talking about behavior and just starting more generally, why is behavioral science so important?

 

Scott Brill  

Yeah, it’s a really great question. And really a good starting point for, for this conversation. Behavioral Science is really critical, certainly in our industry, but just honestly, you could apply it to life. It’s really how people make decisions. Really all decisions show the subject of human actions, the way emotions, the environment, social factors.

All these kinds of things really just influence our decisions. So, if someone’s goal is really to influence behavior, then surely, it’s critical to know how the behavior happens and what’s really driving individuals to take certain actions. Behavioral science really links everything from what I choose for lunch to what I watch on TV to ultimately what cereal you’re going to buy.

And the really interesting thing is that all the decisions that are really not rational, yes, my assortment of what’s in my refrigerator is going to dictate what my possibilities are for lunch. But I’m not always going to pick a healthy snack. I’m going to pick potentially what’s the easiest thing, what’s friend center in the refrigerator, all these kinds of things. So, it’s fascinating how people make decisions and the ability to predict that on behalf of our clients. You know, just super important.

 

Matt Salem 

Yesterday for lunch, I had my salad ready to go. I had the grilled chicken that I was gonna throw in it. But I also had two leftover slices of pizza from Sunday night. And even though I try to stay healthy on a Monday through Friday, I went with the pizza. So, I could completely understand there when you’re thinking about changing behavior and influencing behavior. How do you go about understanding how the behavior happens that you talked about? Are you merely asking people?

 

Scott Brill  

Yeah, no, really, it’s much more about observation, much more about considering what people are doing. I mean, people, there are certain decisions you can certainly rationalize, but the majority of decisions are, again, much more emotional system one driven, that’s been around for four years at this point, system one versus system two. And it’s not that everything is system one. There’s always a balance between system one and system two. And the ratio between the two differs based on the actual decision itself.

So, it’s much more about starting with observation and then diving into some of the factors that ultimately deliver that behavior delivers that action. So, you certainly don’t want to just simply ask someone directly, why did you choose the pizza? And yeah, they’ll probably rationalize it. It tastes better. But more often than not, it’s Hey, it was there. You understand that you get some pleasure from it. Maybe it’s easier. A lot more goes into it than that enjoyment factor. So really need to observe more so than then ask direct questions.

 

Matt Salem 

That makes sense. And I think for me with that decision yesterday, a lot of it was just the choice architecture because had I not been home and had I been in the office with only that salad and chicken that I brought in for lunch. I probably wouldn’t have moseyed into the cafeteria in this pandemic to get something else. I probably would have stuck to my guns. That’s so interesting the ideas of choice architecture. And as you mentioned, system one and two that have been around for so long. Who in the field do you find influential? We think about behavioral science and kind of the masters of behavioral science in the universe if you will.

 

Scott Brill  

I mean that the discipline has been around for quite some time now. And there are really so many great academics that are really pushing the field and just pushing forward some of the great learning. There are obviously people like [Daniel] Kahneman in reality that most people are aware of. But there are others like BJ Fogg out of Stanford, Roger Dooley, who hosts the Brainfluence podcasts, both bestselling authors, really brilliant minds in the field.

So, it’s really looking at a spectrum of people and not just kind of focusing on one individual. And for what we do and how we support clients across various categories, various industries, and sectors, you can’t rely just on one point of view. So really, it’s about looking at all of these people, all of their thoughts, thought leadership. And, of course, our own understanding. I mean, we’ve been doing this since the seventies.

I mean, I’ve been here since 03′, you joined shortly after that. So, we’ve got decades of experience just ourselves in terms of observing consumers and applying that to how we might modify methodologies and modify even the framework that we could talk about in a little bit.

But really, utilizing all that thought leadership to understand, again, consumer behavior, there’s just so much out there now. It’s amazing. It’s a great time to be in, in the field—everyone’s kind of pushing each other. But yeah, you can certainly go back to some of those core academics as a starting point, but honestly, you just have a little bit more time to dive into it. You know, but earlier Dooley or Fogg at Stanford, literally, that’s what they do day in day out seminars and conferences and looking at all different angles. And they boil it down to a certain point that we can then leverage to take it further for our clients to simplify that much further and make it something that’s really actionable for their businesses.

 

Matt Salem 

So, when it comes to simplifying it for clients and taking it to them in an actionable way, I know that there’s a framework that has been developed. And I’d love to hear a bit more about that framework and how it’s being used and applied to the research that Behaviorally is conducting.

 

Scott Brill  

Yeah, really, we’ve taken all that, that learning a lot of books, a lot of white papers, and pare that down to a simple two-prong framework or approach that we apply to methodologies, questionnaire design, reporting, really everything as it comes to the consumer decision making process.

The framework itself, benefits and barriers, simple but not simplistic, again, leveraging all that learning, but really, these two aspects distill the decision-making process, and really, the balance between motivation and friction.

So, benefits being the motivation, the reason that you might make a decision. And the barriers are the friction being the hurdles that someone really needs to overcome. And can any situation whether it’s, again, we talked about insurance, or you know, the car making process, or buying that cereal or choosing that, that pizza for lunch, are we able to enhance those motivations, enhance those benefits and reduce the barriers and the friction to ultimately make a purchase, use a product, those really being the two fundamental mechanisms to drive action. Yeah, and of course, there are certain underlying principles that feed into that that we’ll utilize, but that it all kind of ladders up to those two aspects.

 

Matt Salem 

When you talk about benefits and barriers, motivations and frictions, and earlier, some of the commentary on how behavioral science can, in fact, be complex. And there are folks that think about this all day, everyday professors, academia conferences that they constantly focus on, etc. How can we simplify behavioral science to make it more actionable for the everyday layperson, if you will, that is not solely focused on behavioral science? And importantly, how can that translate over to helping clients?

 

Scott Brill  

Yeah, and that’s really what we started with when we were thinking about our latest framework and taking all those learnings and distilling them into the benefits and barriers. But really the many reasons that we want to simplify the idea of behavioral science.

Fundamentally, it was about better supporting our clients and partners, and we wanted to make it easier for them. We wanted to make it I don’t say less of the conversation, because really everything that we’ll discuss in any research initiative would be tied to the benefits and barriers, but we didn’t want to spend 20 minutes of an hour-long presentation or real conversation around next steps, addressing the framework itself, we didn’t want to go through all these influencers and, and heuristics and the copy effect and conformity and all that kind of stuff. It’s just too much. So, utilizing, you know, again, all of our experience, you know, we live and breathe on a daily basis, our passion, etc.

We could boil that all down to a simplistic framework that allows clients to take action, and that’s really what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to help clients drive growth, you know, move their brands forward. And understanding human behavior is how you really do that. So again, going back to kind of the start of our conversation, making that idea as simplistic as possible. So again, clients can act all the better. People continue to say Kahneman’s, Thinking Fast and Slow, great book, highly recommend it. Not everybody has time to read a 500 plus page book, you know, listen to the audio.

So, it’s, it’s that idea, you know, kind of leaning into what clients are asking of us, which is fundamentally to help their brands help them grow—but knowing that we need some of that rigor and kind of behavioral lens in place. And that’s really why we wanted to simplify it just to make it easier for our clients to incorporate this within their learning and next steps.

 

Matt Salem 

I think the simplification of it is Behaviorally science-driven at its core. Suppose we want clients to actively think about behavioral science and how it can impact their business and drive growth. In that case, we have to make it simple to you. The choice of itself of using it or not is going to tie directly to its simplicity. So, it seems like the smart decision to make it as simple as possible, which will hopefully help clients to activate it,

 

 

you could spend a lifetime, and people do spend a lifetime exploring all this stuff. And it’s all great stuff, impressive stuff. But you know, most of it doesn’t apply to every single kind of situation. And everything that those clients are asking of us. So yeah, to your point, kind of move past some of the extraneous stuff to more of that direct, actionable, and simple framework.

 

Matt Salem 

And mentioning that it doesn’t apply to everything. But juxtapose to that some of the examples given earlier, it does come into play, maybe if you’re buying a car at the decision or purchasing insurance, as you had mentioned, do the different types of scenarios impact how a framework such as this can be applied? Or is it a one-size-fits-all, particularly in our universe? Shopper research packaging? Is it as simple as taking that framework and applying it the same way? Or are there nuanced differences that need to be considered?

 

Scott Brill  

You know, it is as simple as taking the framework and applying it. But yeah, it’s not one size fits all, you know, you think of different tactics of shopper marketing, whether it’s the point of sale versus packaging versus pricing, an established brand category leader new product or brand established in one category moving to another, even as things like refrigerated versus shelf-stable juice, you know, just the decision making process, the experience the emotion will stay on refrigerated or shelf-stable, refrigerated is your buying that probably for in the moment you’re going to get it and use it you’re going to get juice for your son for dinner that night is at a different experience.

Emotion needs state relative to that shelf-stable that you might be more pantry stock. So yeah, it certainly is, is nuanced. And there’s a different balance that might have to happen between the benefits and barriers. But those two fundamental issues still apply.

So, I mean, those are certainly CPG examples, you know, we mentioned card buying. You go back 20-30 years. It was a horror story. You’re gonna have to have a whole strategy, and you’re going to have to deal with the hassle of negotiation and have a master come with you and, and all this kind of stuff. And some manufacturers, Saturn, I guess probably the first one back in the 90s, I guess it was realized that there was just so much friction and so much barrier for people that come buy a car said, “Hey, let’s scrap all that. And here’s your no-hassle pricing.”

Fast forward to, you know, the last five years and things like Carvana that have made the process even that much easier. And you don’t hear those horror stories anymore. Because if that is a barrier, the negotiation, the hassle, inventory, you know, if that’s your barrier, there is an alternative that has made that process so much easier.

So, in that car buying example, the barrier was first and foremost, and those are the barriers in terms of pricing and the specifics that go into your actual purchase. But that hassle was that barrier. They addressed that that’s all they really need to do.

And those two Carvana is certainly doing quite well now. You go into more CPG-type stuff. And that balance in that ratio between benefits and barriers starts to shift. You know, it’s more about potentially impulse more about health credentials, so forth, and so on. So yeah, but to your fundamental question. It’s simple nature of easy to understand, easy to explain. But there is this rigor behind it that we’ve gone through to understand all these different situations that we can then apply to individual business issues and business objectives.

 

Matt Salem 

I like the car example. And it makes me think that benefits in barriers aren’t necessarily universally of benefit or better. Think about how the car buying experience has changed over the years, right here near me in Wayne, New Jersey, on Route 23. CarMax is opening a physical lot. So, it’s almost the other direction. Some folks, the barrier may be, well, if I’m gonna buy a car from CarMax, I want to be able to check it out in person too and do so quickly and easily.

So, it’s interesting how the benefits and barriers can be seen through the eye of the beholder a bit, which in my mind makes me think about the different sampling of audiences and research and understanding how perhaps different psychographics may respond to any given stimuli, shopper marketing, packaging, and really curtailing the benefit and barrier approach to those specific audiences.

What about in your own life? I mean, as we begin to wrap up here, I always like to throw in a random question for my guests. Do you ever find yourself in a position, particularly since you’re thinking about this a lot that you’re kind of literally weighing the benefits and barriers to yourself when you’re in a supermarket shopping when you’re at the liquor store buying your favorite bottle of Blvd?

 

Scott Brill  

Yeah, we’ve been doing this day in day out for so long; that you start to apply it to every everyday conversation. And was the grocery store or dealing with my four-year-old or started adapting to conversations with my wife and family members? For keeping it CPG, My family’s very diligent focus. We’ve got shopping lists, everything we offer specific, so they got to be on the list. Nevers that list, what we come home with, you know, it’s always twice as large. The interesting thing to your question is, I don’t realize until I’m 70%, through that I’ve added 20 things. So, on the 21st thing that I’m adding, I started to weigh the benefits. But I’ll go back and look, why did I get this? What was I thinking was it just promotion and pricing? So, it’s a little bit more of a retrospective when you realize that your own spoils kind of and you know, you’ve helped clients influence behavior, and then that behavior, the influence ends up being your own, ends up getting a good laugh and in our household.

 

Matt Salem 

That’s funny. In my household, if I want my own type of mozzarella stick, my wife says just keep the kids. The list tends to stay the same, more so than that stand where you’re coming from. God, it’s been a true pleasure. I’m glad we were able to connect on behavioral science. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks a lot for the time that you’ve spent here today. And once again to our audience. Thanks for tuning in to our best behavior brought to you by Behaviorally. Thanks again to Scott Brill, and we’ll catch you next time.

 

Scott Brill  

Thanks, man.