Imagine you are marketing a service that deliberately gives people a disease, is physically painful, requires them to come to you and they have to pay. Welcome to flu shot season!
Two Australian pharmacy chains are approaching the task of enrolling flu shot customers in subtly different ways, so let’s look at my reaction and, perhaps more meaningfully, the behavioural techniques at play.
Every aspect of marketing should be regarded as an opportunity in choice architecture, and you have the power and responsibility to shape the behavioural outcome of your communications. Both ads were created with the objective of stimulating flu shot bookings. Both ads were presented as banners on their home page. Both ads articulated price and attempted to create a sense of value.
And yet the behavioural influence exerted by “Get the jab not the flu” is far stronger than “Arm yourself against the flu” because it overcomes status quo bias (ie. where we can’t be bothered to get a flu shot) by creating a sense of scale between what we have to gain versus what we have to lose. The loss (discomfort of injection, price, inconvenience) is minimised to such an extent that the gain (avoiding flu) seems appealing enough to act.
So if there is one call to action from flu season it is this; you must overcome our innate tendency to do nothing by ensuring the gain of changing behaviour exceeds the loss. If a jab can do it, so can you. Happy jabbing.
Bri Williams is an authority on behavioural economics applied to everyday business and personal effectiveness.
