Is Behavioural Economics The New Social Marketing?

 

In London last week for a packed Charity Comms conference on Social Marketing: Changing Behaviour Through Communications, where I co-presented with social marketer Viv Caisey. (Slides available here)

Lots of interesting discussion about values vs nudges, and whether, if the aim is to change behaviour, it’s necessary to change minds (a key differentiator for interventions which use social marketing vs those that use behavioural economics). If you were to ask that question of the UK’s Coalition Government, it would seem that behavioural economics is indeed the new social marketing when it comes to the policy choice for interventions aimed at changing behaviour. Elsewhere, the answer would be different.

And those signs? Old and new approaches to the same subject, spotted whilst walking through London’s jewellery quarter, Hatton Garden, en route to the conference. 

The Natural Health Service

Viv Caisey and I went to a meeting earlier this week with a fascinating man, Dr William Bird OBE, the GP behind Healthwalks and Greengyms. I’d met William, who is Strategic Health Advisor to Natural England, and Chair of the Outdoor Health Forum, at the UK Public Health Association conference.  At the UKPHA, William and I had talked about obesity, climate change and car dependency, and the insights that could be offered by social marketing and behavioural economics. But this post is really an excuse to put in links to a couple of excellent papers written by William, on the relationships between physical and mental health and the great outdoors. Here they are: Natural Fit and Natural Thinking.