the Health and Fitness category on the iOS app store, with over 100,000 downloads in the first year. Seven years on, it is still going strong. It has been downloaded over half a million times, and the quitting success rate of users is eight times higher than smokers without support. The app has been white-labelled for use by a number of other governments and is still a key part of Australian government stop-smoking campaigns. It is probably the most effective stop-smoking intervention employed to date by the Federal Government.
Why has it proven so successful? The initial insight behind developing an app was that most quit attempts fail because cravings can hit at any time, so timely support needs to be within arm’s reach at any moment. For most of us, the only thing within arm’s reach 24 hours a day is our mobile phone. The technological solution was therefore built around an insight into the desired behaviour – and not created for its own sake.
But, more importantly, we were able to create a more effective, addictive and usable app because we had data on what parts of the app people were using. It has been continually updated over the last seven years based on data on actual behaviour.
For example, we found app users were screen-grabbing the homepage (which showed how much money they had saved, how long they had been smoke-free, etc.) and posting it to social media accounts. In the spirit of making it easy, we updated the app to allow users to directly link it to their Facebook and Twitter accounts, so that with one tap they could post an update. This leveraged two behavioural biases: commitment bias (making a public commitment makes us more likely to stick to a behaviour, in this case telling all your friends you have quit); and social proof (showing how popular the app was would encourage others to download and use it).27
The app was continually optimised based on actual user data and behavioural science best practice, a distinct advantage over a traditional, one-hit advertising campaign.
I think this example of how behavioural science has been used to address an important societal problem can tell us a lot about how to solve business problems, as well as save lives, and has been hugely informative in my own work. It tells us about the importance of focusing on (behavioural) outcomes, like helping people quit rather than simply telling them why they should. Similarly, it shows us how behavioural science can lead to a better evidence base and enable more creative solutions (such as the fatty cigarette campaign), as well as how technological solutions work best when grounded in a behavioural insight, rather than simply a desire for novelty or innovation. We shall explore this more in part two.
In the next chapter, we will see how this kind of scientific approach – based on testing, learning and optimising – is fundamental to building a successful behavioural business.
19 NHS England, Statistics on Smoking – England, 2018.
20 www.thirdsector.co.uk/change-makers-british-heart-foundation/communications/article/1192942
21 If you are curious, Waters told me that the ‘fat’ in the cigarette was made using a combination of hummus and wallpaper paste. Which must have smelt disgusting.
22 In part five we shall see that the motivational messaging subsequently centred on the consequences of smoking on smokers’ families.
23 However, this does not necessarily increase the number of people who receive organ donations. The issue is a complex one, as it is also heavily determined by the processes employed by hospitals when a donor dies – as they need to then obtain consent by the next of kin, and have the right staff and logistics in place to ensure the organ can be received and transported in time to be used by the donor. The single biggest improvement in live organ donation success rates in the UK was actually achieved by having a dedicated donor nurse active in each NHS hospital. Obviously having more people on the register is helpful to increase the pool of donors, but the debate is whether a mandated opt-in (so that everyone has to state their preference, and let their next of kin know their intention) is preferable to an opt-out system, which leaves potential doubt about their wishes in the event of their death, and so leads to more next-of-kin refusals. Scotland and Wales have moved to an opt-out system in recent years, and at time of writing England has stated an intention to do the same.
24 The now defunct COI (Central Office of Information) was established shortly after the Second World War, as the successor to the Ministry of Information (the propaganda department), initially to inform the nation about the newly created NHS. It is perhaps best known for producing much-loved public information films such as ‘Charlie Says’ and ‘The Spirit of Dark Water’, as well as for well-respected evidence-based best practice in behaviour change communications. Despite its integral role in the creation of the BIT, it was closed by Cameron’s government in 2012 as part of austerity measures. Following a public vote of no confidence in its successor by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (due to its procurement processes), a new Government Communications Service was subsequently established – effectively a COI 2.0. Meanwhile, nearly all COI staff had either left (like me), taken redundancy, or moved on to other departments.
25 www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/small-business-blog/2014/feb/03/nudge-unit-quiet-revolution-evidence
26 This was mainly because the minister for health wanted a major announcement she could make on World No Tobacco Day on 31 May 2012 – which was eight weeks away. Whilst it was a stretch to make this target, it was the right thing to do in hindsight. The minister had an eight-minute slot on primetime TV programme The Project (the Australian version of The One Show) where she talked about the app for most of that running time. This PR exposure was hugely effective at driving downloads, which snowballed from there.
27 See page 10 for an explanation of social proof.
Chapter 3: Test-Tube Behaviours – How to Deliver Marginal Gains Using Behavioural Science
‘Sciencing the shit’ out of problems
In the Oscar-nominated movie The Martian, Matt Damon plays a NASA botanist stuck on Mars. His crew have departed after they have (reasonably) assumed he has been killed by an accident during their mission.
Damon’s character survives. It will be several years before a rescue mission can reach him – but he only has sufficient supplies to last a few months. As a highly qualified scientist, he does not panic. He decides to solve the problem in the most effective way possible.
In his words, he decides to “science the shit” out of the problem.
He consults the notes left behind by his colleagues, experiments using the limited resources at his disposal – including a highly creative way of growing potatoes with the help of his own faeces – and he keeps himself alive.
Not only is this a great movie, but it is also a powerful allegory for the way science has solved mankind’s problems. The houses we live in, the food we eat, the transport we use:
