Hooked

Part 3

Putting it to use

I was once told a great story from the annals of workshop lore. At a workshop for a major FMCG brand on influencing consumer behaviour with heuristics, the following example ‘nudge’, taken, in fact, from Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge was presented:¹

“Gents, is there anything worse than going into a lavatory and coming out with wet shoes? Whether you accidentally marked yourself as your own territory, or whether you had to slosh through the mess made by others, it’s not a nice experience. Fortunately, there is a clever – and now extremely popular – ‘nudge’ which reduces splashback at urinals: a fly sticker. There is a certain point in a urinal where the potential for splashback is at its ­lowest; if you put a small sticker ...