They say presentation is everything; and this is true in
communications as much as design. How we communicate ‘reality’ makes a huge
difference to public perceptions, and how we present facts and stats can have a
significant impact on people’s behaviour.
This was emphasised last weekend when two seemingly
contradictory articles were published. The first was a comment piece in the
Guardian which reported that, according to the Move Your Money campaign, “half
a million people have left the big banks for more trustworthy and respectable
organisations so far this year”. Meanwhile, an article in the Financial
Times stated that the big banks have found there has been “no
rise in the number of customers closing accounts”.
Leaving aside the question of whether both of these
statements can be true, what is interesting is that both the consumer campaign
and the high street banks seem to have a grasp of basic behavioural economics.
Studies show that we are more likely to do something if we
believe that everybody else is doing it, especially people like us. By
highlighting the number of people who have already changed their bank accounts,
the Move Your Money campaign is trying to nudge people into following the crowd
and changing their financial arrangements.
However, research also shows that people have a strong
tendency to stick with the status quo, meaning that arguments for change need
to be considerably better than those for staying put. By emphasising that very
few people have actually changed their accounts, the banks are hoping to take advantage
of the natural bias towards inertia.
New measures set to come in at the end of 2013 will address
one of the main issues that deters people from changing their banking
arrangements, by cutting the maximum time it takes to switch current accounts
to seven days. But the Move Your Money campaign will need to work hard to
address the additional concerns identified by the Office of Fair Trading,
including complexity and risk
Only time will tell which camp has more success with its communications strategy.
The important thing for communications professionals to remember is that there
is huge power in words, and how we frame our arguments can make a real
difference to behaviour. As a starting point, it’s
worth considering what influences your own behaviour – are you making active
choices or just following the herd?
Jo Nussbaum
Consultant
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