Rory Sutherland Leads Ogilvy in Driving Change
Rory Sutherland, Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather UK and world-leading proponent of behavioural economics is leading a new collaboration between Pimp My Cause and Ogilvy.
As a spin-off project created by the Agency of the Future, Pimp My Cause was created to support the marketing profession in changing the world for the better. Collaborations with top agencies like Ogilvy inspire many more agencies and corporate marketing teams to get involved and find out how they can support the marketing for good agenda.
This partnership will see Ogilvy’s specialist behavioural science practice, OgilvyChange, adopt three Pimp My Cause member organisations a year. There are also plans to develop fresh ways to activate Ogilvy's growing broader behaviour change community inside and outside the Group to harness its talent for good.
OgilvyChange uses the latest in cognitive psychology, social psychology and behavioural economics to create behavioural change in the real world.
The collaboration will help develop practical creative applications of recent advances in the science of behavioural economics, effectively creating a "field lab" for implementing behavioural insight in addressing real world social problems.
Rory Sutherland is one of the most influential figures in advertising, and championed the role that behavioural economics plays in marketing during his chairmanship of the IPA. “The purpose of behavioural economics is simple. It is to enable people to make better choices by designing and framing choices in accordance with human nature. The value this can offer to social marketing programmes and charities is potentially limitless. It was always our intention that #ogilvychange should devote part of its time to charitable causes and to small businesses. There were two reasons for this. One is wholly altruistic - the use of behavioural economics is a relatively quick and inexpensive way to make a difference to such organisations where it matters most. And there is, of course, an ulterior motive, in that lessons learned from these activities can be deployed elsewhere in our commercial work”.
According to Jez Groom, head of OgilvyChange, “We created OgilvyChange to increase the health, wealth and wellbeing of people across the world and we can think of no better partnership, than with Pimp My Cause to further this ambition. OgilvyChange combines the gravitas of academia with the real world communication expertise to create little behavioural ideas that can have a demonstrable effect and can really help some of these very worthwhile causes.”
Paul Skinner, founder of Pimp My Cause said: "Behavioural economics represents a great opportunity for small charities and social enterprises seeking to make a big difference. Its insights often cost nothing to apply and can make a disproportionate contribution to the kinds of changes that voluntary sector organisations are trying to achieve. This is also a great example of leadership from Ogilvy in showing that marketers are among the best placed professionals to creatively apply its principles and that agencies can make a real difference even away from their traditional high media spend environment."