Page 17 - Packaging News magazine November-December 2022

need to understand these things when we bring them to the here and now – it’s not just in sustainability, it is in huge areas across anything to do with long term impact,” she said, challenging the audience to start thinking about how you to address this, and find ways to show a person their future self to incen- tivise their actions in the future.
Friedrich then spoke on testing the effectiveness of ‘recycle, reuse, reduce’ . “From the behavioural science point of view, this is the magic three. We know how the human brain loves things and we love alliteration, so it works from that perspective. But in my mind, I’m asking who is testing its effectiveness and what is in it for consumers. How am I rewarded by doing it? Because that slogan is actu- ally just telling us what we need to do. It doesn’t cover anything about emotional savings,” she said, advising that everyone should be experimenting with testing, and look at incentives that make a per- son feel as if they are doing a good thing. Loss aversion, where one may not do something good as they fear losing
something else, was also discussed.
Above: Compelling keynote speaker, behavioural science strategist Sonia Friedrich
Opposite (top): PKN’s publisher Lindy Hughson gave the welcome address.
Below left: The Women in Packaging event was sold out.
Understanding these behaviours is key, said Friedrich, moving on to highlight the importance of present- ing information concisely and easily, and provide examples of preventing cognitive overload, which showed how succinct information, words and visu- als, as well as choice architecture can influence a shift in behaviour change. She also highlighted how sustainable packaging messaging could be working better, suggesting that too much infor- mation can have a negative influence on a consumer selecting the product.
“Anyone who’s in brand or graphic design really needs to understand that behavioural science. We all know the power of words, but are we testing the power on pack?” she said, advising to keep things simple whenever possible.
Friedrich also highlighted the subject of self-perception related to the term sustainability, and how its perceived meaning can influence behaviour. She explained that studies had revealed that men do not see sustainability as a mas- culine word, which lead to the challenge of “how do we make males feel more mas- culine by using sustainability products?”
Testing is being done now to discover words to help convert towards sustainabil- ity when the audience is men, she said.
Friedrich then discussed the agents of change which could allow people to go down the path of purchase, such as the creation of prescribed option boxes and portraying jargon in more specific and con- crete ways, before asking,“What is it that you can do that can change behaviour?”
Her advice was to go through the jour- ney of what ones customers are doing, and start looking at what defaults they
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