Unilever and the tale of the spy toothbrush

There’s much to love about behavioural economics. Despite being nearly 30 years old it seems fresh and exciting, its sciencey while still being fairly intuitive – and it indirectly led to the development of the spy toothbrush.

Richard Wright, Unilever’s wonderfully-titled ‘discover platform director for sensation, perception and behaviour’, talked delegates through an “intervention” the company embarked on to try to encourage people in China to brush their teeth twice a day.

Typically, when consumer goods companies want to sell more of generic product X they add an impressive-sounding new ingredient to the mix to kindle interest. But, in the case of toothpaste, simply getting people to brush in the morning and at night helps both to shift more product and deliver health benefits.

And so Unilever developed an ad depicting a father and son watching football, with the young boy copying everything the father did. It ended with both brushing their teeth – the central message being that kids will mimic your good behaviours as well as your bad habits.

And this is where the spy toothbrush comes in. Unilever wanted to know if the ad affected behaviour but needed a way to do so without the research itself influencing behaviour. To monitor when respondents brushed their teeth, without the need for direct observation or self-reporting, the company fitted accelerometers to toothbrushes that would record when the brush was in use.

It was only a minimal intervention, Wright said – one family shown the ad on two occasions with another family acting as a control group – but it did show signs of behavioural change.

Another example of behavioural economics in action came from Oliver Payne of The Hunting Dynasty and his quest to help a furniture company sell more of its cardboard desks. Corporate buyers were reluctant to buy, he said, because their purchase decisions were framed by their desire for office furniture that is hard-wearing and sturdy, something cardboard isn’t considered to be – thus creating cognitive dissonance.

Again, all very interesting. “But when you boil it down, isn’t behavioural economics just very, very good market research?” asked one delegate.