Inspiring action through Pivotal Ideas

Brands can no longer expect people to act on messages or stories alone. They need ideas that can touch minds, hearts and —most importantly— the very inner strings of human behaviour.

Pivotal Ideas are ideas that are specifically created and designed to shape behaviour, not just communicate a message. They emerge from a human insight and inspire action. And they exist at the exact right moment to pivot a person's relationship with a brand and drive business results.

Spock vs Homer

That’s how our brain really works. We think the mind is in charge, but long established habits and behaviours usually trump the best laid plans.

Logic and traditional communications are not the best choices to inspire action.

There’s a fly in the urinal

Legend has it that to keep public toilets cleaner, a very smart janitor conducted an experiment in Schiphol Amsterdam Airport. They added a sticker of a fly inside the urinal of half the bathrooms, and left the other half untouched.

It turns out that intervened bathrooms recorded reduced spillage by 80%. Men, being men, aimed better when given a target vs the traditional “it’s shorter than you think” message.

Pivotal Ideas

That’s a classic Pivotal Idea: An idea based on profound understanding of human nature that does not need to say anything to work. It just drives action.

The 10 Behavioural Triggers

To help with the creation of Pivotal Ideas for our clients, we have identified 10 categories of behavioural triggers, scientifically proven to influence behaviour.

Learn more about them by clicking on each category:

Or jump back to the questions to trigger Pivotal Ideas for your brief.