Nudgestock 2024 | Time is not of the essence

Our relationship with time is not a straightforward one. It has puzzled and fascinated humankind in equal measure since, well, the dawn of it.?

Time is at once an objective, fixed, measurable entity – a minute is 60 seconds, an hour is 60 minutes and so on – and yet, at the same time, a wholly changeable and subjective concept, shaped by the mind. It is elastic and imprecise, and our experience of time can change dramatically based on sensory inputs, our emotions, the situation, events etc. Under different circumstances a minute can feel like a very long time or can flash by in what seems like seconds.

Time and its hidden power was the theme of this year’s Nudgestock, the world's biggest festival of behavioural science and creativity, which took place last month. As always, the day was rigorously academic and absorbing, featuring an impressive line-up of eminent speakers covering a broad range of time related topics.

From strategies to counteract the effect of ‘I want it now’ and the pull of the ‘present bias’ – and how commitment devices can help brands and businesses encourage everything from healthy behaviours to saving money, to how to build, and help others build, meaningful lives now by paying yourself with time.

From how a better understanding of our circadian rhythms and when consumers are most receptive can influence product and communication strategies, to the importance of ritual in adding emotional value to the brand experience.

From how we can give ‘quality’ time back to our younger generation whose childhoods have been negatively impacted by the smartphone to the relationship between past, present and future in understanding thinking styles to guide more effective marketing strategies.

However, the underlying theme of the day was really about the need, in a time optimised world, to get back to a more human-centred world and way of thinking. In a world where the urgent drowns out the important and the short-term triumphs over the long term, all the talks in some way addressed the need for a better understanding of human behaviours and preferences based on how our brains actually work. We live lives of ‘joyless urgency’, enmeshed in an ‘efficiency trap’ and there is a need to slow down and accept that there will always be too much to do and never enough time to do it. We need to listen more, properly listen, and tune in to what really matters; we need to make patience a virtue and a secret power. We need to counteract the effect of ‘now’ and the need for instant gratification in order to help us make better and more beneficial decisions.

Technology has been an enormous force for good and has transformed our lives in so many ways. However, we have also become slaves to it. We live in a time optimised world where the underlying assumption is that we are all in a hurry all of the time and therefore speed and time efficiency are always for the better – the time saving bias. But there is huge disquiet at the pace in which we are now obligated to lead our lives and, as Rory Sutherland so eloquently pointed out, time and speed efficiency only ‘obliquely and tangentially correlate with human behaviour and preference’. Apparently, research has shown that people actually quite like commuting and the time it affords them!

Technology almost always starts out as offering choices or ‘options’ but through mass adoption it very quickly becomes an ‘obligation’ and actually removes choice. Perhaps the simplest example is email as we all now feel obliged to look at our inboxes continually and reply instantaneously to meet the assumed expectations of the sender. Rory Sutherland believes that email is one of the greatest blockers to productivity in the workplace and argued that optimisation models are almost always in conflict with the reality of human behaviour and preference.

All of this has significant implications for marketers and brands not only highlighting new and perhaps better ways of connecting with consumers but, by tapping into these key insights, also affording new platforms for differentiation and distinctiveness. Guinness famously made time its ally by turning a negative into a positive in ‘good things come to those who wait’. The Uber app shows where your car is so removing the sense of anxiety and uncertainty in the wait time.

Design has also played a significant role tapping into behavioural psychology to ‘nudge’ consumers into better behaviours and closing the intention-action gap. It also has a role to play in helping brands counteract the dominant efficiency narrative, giving time back by prioritising the consumer experience.

For instance, brands can intercede in our busy lives by designing simple, enjoyable rituals, such as Oreo’s ‘twist, lick, dunk’, to create better brand experiences which have the effect of slowing things down, creating greater levels of emotional engagement and reward, the value being as much in the journey as in the eventual destination. Curiously, a brand like Nespresso actually managed to design out all the coffee making rituals, hollowing out the experience for the price of convenience.

We can also tell stories through design that can take consumers out of the now and help reinforce the experience. Brands can tell origin and founder stories, product, ingredient and supply chain stories, sustainability stories. We helped English Tea Shop uncover their brand story and clearly articulated this through all the engagement points including use of the packaging to tell an extended farm-to-cup story. Oatly has very successfully used its packaging as an unpaid advertising medium to engage consumers.

The Outernet at London’s Tottenham Court Road offers free, all day immersive experiences on wrap-around screens offering people time-out from the city bustle and Magnum famously created their pop-up Pleasure Stores, a true brand experience that allowed people to create their own personalised Magnums.?

In our always on lives time has become the enemy but by thinking about time differently it can become an ally and provide brands with significant opportunities for greater engagement through a better understanding of our emotional states, our true behaviours and preferences. I am reminded of the famous Play Station ad which dramatised our finite time on earth and encouraged us to play more!