LONDON — Tin Man has launched a behaviour change unit, Tin Science, alongside a new behaviour change model. 

Developed in collaboration with behavioural expert Richard Shotton, the model expands the agency’s insight-driven creative and strategic work by exploring the role of emotions and irrationality in behavioural change science.

It consists of a framework incorporating more than 100 cognitive biases – identified through working with Shotton, the author of behavioural bias book ‘The Choice Factory’ – and starts from the basis that “humans are complex, emotional beings that behave irrationally in their decision making”.

The new behaviour change unit and model is led by the agency’s creative director Paul Valentine and supported by a team of creatives and strategists alongside Shotton.

Valentine said: “How we feel or don't feel about doing something is often a deciding factor. And when we know how we feel about something, we know what to do. However, in many cases, consumers start from an apathetic position on a topic – our role is to move them into a more active emotional state. And the same can work in reverse. The model we’ve developed not only allows us to influence behaviour by working with specific emotional states but can help us make audiences feel something if they’re emotionally neutral.”

Tin Man CEO and founder Mandy Sharp added: “Tin Science has been almost a year in the making, so we’re thrilled to formally announce it after putting the new framework into practice on some real-life briefs. Most behaviour change models rely on audiences moving mindlessly through set stages of a standard model. However, we all know humans are more complicated than this, with a complex set of emotions and cognitive biases which influence their behaviours. We wanted our model to reflect these nuances and be more useful in answering our clients’ comms challenges.”

The Tin Science team has already used the model for some of the agency’s most recently won client pitches, including not-for-profit Smart Energy GB, which is encouraging families to use smart electricity meters for to combat rising costs and for the environmental benefits.