Every day, people make lots of choices, many of them commercial. Like what toothpaste to pick? How much should I spend on a bottle of wine? Should I renew that subscription? Such choices may appear to be freely made, but psychologists have shown that subtle changes in how brands are positioned, promoted and marketed can alter actions. British psychologist Richard Shotton’s focus is on how findings from behavioural science apply to advertising.
Shotton has been invited by TAM Ireland to be the guest speaker at a Long Lunch industry event at the Aviva Stadium on Lansdowne Road on January 23. He has written two books, The Choice Factory (see John Fanning’s review at https://marketing.ie/articles/understandings-on-what-drives-consumers/), and The Illusion of Choice. The latter book identifies the 16½ most important psychological biases that everyone in advertising should know.
It shows how adland can maximise these biases to win and retain customers – and sell more.
In 2018, Shotton founded the Astroten consultancy. Prior to that, he was deputy head of evidence at Manning Gottlieb OMD and worked at ZenithOptimedia for 12 years. He was communications manager at Vizeum UK. He started his career as a media planner, working on Coke, 118 118 and comparethemarket.com, before moving into research. He has written about the experiments he runs for Campaign, Marketing Week and Admap.
He tweets about social psychology findings from @rshotton.
Top TV shows in 2024
TAM/Nielsen figures for the top 50 TV programmes for 2024 show that the highest rating show across all channels was again The Late Late Toy Show (above). I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here on Virgin Media and Room to Improve performed well, making it into the top 20 shows of the year. Home-produced programmes and entertainment shows continued to dominate the top of the ratings chart across all channels, along with news and current affairs.
Sport accounted for more than half of the top 50 shows. The Guinness 6 Nations France v Ireland game was the most viewed sports programme with 1.08 million viewers. The All-Ireland senior hurling final between Clare and Cork was next with 1.05m viewers. The average Irish adult in a TV home watches two and a half hours of TV every day, with 84 per cent of daily viewing consumed live – as the show is scheduled, and 16 per cent watched as catch up.
Over 90 per cent of all TV homes in Ireland now have fixed or mobile broadband.
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