To nudge or not to nudge

We all know what marketing means in the commercial environment (well, when I say everyone, there are still those that haven’t been enlightened just yet, but we’re working on it), but non-commercial marketing; is there such a thing? Yes. Oh, yes, and there’s much more of it than you may think.

I’m going to try and be completely apolitical and impartial, but forgive me if I stray a little off the narrowest of paths. Given that a definition of marketing is messaging designed to influence opinion, then the commercial world can only look on enviously as governments around the world foist their latest findings on the world; the fact that it may well contradict results from last month is neither here or there.

When it comes to public health, governments know well that legislating on contentious issues is a guaranteed vote loser. Nonetheless, they have to push the research results from various research bodies that have been so generously funded by the public purse. Given that when it comes to health matters and ‘choice’, the government of the day can’t tell us not to do this, or stop doing that, rather tut-tutting at us, solemn head shaking and the insinuation that if we continue to drink/smoke/eat sweets/drive then we’re somehow irresponsible and a future burden on the health service. This is the art of ‘The Nudge’, and 24 hour rolling news is the perfect vehicle through which the world’s electorates can be nudged.

We commercial bods with something to sell can only dream of a budget free campaign that can reach so many, so regularly and – with scientific findings apparently contradicting themselves almost overnight – with no impunity at all. So now we know; even the tiniest amount of alcohol will drastically raise your chances of cancer, the smallest fizzy drink will render you an immobile, obese couch potato and inhaling air contaminated by a smoker six miles away will condemn you to a life in an iron lung. Welcome to the world of the nudge, a marketing technique out of the reach of the commercial world. Unless you’re selling carbon-footprint free glacier water or monogrammed nut cutlets, that is.