Make the behavior you need people to adopt an easy, natural and rewarding choice
About The Business of Choice
Every organization’s success is down to one thing – making it easy and rewarding for people to make the choices you need them to make. The Business of Choice is a behavioral insights and choice architecture consultancy that helps organizations make these choices align with how people naturally choose.
Matthew Willcox, founding partner, is one of the pioneers of the application of behavioral science insights to the practice of marketing. His book, “The Business of Choice” was named M&SB’s “Marketing Book Of The Year and winner of the American Marketing Association’s prestigious Berry Book Prize.
Prior to setting up The Business of Choice, Matthew founded and ran the Institute of Decision Making, a think tank that served as a bridge between marketing practitioners and scientists who study behavior and choice.
Matthew has over 25 years brand strategy experience in Europe, Asia and North America, and has helped organizations such as Levi Strauss and Co., Electronic Arts, Unilever, Nestlé, Shell and GlaxoSmithKline get their products chosen, and in the process, has won eight Effie Awards. He has also acted as an expert on behavior change for the US Food and Drug Administration anti-smoking programs, for consumer, B2B and healthcare companies, and for development organizations tackling stubborn problems in the area of sexual and reproductive health. He has spoken frequently at marketing and communication events, including Advertising Week New York, El Sol in Bilbao, Most Contagious in London, and the Cannes Lions.
WORKSHOPS – LIVE AND VIRTUAL
The workshops around decision making that Matthew leads are truly eye-opening. They get at the heart of how human beings make decisions. Beyond marketing plans and strategies, he gets at what motivates us at our core. The result is revolutionary ways of thinking about the consumer journey and how your brand can intersect and influence choice
JENNIFER SEY, GLOBAL CMO GLOBAL LEVI STRAUSS & CO., AND ONE OF FORBES’ WORLD’S MOST INFLUENTIAL CMOS 2019
Every organization is in the business of choice. So understanding how people choose, and applying these insights to how you do business is critical. Our customized workshops have helped marketing, innovation, game development, community health and sales teams understand the non-conscious factors that guide people’s choices, and kick start the process of developing solutions that use this understanding. Extensive pre-planning with stakeholders ensures the workshops are focused on the most relevant aspects of human decision making for the client’s business. Workshops are offered to organizations, and through affiliated marketing associations, to individual marketers. These are fun, engaging and creative sessions that also help participants understand their own decision making processes – even in the age of virtual meetings and social distancing. You can find details of our virtual workshops here.
These are must attend workshops for marketers. Matthew’s deep understanding of human psychology and depth of experience with marketing makes him a great guide to discover how people make decisions in everyday life, and to use these insights to develop marketing solutions
Roberto Lobetti Bodoni, Global Chief Marketing Officer at Geox ; Forbes’ CMO next 2019
SPEAKING
Matthew’s talk was a fantastic overview for our clients. It really crystallized a lot of the theory we have been trying to instill over the past few years. In fact one of our senior clients commented that it was one of the most enlightening marketing talks they had ever seen!
BRETT MORRIS, CEO FCB AFRICA
How people choose is a fascinating topic in its own right, and one that is critical to marketers. Matthew Willcox, founding partner of The Business of Choice gives a wide range of talks that cover choice, influencing decisions, creativity and innovation adoption that can be customized for specific industries and audiences.
Matthew has talked at numerous sales and marketing summits and conferences, and at leading venues as different as the United Nations Center for Africa in Addis Ababa, The Stage at the Times Center, New York and the Debussy Stage at Cannes.
At the end of our partners’ summit, the president of one of our partners said: “I enjoyed all the speakers, but Matthew’s 45 minute talk alone was worth my three days of being here. I was so transfixed with what he was saying I didn’t want to look down and take notes.” For a president of a global company who took a chunk of time out of his busy schedule to say ‘that alone was worth my 3 days here’ was validation of the event.
Ben Schlosser, CMO, Richard Childress Racing (RCR)
SOME OF THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT WE HAVE WORKED WITH TO MAKE CHOICE EASY, NATURAL AND REWARDING
CONSULTANCY
We use a decision-centric approach and our Behavioral LENS framework to help our clients understand what behavioral and cultural headwinds might impede the choices that they need people to make, and what tailwinds might make those choices easier. We also advise on the design of behavioral research and testing, and partner with research firms in executing research.
BOOKS
The insights that Matthew brings about how we really make choices are interesting and relevant to anyone working in marketing or selling, but are even more astonishing and invaluable to anyone with the remotest curiosity about the human condition.
ALAN JOPE, CEO UNILEVER
“The Business of Choice” has been published in English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and Spanish. It was named Marketing & Sales Books “Marketing Book of The Year”, and winner of the prestigious American Marketing Association Berry Book Award. The Spanish language version was also one of 10 finalists for KnowSquare’s business book of the year.
The Business of Choice is revolutionary. Informed by psychology and neuroscience, and infused with wit, it challenges the very foundations of rationality on which modern marketing is built and invites us to see people as they are – complex, emotional, irrational, human.
Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, VP of Marketing, DoorDash