When you set out to convince, you make the conversation into a battle to be won and lost. You bring force and, as Newton’s laws of motion tell us, force creates counter-force. You’re creating resistance before you’ve even finished your argument. Winning means that in the end, we will just have one side (our own!). We want that unity of opinion, but we create opposition in the process.

How to get people to do exactly what you want, and make them want to do it On live telly, decisions need to be made on the spot. Learn from Maz' years of experience producing everything from Big Brother to the US Apprentice (yes, with... him) and get ready to unlock the secrets of instant behaviour change. This interactive session will give you practical tools to influence behaviour in real-time, leaving you with a brain-bending understanding of how to not only get people to do exactly what you want, but enjoy doing it. Maz Farrelly - Legendary TV producer with over 8 billion views. If you've watched it, Maz probably made it. TV mastermind Maz Farrelly has created and produced some of the biggest shows globally, watched more than eight billion times; from 5 series of Big Brother, to The X Factor, to the US Apprentice (yes, with... him). She's produced everyone from pop stars to politicians, Hollywood A-listers to Astronauts, Beyoncé to King Charles. Maz now uses their 'borrowed' intel to help global brands succeed in getting noticed and being successful. You could call it gaining the 'X Factor' - and Maz should know, she made the show.

But because the very act of providing an answer closes the loop. You've solved the riddle. The thrill of the chase is over. Now everyone else is just expected to take your precious answer and dutifully apply it – to products, campaigns, media plans – without having experienced the journey that got you there.

A lot of people would like to make the world better, but they don’t know how. This is a great tragedy.

Edward L. Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and the founding father of concepts in Public Relations (PR), is known for linking Freudian psychoanalytic theories to influence consumer behaviour.

Believe it or not, analyzing seemingly unrelated data can reveal hidden truths. Take the Pentagon, the nerve center of the U.S. military. While classified briefings and high-level meetings happen behind closed doors, open-source data can offer clues about what might be brewing. Here’s where things get interesting. We can use Google Trends data to track searches for “Pentagon pizza delivery” and nearby “gay bars.” Why pizza and bars? Increased late-night activity might indicate longer work hours for Pentagon staff, potentially signifying preparation for a major event.

Discover ideas that make money

In their landmark 1959 report often referenced in leadership theory, social psychologists John R. P. French and Bertram Raven pinpointed five bases of power: Legitimate: when people perceive that your rank in a formal hierarchy—e.g., manager, CEO, or president—gives you the right to “prescribe” their behavior Reward: when people perceive your ability to distribute rewards for completed tasks or met goals Coercive: when people perceive your ability to distribute punishments and disincentives (the opposite of reward power) Expert: when people perceive your special knowledge or expertise, which causes them to defer to your expertise Referent: when people feel “oneness” with you or a desire to be like you, leading to their respect and admiration of you Referent power is considered the most potent because it doesn’t require that a leader micromanage, use coercion, or reward to influence others. People follow a leader with referent power based on who the leader is and how they behave. According to French and Raven, referent power has the broadest range of influence of any power, allowing it to be leveraged on a large scale.

Start with the Quick 2+1™ to find your answer. The next phase is to trust your intuition to Label™ and Mirror™ the circumstances or dynamics that may have led to the confrontation. Then use a little Dynamic Silence™ to allow room for a response from the other side. Once they respond, use mirrors and labels to encourage them to keep talking and gather the information you need to get to the heart of the matter.

Ogilvy UK head of strategy, advertising, Matt Waksman, illustrates and interprets the role of the strategist within advertising and wider society

New Metaphors is a creative toolkit for generating ideas and reframing problems.

If you’re trying to think and act more creatively and more critically, focus on asking better, more interesting questions of the briefs you’re tasked with answering. What we teach children can and should be applied to our own professional lives, too. A focus on problems and solutions first, promotes consistent, ‘safe’ answers, but won’t move the work on. Spending time on asking and answering better questions will help refine the understanding of a problem and will create the conditions for new, interesting and challenging solutions.

visual representations of things that can be described by various adjectives

“We don’t have a hundred biases, we have the wrong model.” So said Jason Collins in a recent blog, perhaps somewhat provocatively likening the use of biases as akin to the activity of ancient astronomers who were required to compile an exhaustive number of deviations to retain the broken model of the universe revolving around the earth. Collins challenge is whether the model at the heart of behavioural science is similarly broken.

Below, I’ll break down the three key steps to creating a compelling pitch for behavioral science. A bonus: you can put it all together in one minute or less to make a short—and sweet—sell on our amazing field.

Could there be another way to practice copyediting—less attached to precedent, less perseverating, and more eagerly transgressive; a practice that, to distinguish itself from the quietly violent tradition from which it arises, might not be called “copyediting” at all; a practice that would not only “permit” but amplify the potential for linguistic invention and preservation in any written work?

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? According to digital storyteller, Brian Clark it doesn't! In this DIY conversation, Brian Clark applies the philosophical concept of phenomenology to art in the digital age.