Ogilvy Change applies behavioural insights to help people come to terms with loss

 

Through a partnership with Pimp My Cause, the Ogilvy Change team, led by Rory Sutherland, is supporting three of our member causes per year through their behavior change advisory service.

CEDAR CIC, a small charity that offers death education programmes is the first cause to benefit from this collaboration. Their mission is to help prevent social exclusion and loneliness by giving people the tools to better prepare for handling the loss of a loved one, to talk about death and the issues it raises in a more informed way and to help all of us know how to support our friends, colleagues and neighbours who are grieving.

People often don’t know how to deal with the difficult topic of death or how best to support people who have been affected by bereavement and therefore avoid interacting with people who have lost someone close to them. The combination of grief and the social isolation it can lead to, can bring very serious secondary problems such as alcoholism or drug abuse, clinical depression, escalating violence, self-harm, increased absenteeism and many other knock-on effects of un-alleviated suffering.

CEDAR offers death education courses to help people become better equipped for dealing with death and bereavement. Their courses make a positive difference to people’s lives, but an obstacle that CEDAR faces is that many people avoid taking them in the first place simply because they find the topic off-putting and would rather avoid it.

#ogilvychange set out to help CEDAR further achieve their mission by finding a way to nudge the public into confronting this challenging subject. They said this was one of the most emotional briefs they had ever taken on, and they came up with the brilliant solution of reframing death education as “Good Grief”. As a brand agenda for the cause, “Good Grief” sends a positive message; engages people in better understanding and supporting the grieving process; and takes away the potentially intimidating connotations of formal education.

CEDAR is already making great progress with developing their new Good Grief programmes and the work done by #ogilvychange has enabled CEDAR to access pro bono support from a web developer, who is currently building their new website, and from a university art department, which will help them create new designs for their branding and brochures in line with Ogilvy’s advice.

#ogilvychange also proposed a suite of initiatives to help CEDAR drive the Good Grief agenda forwards. For example in today’s society there is no longer a social custom, such as the mourning dress of the Victorian era, to indicate that someone is grieving or to give an outward expression to their inner feelings. The #ogilvychange team developed the idea for a visible marker which could be worn to indicate that someone is grieving and that they are open to support during that difficult time.

If you would like to help CEDAR make the most out of the behaviour change solutions developed by #ogilvychange, you can get in touch with us to offer them your support by emailing anna@pimpmycause.org. They are currently looking for further help developing their communications strategy and in making the most out of the new opportunities for partnership and collaboration that the Good Grief agenda is already opening up for them.

Would you like Ogilvy Change to help your cause?

If you would like your cause to be selected to be supported through our partnership with Ogilvy Change please get in touch with us and let us know what behaviour you seek to change.

#ogilvychange takes a behavioural science approach that combines the gravitas of leading research in cognitive psychology and behavioural economics with the communication expertise of the Ogilvy group.

Many of the factors that affect our decision making are subconscious and hence we are not aware that they are driving our behaviour. Ogilvy Change exists to identify the subconscious triggers and barriers to our behaviour according to the leading academic research.

This is an incredible opportunity to harness world leading expertise to help you achieve more for your beneficiaries.