Ogilvy Announces Line-Up for Nudgestock 2021, the World's Largest Festival of Creativity and Behavioral Science

NEW YORK, May 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ogilvy announced today the lineup for Nudgestock 2021, the can't-miss festival curated by Ogilvy Consulting which brings the worlds of creativity and behavioral science together. For the second consecutive year, Nudgestock will be available live and online across the globe for free. The day of talks, provocations, and discussions will be held on Friday, June 11 with continuous programming from 2:30 AM, EST (8:30 AM, BST) to 2:30 PM, EST (8:30 PM, BST) streaming live on Nudgestock.co.uk. Register for your spot and see the full program agenda here.

Nudgestock 2021 features a roster of the brightest, most provocative, and inspiring minds spanning the worlds of behavioral science, marketing technology, sociology, and entertainment. Speakers will reveal why the keys to understanding hot-button issues like mindfulness, climate change, and vaccine hesitancy are all about behavioral science. This year's festival will tackle themes including:

• Resetting the New normal with Behavioral Science: Why We Can't Go Back - In many ways, the pandemic has offered a reset. Hear about the research and applied experience of experts propelling forward solutions addressing climate change, inequality, urban mobility and more.
• Echo Chambers: Why You're in One and How to Break Out of It - In the age of "the social dilemma," we find ourselves pushed farther and farther apart from those we disagree with. Tribal divides go beyond social media feeds – they impact our world view, our values, and importantly, our actions. What does the field of behavioral science have to teach us about strengthening of today's social fabric?
• Cut the Stigma: Mental Health - Conversations about resilience and vulnerability have never been more important. Backed by cutting edge research and rich lived experience, Nudgestock's speakers will share their best advice for holding space for yourself and for others.
• Innervation: Behavioral Science to Outsmart the Competition - Behavioral Science provides a valuable counterpoint to the reductionist view of business as a logical, quantifiable battle for efficiency gains. Without some acknowledgement of human psychology and epistemology, without understanding the need for framing and storytelling, you can be as logical as you like and still fail, even if your product is objectively better and cheaper than the competitors'. Nudgestock will explore why psychological innovation is the most enduring way to gain a competitive advantage.
• Fighting the Pandemic: When to Nudge and to Shove - Hear our speakers' thoughts on the behavioral aspect of the coronavirus, Covid-19, and how to tackle its spread.

Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy UK said: "One of the most interesting developments of the last year is that, suddenly, every business question is a behavioral question. There has never been a moment where marketing insight and creativity has been more needed in business and government. In times of stability, businesses tend to take human behaviour as a given, and focus on the more deterministic, operational questions posed by the balance sheet. Now, unless you can answer the human questions first, every other question is theoretical. With Nudgestock we aim to bring together some of the best of thinking in behavioral science with the simple aim of exploring how real-world humans think, decide and act—something that has never felt more relevant." 

Since 2013, Ogilvy's Behavioral Science Practice has held Nudgestock in the UK. Last year, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Nudgestock to evolve into the virtual, global event it is today. It has featured a mix of Nobel Prize-Winning economists, magicians, primatologists, evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists all dedicated to the simple aim of studying the complex science of how we think, decide and act in the real-world.

Ogilvy is committed to delivering a representative and diverse set of speakers and perspectives to attendees and this year's line-up has been DICE (Diversity & Inclusion at Conferences and Events) approved and certified. Some of the 2021 headliners include:

• John Cleese is a renowned actor, comedian, screenwriter and producer and one of the co-founders of the comedy troupe Monty Python, which created popular TV series  and  four  hugely successful  films,  And  Now  For  Something  Completely  Different (1971),  Monty  Python  and  the  Holy  Grail  (1974),  The  Life  of  Brian (1979)  and  The  Meaning  of  Life  (1983). He also co-wrote and starred in the hugely-popular sitcom Fawlty Towers and the film A Fish Called Wanda, for which he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. For  his  work  on  television,  Cleese  won  an  Emmy  Award  for  his guest  role  on  the  comedy  series  Cheers,  and  received  another Emmy  nomination  for  "Will  and  Grace". Cleese has also authored two best-selling books on psychology, Families  and  How to  Survive  Them  and  Life  and  How  to  Survive  It.

• Daniel Kahneman is the author of the best-selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow and is one of the leaders of modern behavorial economics, as highlighted in Michael Lewis's The Undoing Project. In the late 1970s and early 80s, Kahneman and Amos Tversky published two landmark papers laying the foundation for what the subject is today: "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk" and "Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases". Since then, Kahneman has moved on to studying new subjects including hedonic psychology, algorithmic data analytics, and, most recently, artificial intelligence. He has also spent several years consulting for top financial services firms worldwide. Kahneman's latest book, Noise, releasing May 2021, explains how and why humans are so susceptible to noise in judgment, and what can be done about it. 

• Cerita Bethea has spent over 25 years applying principles of Behavorial Science to Product Development, Marketing and MR, Innovation, and Design, having earned a PhD in Cognitive Psychology. Her career spans the automotive industry at both Ford Motor Company and Toyota as lead Human Factors Engineer, to Kimberly-Clark Corp where she led the adoption of  behavioral frameworks to drive brand building platforms, and most recently at The Coca-Cola Company where she leverages models of behavior and decision making at scale to fuel and sustain brand growth.

• Shahzeen Attari is an Associate Professor at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington, whose research focuses on people's judgments and decisions about climate change and resource use. She has investigated how people think about energy and water use, how people conceptualize water systems, and is currently studying how to use stories to fuse facts and feelings to motivate action on climate change.

• Ruby Wax  is a highly successful comedian and presenter who had her own show on the BBC for 25 years interviewing among others, Donald Trump, Imelda Marcos, Madonna and O.J. Simpson.  She is author of four Sunday Times best- selling books, and has also for the last 25 years been performing her live one-woman shows globally, until recently directed by the late Alan Rickman.  She has a Master's degree in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy from Oxford University and is a highly-acclaimed TedTalk Global speaker.

Ogilvy's Behavioral Science Practice creatively applies the insights of contemporary behavioral science to diagnose, create and validate 'Unseen Opportunities' and to create giant impact.  Be it tasked with improving the security of Europe's busiest airports, changing how people interact with the world's most popular social media, or leading sustainability projects across the globe, their work spans product design, experience design, organizational change and behavior change communications.

About Ogilvy 

Ogilvy has been producing iconic, culture-changing marketing campaigns that have grown brands and businesses since the day its founder David Ogilvy opened up shop in 1948. Today, with 132 offices in 83 countries, Ogilvy's singular ambition is to be the best creative partner and platform for growth on the planet. Ogilvy's deep expertise in almost every field coupled with its award-winning global network allow it to scale value-driving ideas at lightning speed – all powered by world-class creativity to give clients an unfair advantage in this complex, noisy, hyperconnected world. In 2020, two of the world's most prestigious creative award shows, D&AD and The One Show, recognized Ogilvy as the Network of the Year, a reflection of its ability to use creativity to transform business and culture. Ogilvy is a WPP company (NASDAQ: WPPGY). For more information, visit Ogilvy.com, and follow Ogilvy on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

For more information contact: David Ford / [email protected]

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