This session places participants at the intersection of two converging fields, behavioral economics and communication, to teach them how our predictable irrationality can become a competitive advantage in persuading people, groups and organizations to take favorable actions. Through lecture, case analysis, and a group project, participants learn and apply a variety of psychological principles to communication thinking, planning and leadership. Participants are challenged to think broadly about communication - advertising, PR, social media, content and internal communications - in their application of cognitive bias and heuristics principles including anchoring, framing, loss aversion, group biases, time-discounting and choice overload.

Ultimately, the goal of this session is to prepare and challenge participants on how best to align positioning and message delivery with driving value for the bottom line.

Participants in this session should expect to have the following critical questions discussed, debated and answered:

What role does/can psychology play in communication planning?
How do cognitive biases and heuristics inform persuasion?
Is it really possibly to control behavior?
How does application of these behavioral economics theories to communication decision-making drive brand value for an organization?