This is one of the core service categories we offer at Ogilvy Consulting, the strategic consulting arm of the Ogilvy ecosystem. In this blog we focus on this practice in particular, understanding that it is part of a broader portfolio of capabilities that work in an integrated way to transform organizations.
Most business and communication strategies assume that people are rational, that they process information objectively, and that they act in their own best interest. The reality is radically different: people make decisions based on mental shortcuts, cognitive biases, emotions, social context, and deeply rooted habits that mostly operate unconsciously.
Behavioral Science lets us understand how people really think, feel, and act — not how we assume they do. And more importantly, it lets us design interventions, communications, and experiences that genuinely influence behavior in a predictable, measurable way.
Our Behavioral Science practice applies research from psychology, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and the social sciences to design solutions that generate real, sustainable behavior change — whether in consumers, employees, citizens, or stakeholders.
Behavioral Insights & Diagnostics: Understanding the Why Behind the What
Our behavioral insights and diagnostics observe what people actually do (not what they say they'll do) to scientifically diagnose the invisible barriers — cognitive biases, emotional frictions, context — that block the desired behavior, revealing exactly why the gap between intention and action exists.
Rigorous behavioral diagnosis identifies the cognitive biases at work (do people overvalue immediate benefits versus future ones? Do they let themselves be disproportionately influenced by how information is presented?), the contextual barriers that make the desired behavior harder (is it too complex? Does it require too much effort? Is it not available at the critical moment?), and the real versus the stated motivators (what people say they value often differs from what drives their actual decisions).
We work with organizations to identify why their customers, employees, or audiences aren't adopting the desired behaviors. Instead of relying on direct surveys — where people often have trouble expressing their motivations clearly — we use methods that reveal the true drivers of behavior. These include analyzing observed behavior, controlled experiments, identifying friction points in experiences, and mapping the decision architectures that shape their choices.
The value of this diagnostic isn't only in understanding — it's in designing precise interventions that address the real obstacles and motivators, not the apparent ones.
Cognitive Segmentation: Beyond Demographics
Our cognitive segmentation divides audiences by HOW THEY THINK AND DECIDE, identifying cognitive patterns, dominant tendencies, and processing styles. This lets us design personalized strategies that connect with different ways of thinking — making one message work with people who process information in very different ways.
Two people with the same demographics can make very different decisions due to variations in risk perception, in how they process information, or in the weight they give to social norms or environmental stimuli. Cognitive segmentation captures these fundamental differences.
This makes it possible to design differentiated strategies that recognize that what's relevant for one segment may not resonate with another. For some, functional benefits and rational evidence are decisive; for others, emotional connection or a sense of social belonging is more persuasive; and for others, making action easier by reducing friction is key.
We work with organizations to develop cognitive segmentations that go beyond who their customers are and dig into how they think and decide — allowing strategic personalization of products, services, communication, and experiences based on the factors that really influence their behavior.
Intervention Design: Architecting Behavior Change
Our intervention design is built on scientific actions — such as nudges, choice-architecture adjustments, and friction reduction — to make the desired behavior easier without demanding heroic effort. We apply validated behavioral economics principles to turn intention into action and deliver sustainable, measurable behavior change. At Interaction Ogilvy we worked on a case that perfectly exemplifies this.
According to the World Health Organization, by 2025, Costa Rica would face the worst drought in its history due to the "El Niño" phenomenon. The behavioral problem was clear: the average Costa Rican consumes more water than the Latin American standard. Costa Ricans had never suffered drinking water scarcity and had always thought of water as an infinite resource, so they wasted it without care.
The behavioral insight was critical: Costa Ricans weren't aware of their high water consumption because they believed it was an unlimited resource. To change this behavior, we needed a new way to visualize and talk about water use.
The intervention we designed was called La Métrica Embotellada (The Bottled Metric): we created a tool that converts daily water consumption into 2-liter bottles, making it easy to understand and providing tips for saving water. This tool was promoted by media, influencers, and a former President of Costa Rica.
The intervention worked because it attacked the real behavioral problem: abstraction. "Liters of water" is an abstract metric that doesn't generate an emotional reaction. "2-liter bottles" is concrete, visual, and triggers an immediate reaction when you see how many bottles represent your daily consumption. That's behavioral intervention design: making the abstract tangible, making the invisible visible, and making the desired behavior easier by providing actionable information at the relevant moment.
Communication Strategy: Messages That Really Influence
Our communication strategy designs messages that generate specific behavior, not just awareness. We identify what barriers block action, what mental frames resonate, what channels reach people at the right moment, and what messages make it easier for people to act.
All of this is evaluated with metrics of real behavior change, not solely with communication indicators. At Interaction Ogilvy we worked with Casio Costa Rica during a particular challenge: in response to COVID-19, the government issued a 50% capacity limit on all businesses. For Casio stores, that meant they could only have 1 customer per store at a time. The real behavioral challenge wasn't the capacity limit — it was not losing any customer while they were in line waiting for their turn.
The communication strategy we created was called Find It: a promotion that entertained customers and leveraged the store window. We placed 2,000 watches on display and synchronized them all except one. When customers found it, they got a 30% discount on their next purchase.
The communication worked because it understood the psychology of the moment: waiting in line generates impatience, frustration, and abandonment. We transformed passive waiting into active engagement. We turned lost time into a game with a potential reward. We leveraged the scarcity principle (only one unsynchronized watch) and the investment principle (the more time you spend looking, the more committed you are to finding it). The window stopped being a visual obstacle and became the medium of the experience.
This campaign won multiple recognitions: Effie Awards Costa Rica 2021 (1 Bronze in Crisis Response, 1 Silver in Reduced Budget) and a Silver award at the FePi festival in Argentina in the Online 2020 COVID category. That's behavioral communication strategy: designing experiences that don't only inform but transform how people feel and act in specific contexts.
Corporate Training: Building Behavioral Capabilities
Our corporate training designs learning programs based on cognitive and behavioral science to close the gap between knowledge and action. We achieve this through deliberate practice, spaced reinforcement, and realistic simulations — generating measurable, sustainable behavior change in real work, not just higher satisfaction scores in evaluations.
Effective behavioral training recognizes several principles. Learning is stronger when distributed over time rather than concentrated in a single intensive event. Deliberate practice with immediate feedback generates more change than passive exposure to content. And the environment where what's learned is applied determines whether the new behavior is sustained or fades after training.
We work with organizations to design training programs that incorporate evidence-based learning architectures: spaced microlearning that reinforces key concepts repeatedly over time, simulations and role-plays that allow practicing new behaviors in safe environments, nudges and reminders in the workflow that make application in real context easier, and peer-to-peer accountability systems that leverage positive social pressure to sustain change.
The goal isn't for employees to "know more" — it's for them to consistently act differently in situations where it matters, and for those new behaviors to be sustained beyond the initial post-training enthusiasm.
Behavioral Science isn't magic — it's the rigorous application of decades of research on how humans actually function. In a world where capturing attention is increasingly difficult and generating sustainable behavior change is the real challenge, understanding and applying these sciences isn't a methodological luxury — it's a fundamental competitive advantage.
Ready to explore how we can help you design interventions that generate real, measurable change? Let's talk.
Written by Daniela Laclé
Head of Consulting
