What's in our name

What’s in our name.

Just like that I wrote to Ogilvy Change. It was a ‘Dear Sir/Madam’ email, to no one in particular. I was heading to London in February of 2018 to present a poster on Health Behaviour Change at the Centre for Behaviour Change at UCL, and thought that if I got the chance I’d love to visit Ogilvy. I really wanted to meet Rory, because I’d been reading his work for a long time. I had paid some fairly hefty sums – hefty for us in Trinidad because of the exchange rate - to download his stuff from the IPA website, and I printed them, so that added up too. I got three: “Behavioural Economics: red hot or red herring?”, “We’re all Choice Architects now” and “Behavioural Economics in Action”

“Hello Steve, What a tremendous opportunity, thank you for reaching out.” That was Pete Dyson, Senior Behavioural Strategist at Ogilvy Change writing back. Not only was he interested in meeting, but he was already clearing a date! I was overjoyed to hear from him because often when we write to people we don’t know in big companies, we expect nothing. Not so this time. What impressed me was that I was not a potential client and I was writing from a very small two-man operation, from a tiny country, so Ogilvy Change had no money to make from me, but Pete still agreed to meet. You can’t put a price on that kind of generosity. People in high places in the Caribbean can learn from this kind of attitude.

But here is what interested Pete, and later on I realized that it’s also what interested Rory.

I had said in my email that I’d like to pioneer a behaviour change agency in the Caribbean and that I’d, a couple years earlier, started a health behaviour change company. At that time no one was doing Behavioural Design in Trinidad apart from me. Still in 2020 no one is doing it apart from me. I need to add this note here that yesterday, Thursday 24th September, speaking at Now!Fest, Rory made the exact point that already established companies should start growing behavioural science practices with creatives in small operations across the world. So, it makes sense why Pete and Rory would have agreed to meet. They want to see behavioural science creative practices grow across the world, and their being part of the first such practice in the Caribbean will be exciting.

The wishes to set it up are one thing. The work to get it done is another. It won’t be right to call names here. But when I returned from London, after spending a week at Ogilvy with Pete and his fantastic team [they created some truly great power-points for me to present to potential partners here], and after getting a gentleman’s agreement from Pete and Rory that they will lend their name and expertise to a Caribbean agency, I wrote to ‘big’ people in Trinidad with this opportunity. I heard nothing. That’s life in the Caribbean. If you’re not already somebody you can’t be somebody. This cultural trait is terrible but it’s especially paralyzing and harmful to start-ups like ours where we need buy-in from policy makers in government and big business. Anyone familiar with doing business in the region will know what I’m talking about. Pete and Rory should do something on Coursera for them. And the thing is, ours is a desperately needed practice that can bring big, positive change to the Caribbean. And change at small scales designed to grow organically is affordable.

Dr. Ron Sookram got it the very first time when I met him. He’s a bright young academic at the Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business here in Trinidad. Ron set up meetings with his team and my team and we zoomed with Pete in London. It was about to start! We needed a name and I recommended the Caribbean Behaviour Change Network. That’s not a power name or an accidental name, it’s a name that promises to offer what Rory and Pete has offered us, generous support to grow creative behavioural science practices. That’s why the ‘Network’. And that’s why we have a ‘sail’ in our logo, to invite people on board to help us chart the waters, rough and smooth.

So we are the Caribbean Behaviour Change Network proudly powered by Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business, Ogilvy BSP, London and Vessel, Trinidad and Tobago. We’re pioneers and open for business, so please do like Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland and write us back.