Seven wins to becoming a habit, for good brands, organisations and missions

Making your brand a ‘habit brand’ seems linked to your success in many categories – In our research, consumers were asked to describe a brand they consider a habit for a range of regular tasks, from brushing teeth to listening to music and social media to holidays. The results suggest being viewed as a habit brand helps secure your position in many categories, for example with 61% of people considering Colgate a habit brand, 55% Facebook and 33% Spotify.

Becoming a ‘habit brand’ involves a combination of factors – consumers suggested the factors that make brands a ‘habit’ include: being easiest for the task (44%), being trusted or unique (38%), making people feel good (29%) and people liking what the brand stands for (28%). These are important considerations for your product, positioning and communication and for how you bring them to life creatively – but they’re not the full answer to what really makes a habit. Our behaviour design x creativity approach is underpinned by the scientific secrets.

Some categories appear to have more ‘habit headroom’ than others – Understanding your category and the ‘habit’ opportunity is crucial. For example, in dental care, three brands stood for 79% of habits, whereas exercise doesn’t have a clear ‘habit brand’, with 56% of people not able to name a brand that they’d turn to to exercise, despite physical wellbeing being the top habit people wish to create.

Don’t underestimate how hard creating habits is – 49% of consumers find it challenging to successfully adopt new habits. Incorporating something new or different into your life is HARD. We’ve got to remember that. Just because you want people to do it doesn’t mean they want to. Just over a fifth of people have found it HARDER to make habits successfully since COVID, too. Be specific and be pessimistic about how hard your ask will be for your audience – it’ll make you more effective.

The public wants help from brands and businesses to make positive habits – 5% of Britons say they can NEVER make new habits stick, 7% have unsuccessfully been trying to make a new habit for years and 37% say habit-making is always hit and miss. There is clearly potential for good brands to support health, wealth and happiness by helping people form positive habits. 82% of people said they would welcome free help to do this – even those who say they’re good at habit-making.

People have a mixed understanding of the proven ways to make habits stick – with a fitting 21% believing doing a new habit for 21 days is enough to make it stick (this idea was popularised in the 1960s but it’s been challenged by more recent academic work including from UCL and Stanford). Another 21% believed they should promise themselves a reward only after a long time of doing the habit. This suggests brands, businesses and organisations can offer significant help to audiences in improving their ability to make positive habits – if they understand the best ways to do it.  The received wisdom of using education, motivation or punishment to get people to do things is flawed.

People have three major habits they want help from brands or businesses with but the importance varies between groups – Physical wellbeing is the most desired type of habit for Britons overall (34%). It is over twice as desirable as the second and third most desired habits, financial wellbeing (14%) and mental wellbeing (13%).

Want to know more? Get in touch hello@welcometoshook.com or look out for some events in the New Year. 

Research conducted with Vitreous Worldwide and Opinium