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At Together, creativity is more than just visual appeal; it’s about designing ideas that truly connect with people and drive real change. By weaving behavioural science into their creative process, the team turns psychological insights into strategic tools that shape messaging, guide visuals, and inspire meaningful action.
We sat down with Paulina, Behavioural Scientist at Together, to talk about how the agency blends data and design, logic and emotion, evidence and artistry. In this conversation, she reveals how behavioural science has become a key part of Together’s identity, shaping everything from the first spark of an idea to the final campaign rollout.
It actually started before I joined the company two years ago. Together collaborated with the University of Nottingham, where behavioural scientists helped embed behavioural science thinking and tools into the agency’s ways of working.
Since then, integrating behavioural science into our approach including our creative process has really become part of our DNA. It helps us stand out from other creative agencies. We’ve been refining this mix of behavioural science and creativity for years now, improving how we work and execute ideas. As new evidence and tools emerge, we adapt and sharpen our approach.
There are definitely some briefs that naturally lend themselves to behavioural science, but we look at every brief through a behavioural lens. Sometimes it’s just a light touch spotting a few quick wins for a specific audience. Other times, it’s a much deeper dive where we review evidence and identify principles to guide the strategy and shape creative thinking.
Most briefs, at their core, are about changing behaviour. Whether it’s getting someone to try a new product, adopt a new habit, or see a brand differently, it all comes down to influencing behaviour.
For example, a new product launch might focus on reducing uncertainty and making the first use feel low effort and high reward. A rebranding project could look at how to transfer familiarity and trust from the old identity to the new one, without losing existing loyal customers. And for customer acquisition, it’s about widening appeal while protecting the identity of the current audience.
It’s all about the team’s balance of skills and collaboration. My role is to bring insights grounded in human psychology. I set useful constraints based on evidence, but I don’t dictate the creative outcome. The creative directors and designers handle the execution, integrating those principles into their ideas.
I stay close enough to ensure what I call behavioural integrity, but not so close that I’m micro-directing. For me, the exciting part is seeing how those psychological insights translate into visuals and campaigns that feel emotional, relatable, and effective.
We usually start by interrogating the client’s brief as a team: strategy, creative, and account leads all come together to define what success looks like. I specifically look for the behaviour we need to shift, who the audience is, and what barriers or opportunities exist. Then, I gather evidence, this might include client insights, academic research, or even examples from other categories.
From there, I distill everything into a short set of actionable principles, usually two to five key ones, like scarcity, loss aversion, or reducing perceived effort. I share these with the creative team as a “behavioural brief,” and together we co-create ideas around them.
We refine those routes, share them with the client for feedback, and keep evolving until the creative feels both behaviourally sound and creatively strong.
We often use frameworks like COM-B and the habit loop to understand the context behind a behaviour: what enables it, what blocks it, and where the opportunities lie.
From there, we pick the most relevant principles. Some, like salience and social proof, come up frequently. Salience helps brands stand out in a noisy world, it’s about having distinctive visual or sonic assets that people instantly recognise. Social proof, on the other hand, shows that others like you are already engaging with the brand.
It sounds simple, but it’s powerful. It could mean showing real people using the product, highlighting testimonials, or framing numbers in a more human and relatable way.
It shapes almost everything from messaging to visuals to digital experiences.
When it comes to messaging, we keep calls-to-action simple and make rewards immediately visible. In visuals, we focus on attention and comprehension. For instance, we know that featuring people in images makes an impact feel real. Even something as specific as gaze theory where someone in the image looks at the product can direct the viewer’s focus.
For digital work, it’s about clarity and flow, showing one benefit per frame, one choice at a time, and clear prompts for what comes next. It’s small things like these that make a big difference in how people respond.
We recently worked on a campaign for a food brand where behavioural science played a key role right from the start. We used it to group principles into clusters that defined each creative route giving every concept a clear behavioural spine.
That ensured the ideas didn’t blur into one another, and each route felt distinct in its emotional tone and visual approach. The client immediately saw the behavioural thinking behind each concept. It helped us stand out, win the project, and gave the client confidence that the work was both bold and backed by evidence. That’s exactly the balance we aim for: creativity that’s free but also disciplined.
That’s one of the biggest challenges. Ideally, we measure the change in behaviour things like purchases, signups, or support-seeking actions.
For example, in our “Charlie is in Control” campaign, which aimed to raise awareness about the negative effects of cocaine use, the key metric was people accessing support. The client tracked a clear increase after the campaign, which was incredibly rewarding to see.
When direct behaviour change is harder to measure, we use proxies like completion rates, repeat visits, or recall of key action cues. It’s all about linking what we design to real-world outcomes.
Yes, the biggest one is that it’s a quick fix!
People often get excited about “nudges” and want to jump straight into applying them, but without context, that’s just guesswork. We spend time understanding the brand, audience, and challenge before picking the most relevant principles.
It does take more effort, but it leads to creativity that’s genuinely relevant and effective, not just clever on paper. My mantra is always: context matters.
It’s hard to talk about the future of creativity without mentioning AI. I see it as a tool that helps us work faster and smarter, not something that replaces human judgment.
AI speeds up the evidence-gathering and analysis process, helping us apply behavioural thinking to more briefs in less time. But the real creativity still comes from people and can’t be replaced by AI; from how we interpret insights, connect emotions, to engaging storytelling.
The future, I believe, lies in blending science, technology, and imagination. With AI handling the groundwork and humans bringing empathy and intuition, we’ll be able to create ideas that not only look great but truly influence behaviour.
At Together, behavioural science isn’t just a support function, it’s a creative catalyst. It helps decode what drives people, turning psychological insight into practical strategy and creative storytelling. By grounding ideas in evidence and bringing them to life with imagination, Together bridges the gap between what looks good and what works.
The future of creativity, as Paulina sees it, isn’t about choosing between science and art, it’s about blending them. As technology like AI accelerates access to insights, the human side of creativity becomes even more important. Because in the end, great ideas don’t just capture attention, they change behaviour. And that’s exactly what Together is built to do.
Curious how behavioural science can shape your next big idea? Get in touch now, we’d love to collaborate.
