We don’t just build brands, we change behaviour.
We work with businesses, charities and governments to drive social and environmental change.
What is AE Change?
A team that specialises in complexity: complex issues, complex psychology. We combine decades of expertise with deep insight and high-impact creativity to create positive change in society, for the planet.
Case Studies
Please contact us to see our full creds (and view exclusive case studies)
We used self-consistency theory to promote recycling
London Recycle
Behaviour Change / Campaign
Young Londoners say they care about the environment, but the stats tell a different story. This campaign was designed to close the gap between talk and action by creating cognitive dissonance – a mental discomfort that occurs when you say one thing, but do another.
80%
Behaviour change: 80% of young Londoners said they reconsidered their recycling behaviour
76%
Recycling increase: 76% of Young Londoners surveyed said they recycled more
We tackled sexual harassment across a London borough
Lambeth Council
Behaviour Change / Campaign
Lambeth - a South London borough - has multiple ‘hot spots’ of sexual harassment and assault. Previous efforts had spoken to men directly, but they weren’t working. So we leveraged ’the friend effect’ to drive results. By calling on mates to watch out for their mates, we created pro-social behaviour that had a significant impact on reported incidents.
40
safe havens were established across the borough to as part of the campaign
482
Almost 500 incidents were reported as a direct consequence of the campaign
We helped end 50 years of Tory domination
Labour UK
Behaviour Change / Campaign
The Conservative Party had dominated Wandsworth’s local elections for five decades. Where typical campaigns focus on the local candidate, we took aim at the party’s most prominent figure - PM Boris Johnson - and asked one simple question: 'would you trust this man with your money, schools, taxes, bins?’ The answer was no. A simple pivot in thinking that drove historic results.
Won
Labour won the borough in a decisive victory
50 years
The win ended half a century of Tory rule
We reduced littering with the observer effect – during COVID and beyond
London Recycles
Behaviour Change / Campaign
During the pandemic, parks became socialising hotspots. And littering went up exponentially. The observer effect is proven to stop negative behaviour – if someone’s being watched, they behave. So we created observers that felt perfectly at home in parks - gnomes. A playful idea with radical results.
84%
Unprompted awareness: 84% of park visitors spotted the gnomes, with no prompting
23%
Reduction in litter: over the course of the experiment, the park had 23% less litter