National Social Marketing Centre

Banning tobacco displays seems like a good idea. But if measures aren't based on deep audience understanding, they may have the opposite effect to those intended.

So, the Department of Health has announced a year-long project to reduce violence towards staff in A&E by enlisting the help of designers. The Design Council has begun a search for designers to look at things like the layout of A&E, or introducing new furniture.

A bank in South Korea is offering its more adipose customers an extra incentive to lose weight as they save. 

This morning, a Google Alert flagged up a story on a statement given by Sainsbury's boss, Justin King, to the parliamentary inquiry into behaviour change: "Our starting proposition is that there is no such thing as unhealthy products; there are unhealthy diets."

An example here for connoisseurs of human behaviour. It's an amusing illustration of the 'Asch Paradigm', based on a series of experiments showing the effect that group dynamics can have on individual decisions and behaviour.

Today I attended one of the increasingly proliferate seminars on The Big Society. This particular event was organised and produced by inside government and titled 'Building Economic Regeneration through Social Enterprise'. The speakers were generally engaging and most of the presentations emphasised the increasing role social enterprises and wider civil society will play moving forward.

The Guardian reports that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to sign a law this month that will see smokers fined US$50 for lighting up in municipal parks, beaches and pedestrian areas.