BE Good: In-House Agency

BE Good is an academic-led, student-driven creative agency and research area within the School of Communication at Falmouth University. Our mission is to influence consumer behaviour and create positive change through the ethical application of behavioural economics (BE), while supporting students to get real-world experience.

Funder_Cornwall Council logo

Project details

Project lead	Lucy Cokes
Centre alignment	TBC
Start date	December 2018
End date	Ongoing
External website	https://falmouthadvertising.com

BE Good’s past clients include Cornwall Council, UK Droughts & Water Scarcity, Safer Cornwall and Citizen’s Advice Cornwall.

From briefing to pitch process, clients benefit from the perspectives, skills and approaches of our Creative Advertising BA and Marketing Communications BA students, who in turn gain invaluable feedback and experience for real-world challenges.

Students' work in BE Good is informed by our interdisciplinary course curricula, which refers to and introduces qualitative research methods of sociology, theoretical frameworks from economics and psychology that explain human behaviour through the lens of social preferences, heuristics and norms.

There is a need for a more direct approach to solving behavioural change issues beyond educational and informational campaigns. BE Good provides a valuable service to public sector organisations and charities to get high quality 360 degree campaigns while also providing employability opportunities for students.

This project capitalises on the resources of staff and students at Falmouth to address market sector needs. It has allowed us to work in partnerships with external organisations to positively impact societal wellbeing.

Project team

Lucy Cokes

Senior Lecturer, Creative Advertising

Lucy is a Senior Lecturer at Falmouth University, School of Communications. She has been working in ...

Lucy Cokes

Dr Cui Su

Head of Advertising

After her boss at Young & Rubicam told her 'you're the best account handler I've ever had but go...

Dr Cui Su

Joel Ferguson

Course Leader, Creative Advertising

After studying multimedia design and branding, Joel began his career by starting the agency, OTA Dur...

Joel Ferguson

Lucy Cokes: Lucy leads the Behavioural Change for Good modules and has been the lead on this project. Her history of running a large digital agency provides her with the skill set to manage the client relationships, budgets, suppliers and production development with students.
Cui Su: Cui worked on the About Drought project with Exeter University and been pivotal in arranging knowledge exchange events (workshops and talks) with Ogilvy's Rory Sutherland and David Fanner
Joel Ferguson: Joel has worked to develop our external website to showcase the BE Good projects, as well as landing pages for online resources for various campaigns.

Partners

Clients

Safer Cornwall / Safer Streets - https://safercornwall.co.uk/
Cornwall Council - https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/
Citizens Advice Bureau, Cornwall - https://citizensadvicecornwall.org.uk/

Recipients of Healthy Relationships Campaigns

Truro College - https://www.truro-penwith.ac.uk/
The SU - https://www.thesu.org.uk/
Cornwall College - https://www.cornwall.ac.uk/
Barnardo's - https://www.barnardos.org.uk/

Knowledge Exchange Partners

Rory Sutherland and David Fanner, Ogilvy https://www.ogilvy.com/
Dr Rebecca Pearce, Research Fellow at University of Exeter / About Drought

Funders

Safer Cornwall (Safer Streets Fund) - £32,500 over three years via Cornwall Council

Outcomes & outputs

With the aim of supporting knowledge exchange between Falmouth University and the local business community, Lucy Cokes and Cui Su have hosted two ticketed public talk evenings (in 2023 and 2024) to introduce the field and discipline of BE.

The talks were delivered by Rory Sutherland, British advertising executive and founder of Ogilvy UK’s behavioural science practice, and supported by Falmouth alumni, David Fanner, an applied BE consultant.

Lucy Cokes spoke at the 2023 VAWG conference in Cornwall that was also live streamed and available to watch here. The conference keynote speaker and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, Nicole Jacobs, praised BE Good’s work and even taking one of the sample outcomes for the presentation.

Projects, clients and campaigns

Project: Water Scarcity

Client: About Drought

Output: The students came up with an inspiring range of peer-to-peer dynamic ideas and three were selected to be showcased to delegates at the Drought & Water Scarcity Conference at University of Oxford’s Pembroke College in March 2019.

Project: Safer Streets Cornwall

Client: Cornwall Council

Output: The students pitched a range of exciting ideas and two were selected to receive funding to be put in production. The selected campaigns were:

“Not All Hero’s Wear Capes”.
The campaign “Not All Hero’s Wear Capes” could be seen at bus stops, in night clubs in and around Falmouth and Truro and the message was reinforced via social media and a dedicated campaign micro-site.
“Violets Reality”

Project: Healthy Relationships

Client: Cornwall Council, Truro College, Barnardos

Output: The students pitched variety of detailed ideas and three were selected to receive funding to be put into production. The selected campaigns were:

“Do Not Ignore The Signs”
“Heart to Heart”
“Three Brave Monkeys”

Falmouth University Research Repository

Cokes, Lucy 
 (2023) Embedding Live Briefs in the Curriculum: A guide for good practice. Working Paper.

Cokes, Lucy 
 (2023) Talk at the conference: Ending domestic abuse, sexual violence, and violence against women and girls in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. In: Ending domestic abuse, sexual violence, and violence against women and girls in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly., 11th October 2023, Wadebridge.

Project impact & recognition

BBC Radio Cornwall – October 2023
West Britain - 5th October 2023
Falmouth Packet – January 2022 https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/19858314.funding-falmouth-tackle-violence-women-cornwall/
Falmouth Packet - October 2021 https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/19657352.falmouth-streets-made-safer-women-33-000-grant/

“During 3 years of studying Creative Advertising, I had a great opportunity to answer multiple live briefs. It was not only exciting to meet people from the industry and work on big brands, but also it was a really valuable experience. Presenting work to people who have been in the industry for years and getting feedback from them helped improve our work and learn [...] I was excited about the opportunity to actually make a campaign, still as a student. It was a great way of getting some work experience and seeing how the industry works. I believe that the campaign I made is one of the most valuable experiences on my CV.” BA Student

“I would say that this is the single most valuable experience I've had through my whole year here at Falmouth. This taught me pitching skills, really enhanced my ability to collaborate and problem solve, as well as making me feel really positive and motivated about my work because I was helping to enact some real change for some real people. I have recently been rewriting my CV to apply for jobs and this project holds the biggest paragraph on the page, I think it's been a really invaluable experience for my future employability because it proves that I can function well within a professional environment and work effectively to deadlines set outside of, and alongside, my university commitments. This has really helped me to have more confidence in my own problem solving abilities and also to panic less when faced with a change of plans. I'm not just a graduate copywriter now, I'm a graduate copywriter with a live project on my CV, and I'm leaving university also able to pitch competitively, organise a project's budget, communicate within busy project meetings, and adjust my writing to fit the requirements of a tight brief.” MA Student

“Overall I believe implementing live briefs in assessments is a useful and insightful way to start merging university and work, and give students the opportunity to put into real practice what they are studying as a degree, and see this practice being implemented in real life.” BA Student

“Overall, this project really made me re-evaluate what kind of advertising career I want to have and made me realise that advertising for change is what I want to produce. Who else can say they’ve produced an entire campaign before their third year of university? Let alone one for social change.” BA Student

"The campaign is going really well here. We have great feedback and clear evidence of engagement with the campaign. We have had a number of disclosures and people seeking support from students and staff." Truro College

“Thank you so much for joining us [...] and sharing the amazing work your students created. It feels like we are really building a great relationship with the University and I hope our partnerships continues to blossom. Please once gain pass on our most sincere thanks to your students, who have engaged once again so whole heartedly into our briefs to produce some truly inspiring work.” Cornwall Council

“I thought the standard, confidence and professionalism of the student pitches and research was exceptional.” Safer Cornwall