Choice Architecture: The Framework You're Already Using

Episode notes

Send us a note about this episode. We'll reply and thank you on a future episode Every communications campaign you have ever built had a choice architecture inside it. The order you sequenced your calls to action. The option you listed first in a petition. The default you set in an employee survey. The way you structured a crisis response. You made all of those decisions. Some of them deliberately. Most of them by instinct, habit, or convention. And the difference between those two things, between deliberate design and accidental design, is the difference between a campaign that moves people and one that wonders why nobody moved. This episode was recorded live on stage at the IABC World Conference in Toronto on June 14th, 2026, in front of an audience of communications professionals from around the world. Listen For 4:20 What Choice Architecture Means 5:52 The Default Effect 6:50 Printer Defaults Example 8:15 Removing Friction from Sign-Ups 9:31 The EAST Framework Guest: Ann-Marie Blake Website | True Website | LinkedIn Doug Substack | Website | LinkedIn Are you a brand with a podcast that needs support? Book a meeting with Doug Downs to talk about it.

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