Menu
Close
.svg)
For those clients and students who have sat through one of my Habit Lens lectures or capabilities presentations, this story might sound familiar. It’s an example I frequently utilize to illustrate a simple but important point: if we want to understand behavior, truly understand it, we have to start with habit.
Because habit is not just one part of behavioral science. It is foundational.
I’ve been a Tide laundry detergent user for as long as I can remember.
Growing up in Washington, DC, one of my regular chores around the house was doing the family laundry. I would go from room to room, collecting clothes from hampers, carrying everything down to the basement in a basket, and loading the washing machine. I can still picture myself scooping or pouring Tide into the drum, starting the cycle, and going upstairs to do my homework.
Before we had a dryer, I would take the wet clothes outside and hang them on a clothesline, securing them with clothespins. It was a routine: repetitive, physical, and oddly satisfying in its own way. When we eventually purchased a dryer, it made things easier, but the core behavior remained the same.
And through all of it, there was one constant. The smell of Tide.
That scent became embedded in the routine. It wasn’t just detergent; it was part of the entire experience. Over time, it became automatic. When it came to laundry, there was no decision to make. It was just what we did.
Fast forward to 2024. My older daughter came home from college for winter break, and within a matter of days, she had identified a problem. Whether it was the idealism that comes with college life, living in close quarters with other students, or the influence of social media, I’m not entirely sure. But something had changed, and Ruthie had a concern about something in our home:
We were using Tide.
According to her -- and, more specifically, according to her friends -- Tide was harmful to marine life. “Tide kills fish,” became a recurring theme at our dinner table.
Now, I can’t say I went and fact-checked the science behind it. But that wasn’t really what stuck with me. What stuck was that something I had done automatically for decades was now being looked at differently, through a completely new lens.
What was once neutral, even positive, now carried a hint of negative meaning.
And that is how disruption begins.
To her credit, my daughter didn’t just critique the current behavior; she readily offered an alternative: Mrs. Meyers’ Clean Day Detergent. This was what she and her friends used up at Ithaca.
It was readily available on Amazon. I ordered it, and it arrived the next day.
From a behavioral standpoint, this is critical to the process of habit change.
The transition from disruption to awareness to trial was frictionless. There was no need to search, no need to visit a store, no real effort required. The path from “maybe we should try something else” to actually doing it was almost immediate. That matters.
Because even when a habit is disrupted, change might not happen unless trial is easy.
The first time we used Mrs. Meyers, one thing stood out immediately. The fresh scent.
It was different. Floral. Lighter. It seemed, for lack of a better term, more “natural.” That sensory feedback also mattered. It created a positive first impression, something that made the new behavior feel good.
At the same time, there was a second layer of reinforcement.
The "behavioral belief" -- whether fully validated or not -- that this product was more environmentally friendly. That it was somehow better for the planet. That, perhaps, fewer fish were being harmed as part of the near daily process of doing our laundry.
Those two elements -- sensory reward and belief-based reinforcement -- seemed to collaborate in our brains.
Together, they strengthened the feedback loop.
What I find particularly interesting is how my perception of Tide has changed in the process.
For years, it was simply “the detergent.” It had been one of my auto-pilot purchases.
Now, when I think of Tide, I don’t just think of laundry. I think of those viral videos of kids eating Tide pods and ending up in the emergency room. I think of the dinner table conversations about environmental harm.
In other words, the story around it started to change. One comment led to another, one idea reinforcing the next, some of it probably more hearsay than fact.
And before I knew it, Tide didn’t feel neutral anymore. It felt…off.
At some point, without a formal decision, Mrs. Meyers became the default.
We reordered it. We used it again. And again. The behavior repeated. It's always at the top of my Amazon "Buy Again" list.
And with repetition came familiarity. Then preference. And eventually, habit.
I haven’t gone back to Tide since.
This is precisely why we built the Habit Lens framework at ThinkGen.
Whether we are trying to understand a market or influence a decision, we have to be able to unpack behavior in its entirety. And not just what people say, but what they do, why they do it, and what reinforces it.
In this particular situation, several elements aligned:
None of these elements alone would have been sufficient.
Together, they created the right conditions for change.
For those of us working in pharma and biotech, particularly in commercial and I&A roles, this clean little parable holds a number of lessons.
We often think about behavior change as a function of decision-making: awareness, consideration, intent. But real-world change is rarely that linear.
It is contextual. It is emotional. It is reinforced through experience. If we want to impact behavior, whether amongst HCPs or patients, we need to deeply understand:
Because habit is not something we layer on top of behavior. It is the system that governs it.
