Who are we? The founders of SUE.

We’re Astrid and Tom; we are entrepreneurs, behavioural designers, writers, teachers, and absolutely dedicated to helping you to become more successful in achieving your personal and work goals. We do so by helping you apply Behavioural Design to positively infuence behaviour or make better decisions.

That sounds ambitious, helping you make better decisions and change your behaviour. Before we get into that, a short introduction might be in place. Tom is a clinical psychologist who after an internship of 6 months in a mental institution, decided never to practice psychology in the medical arena again. Instead, he started in research followed by advertising. From a qualitative researcher to strategic planner, creative direction, to TED speaker: Tom has done it. Born and raised in Belgium, but now based in Amsterdam and never wanting to leave again (well for Belgium, could be someplace where the sun shines more often).

Astrid is a graduated social scientist who decided instead of doing a PhD in communications and do lab experiments, to see if she could add some creativity to the scientific research ending up in advertising too. From account to strategic planning, copywriting and creative direction, she looked at practice from all angles. Born and raised in Den Haag in the Netherlands, but since many years living in Amsterdam and happy there (but she can also be seduced to sunny places).

We met over ten years ago; we led a digital agency together, we fell in love (not just with the work, but also personally), we both jumped ship together and left the digital agency and founded SUE | Behavioural Design and SUE | Behavioural Design Academy. As we speak, we’re still a happy, energetic duo always looking to learn more, fight indifference and make this world a better place.

We hope to meet you one day!

The SUE team

Tom De Bruyne

Astrid Groenewegen

Mirelle Janssen

Vincent ten Have

Cleo Kerkhof

Maaike Nijholt

Susan de Roode

Jorn Craeghs

Demmy Onink

Tim Versnel

Yves Plees

Debbie van de Wijngaard

Marjan Krom-Clairet

Kirsten Kremer

Aimée de Kleijn

Julia de Groot

Bo Merkus

Science is fascinating, but it often is hard to apply in practice. We are in the business of applied behavioural economics to be able to genuinely solve (complex) challenges by using the science of influence combined with creativity. This is how the SUE | Behavioural Design Method™ came to be. It is a creative methodology deeply rooted in behavioural science to come up with interventions that influence choice and behaviour predictably. We apply our method in client projects, and we train leaders, teams and professionals worldwide to master the Behavioural Design Method themselves.

We go through our method via a process of Behavioural Design Thinking. This is the practical design thinking approach powered up with behavioural science. Design thinking helps you figure out what to make or develop from a human point-of-view (it puts people in the middle of the development process). But adding up behavioural science to this gives you answers to the why. Why do people need certain things, and why do people behave (or not) in specific ways? This addition of behavioural science make sure that you do not only make or invest in the right thing, but you also make it work.

Officially certified educational institute

Behavioural Design Academy is an acknowledged educational institution by the CRKBO, which is the Dutch Organisation for Short-Term Business Education. To get this accreditation, we were evaluated on a quality code covering our curriculum, our method of teaching and our general conditions. All to make sure our students are guaranteed the best quality level of education.

Our work domains

Our Consultancy and Academy has national and international clients all over the world. We have 1000+ professionals from 40+ countries who attended our SUE | Behavioural Design Academy. We have led sprints in a.o. Australia, the United States, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Brazil and South Afrika. We have worked (and work) in the following domains:

• Banking & Insurance
• Health & Pharma
• Government & Public Sector
• NGOs & Fundraising
• Tech & E-commerce
• Telecom & Media
• Food & Beverage
• Entertainment
• Industry organisations
• Hospitality

Here you can find some of our cases of the Consultancy or reviews of the Academy.

All our work can be executed bilingual (Dutch and English). We offer open edition training and tailor-made in-company training. We both work from our head offices in Amsterdam, at client locations or 100% virtual.

The importance of Behavioural Design: the Missing Layer

We always refer to Behavioural Design as the missing layer. If you to start to think about it; it’s just crazy. We all spent so much time, effort, and money into our ideas, businesses, plans, personal goals. And they all have to do with human behaviour. You have to start eating healthy or go to the gym, your clients have to buy your products, you want your employees to be more creative, you want citizens to recycle, you want the people in your organization to embrace change, you want people to save for their pension, you want people to donate. It’s all behaviour.

And still, we all proceed with our plans without actually knowing how behaviour works. How people make choices. How people come to decisions. And we did it too. For years! While it is actually a science. The science of behavioural economics has researched for over 30 years how human decision making works. It’s not something we claim to have invented; it is proven in hard research. And this knowledge is there for you to unlock. Only we’ve made it easier for you. We have combined the eight essential books, dozens of research papers and scientifical experiments into a simple to follow, learn and apply method.

Just imagine how magical it can be! If you know how people make decisions, you’ll know how behaviour works, and you’ll have the secret ingredient to turn your ideas into success. You will add the missing layer. That’s why we call it Behavioural Design: you can design behaviour if you know-how. And we’re all about the how.

The SUE Mission: nudge positive behaviour

Insight into human behaviour can be dark wisdom. It can be used for good and evil. We want to be a driving force for the last. We want more and more people to use the power of behavioural psychology to help people feel and do better. This is the mission we live by on a daily basis.

To unlock the power of behavioural psychology to nudge people into positive choices in work, life, and play.

That’s why we have clients that came to us for questions like: how can we get people to donate to make life in refugee camps liveable? How can we help youngsters out of debts? How can we stop people from using their mobile phones in traffic? How can help people not to run into problems with their mortgage? How can we make people support entertainment for sick children in hospitals? How can we help diabetics live a healthy life? How can we help people build a lasting sports habit? How can we have people vote against extremist right? And so on.

What’s the story behind SUE?

So, what’s the story behind SUE | Behavioural Design and SUE | Behavioural Design Academy then? When we started SUE in 2011, we didn’t want to start just another creative agency. We had our roots in the broad spectrum of advertising (we worked for clients such as Nike, Heinz, Philips, etc. and had won over 20 (inter)national awards), but we both thought the really interesting things were not happening in advertising anymore but in innovation. Two powerful forces technology and behavioural economics were in the driving seat of all interesting new businesses, products, and services.

Especially the behavioural economics, or behavioural psychology, caught our attention. Why do people do the things they do? Why do they make certain decisions or choices? Why do people sometimes take action and sometimes have total inertia? And why do people do things that aren’t always good for them?

It just clicked. This is what we wanted to do. We wanted to become experts in behavioural psychology. But not just the science. We wanted to be the first to combine science with practice. The science is very powerful. If you know how people think, and how they make decisions you know why they do the things they do or don’t do. You can actually change behaviour.

Our culture: Knalldrang

We are both Berlin fans, and absolute techno addicts (which amongst others explains the numerous trips to Berlin). We also love making up German words. Astrid has techno playlists on Spotify that all have self-invented German names if you’re ready to dance you should check them out (username astrid.groenewegen). But our culture is also best described with a Germanism, it’s called Knalldrang:

The unstoppable urge
To move things forward
And come up with brand new solutions
At the speed of light
Occurring in the magical collision
Between behavioural psychology, creativity, and fun
Manifesting itself as brilliant sparks
Of energy and super-duper ideas
That people get jumpy excited about

Knalldrang is the fuel for fulfilling the SUE mission. Knalldrang will help us change the world for the better.

SUE in a nutshell

Our mission
Unlock the power of behavioural psychology to nudge people into positive choices in work, life, and play.

Our belief
Success is all about behaviour.
People have to stop doing what hold things back or start doing what will propel things forward.

Our how
We help people build the habit of using behavioural science to successfully change behaviour.

Our what
SUE | Behavioural Design
From training to transformation

One more thing: were does the name SUE come from?

SUE | Behavioural Design was named after the famous Johnny Cash song ‘A boy named SUE.’ If you don’t know it, you have got to listen to it. As in: listen to the words.

Okay, we’ll save you the trouble (spoiler alert): it’s about a boy who is given a girls’ name by his father. The boy is not happy to say the least (probably had a hard time at cowboy school) and seeks revenge. And then he FIN-AL-LY meets his father. Introducing himself with famous words: How do you do? My name is SUE! He is ready to go in for the kill.

His father completely down and out in the losing position explains to the boy it was for his good that he gave him a girls’ name: it would help him to toughen up. Which he knew the boy was going to need as he wouldn’t have him as a father around. It was a beautiful fatherly gift so to speak (reframing always works). Boy breaks. They do a man-hug thing. And it all ends well.

We at SUE, truly love interventions that are done for the sake of good….and we are a sucker for man-hugs. So, there you go. Our name is SUE. How do you do?

Want to see us in action?