January 24, NEW YORK – Hill+Knowlton Strategies (H+K), an international public relations agency, has hired Lilly Kofler as the U.S. Director of Behavioral Science. Lilly is the company’s first U.S.-based hire for its behavioral science unit, H+K Smarter™. Lilly will start at H+K effective immediately.
“I am excited about joining H+K at such a time of accelerated change.” said Lilly. “We’ve moved on from the days where our only expertise was a knowledge of how the media works. As more of our communications become direct to all of our clients’ publics, we need to become expert in the science of how people actually think, behave and make decisions.”
Richard Millar, H+K Global President, said, “As communicators we have always known that people act in ways that are often surprising and seemingly irrational but it’s only in the last decade or so that behavioural science has begun to help us really understand why this is. Smarter™, our behavioral science unit has been created in direct response to this and we are delighted to welcome Lilly to the team.”
Lilly was most recently a Behavioral Scientist & Data Lead at Publicis Communications, where she successfully brought behavioral science research and strategy into healthcare, retail, CPG and other Fortune 100 companies. Prior to her time at Publicis, she worked at Columbia University where she collaborated with the Department of Energy to apply behavioral science to sustainability initiatives across the United States Navy. Lilly has researched behavioral science and economics since 2011 and holds a Master’s Degree in Social Science from the University of Chicago.
In 2015, Lilly published an examination on the behavioral science of self-control in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. She collaborated on a meta-analysis re-examining the limited strength model of self-control, with the objective of correcting for bias in the literature, training herself as an analytical consumer of research, and inspiring curiosity about other ways in which the industry studies decisions over time. Several outlets, including Slate, British Psychology Society Research Digest and Habitry, covered her paper. Read a list of her published works here.
H+K has offices in more than 40 countries worldwide, delivering award winning campaigns to clients across all sectors and disciplines and with a focus on continued innovation for the industry. Recent innovations include Flight School +, a crisis communications training and simulation tool, Better Impact™, a new approach to brand purpose and CSR, and H+K Smarter™, a behavioral science unit.
The Wheelswap Experiment earned the award for Best Use of Technology & Consumer Electronics at the European Excellence Awards in December 2018 and Best Use of VR/AR at the DADI Awards in the summer of 2018. For more information about our Smarter™ unit, take a look at the page on our website, as well as the work that they do here.
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About Hill+Knowlton Strategies
Hill+Knowlton Strategies, Inc. is an international communications consultancy, providing services to local, multinational and global clients. The firm is headquartered in New York, with over 80 offices in more than 40 markets, as well as an extensive associate network. The agency is part of WPP, one of the world’s largest communications services groups.