Rory Sutherland | Vice Chairman | Ogilvy UK | Author

Rory Sutherland | Vice Chairman | Ogilvy UK | Author

• Rory Sutherland is a British advertising executive. 
• He is the vice chairman of the Ogilvy & Mather group of companies

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Rory Sutherland has taken his experience and knowledge with behavioural science, consumer and market trends, and broader societal norms and become a leading public intellectual on psychology, human nature, the limits of rationality, and on.

00:33- About Rory Sutherland and his journey.

• Rory Sutherland is a British advertising executive. 
• He is the vice chairman of the Ogilvy & Mather group of companies.
• He writes a fortnightly column in The Spectator and has written several books, including Alchemy: The Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense.
• Sutherland joined Ogilvy & Mather as a graduate trainee planner in 1988, having been inspired to join the advertising industry by British TV advertising of the 1980s.
• He worked briefly in account management before switching to copywriting and becoming the creative director in 2001.

03:55- About your book, Alchemy: The Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense.

• To be brilliant, you have to be irrational. Why is red bull so popular? even though everyone hates the taste? Why do countdown boards on platforms take away the pain of train delays? And why do we prefer stripy toothpaste? 
• We think we are rational creatures. Economics and business rely on the assumption that we make logical decisions based on evidence. But we arenas and we don’t. 
• In many crucial areas of our lives, reason plays a vanishingly small part. Instead, we are driven by unconscious desires, which is why placebos are so powerful. 
• We are drawn to the beautiful, the extravagant and the absurd? from lavish wedding invitations to tiny bottles of the latest fragrance. So, if you want to influence People’s choices you have to bypass reason. 
• The best ideas don’t make rational sense: they make you feel more than they make you rethink. 

07:20- To be brilliant you have to be irrational.

• You’ll never get fired for being too rational. It’s much easier to get fired for being irrational than it is for being unimaginative.
• Nearly all disproportionately successful businesses obtained their success because of, not despite, some seemingly irrational component in their offering.
• Assume that in the 80s you analysed the market to see if there was room to introduce a $700 vacuum cleaner. Vacuum cleaners were seen as a necessary but not pleasant purchase. Competing products were sold for a maximum of $300. No customer would have shown a willingness to buy it.
• Sometimes you can do wonderful things that cost very little and benefit lots of people in multiple directions.
• There’s the assumption, which I think is false in complex systems, that the size of the intervention is proportionate to the size of the effect.

17:05- What goes into building a successful brand?

• We might think we’re not affected by advertising; we are. It works in many ways and probably the least obvious one is that we instinctively trust brands that advertise. That’s because the mere act of advertising communicates confidence. It demonstrates that the brand has a reputation at stake. A reputation that it cares about. 
• Whatever else the advertising says, we also know that it must be a socially acceptable product – because other people will be aware of it too.
• Advertising is a form of what Behavioural Economists and Psychologists call ‘costly signalling.
• Don’t be afraid to invest in ‘advertising’. It ‘wastes’ your money so your customers don’t have to.
• Customers need beacons of trust more now than ever. They need to know that brands have confidence in the future. They need great branding to help navigate new channels to market and unfamiliar product categories.

RESOURCES:

You can connect to Rory Sutherland | on LinkedIn 

Visit: https://www.ogilvy.com/ 

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• Rory Sutherland is a British advertising executive. 
• He is the vice chairman of the Ogilvy & Mather group of companies.
• He writes a fortnightly column in The Spectator and has written several books, including Alchemy: The Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense.
• Sutherland joined Ogilvy & Mather as a graduate trainee planner in 1988, having been inspired to join the advertising industry by British TV advertising of the 1980s.
• He worked briefly in account management before switching to copywriting and becoming the creative director in 2001.