RORY SUTHERLAND: INSIDE THE MIND OF A MARKETING GENIUS

Summary

Podcast Summary: "RORY SUTHERLAND: INSIDE THE MIND OF A MARKETING GENIUS"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Great Company with Jamie Laing
• Host/Author: Jampot Productions
• Episode: Rory Sutherland: Inside the Mind of a Marketing Genius
• Release Date: February 26, 2025
• Description: Join Jamie every Wednesday for insightful conversations with great guests—no gimmicks, just great company.

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1. Introduction to Rory Sutherland

Jamie Laing warmly introduces Rory Sutherland, expressing his admiration and excitement to host one of his heroes on the show.

Notable Quote:

• Jamie Laing ([05:22]): "Our guest is Rory Sutherland. He's one of my heroes."

2. Rory Sutherland’s Background and Expertise

Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of the Ogilvy Group, is portrayed as a marketing genius with a deep understanding of consumer psychology and branding. Jamie highlights Rory’s influence in marketing and his recent resurgence on TikTok.

Notable Quote:

• Jamie Laing ([05:35]): "Rory is an international speaker who delves into the psychology between brands and consumers."

3. The Nature of Trends and Mimetics

Rory elaborates on the concept of trends versus vectors, emphasizing that trends are often unpredictable and influenced by multiple conflicting forces. He introduces the idea of "mimetics," where human behavior is driven by imitation, leading to phenomena like the winner-takes-all effect in markets.

Notable Quotes:

• Rory Sutherland ([15:21]): "There aren't really trends, there are vectors."
• Rory Sutherland ([29:56]): "Mimetics is the idea that fundamentally we're a copying species."

4. Evolutionary Biology and Marketing

Rory connects evolutionary biology to marketing, explaining how certain behaviors and trends can experience runaway effects due to feedback loops. He discusses how rapidly emerging trends tend to fade quickly, whereas slowly growing ones have sustained longevity.

Notable Quote:

• Rory Sutherland ([17:48]): "Understanding evolutionary biology helps explain why some trends explode and die fast."

5. Social Influence and Consumer Behavior

The conversation dives into how social norms and collective behavior influence consumer choices. Rory discusses how visibility of a product (like Guinness) can enhance its desirability, and how social proof amplifies the popularity of products or behaviors.

Notable Quotes:

• Rory Sutherland ([42:36]): "Once one person on a street has solar panels, everyone else will follow."
• Rory Sutherland ([29:56]): "Social proof or mimetics being used as a kind of... really."

6. The Critical Role of Marketing in Innovation

Rory emphasizes that groundbreaking products require robust marketing to foster behavioral change. Without effective marketing, even revolutionary products like mobile phones or smallpox vaccines face significant adoption hurdles.

Notable Quote:

• Rory Sutherland ([34:00]): "Revolutionary products demand substantial marketing to drive behavioral change."

7. Branding and Emotional Connection

Rory discusses the importance of branding elements that evoke emotional responses. He cites examples like San Pellegrino’s foil branding and Doubletree’s warm cookies, illustrating how these seemingly extraneous features enhance brand personality and customer loyalty.

Notable Quotes:

• Rory Sutherland ([61:31]): "Politeness consists of doing something more than you are required to do."
• Rory Sutherland ([63:15]): "Branding elements like the pink octopus create a distinctive identity."

8. Case Studies: Successful and Misguided Product Launches

Rory provides insightful analyses of various products:

• Google Glass: An innovative concept hampered by poor marketing and lack of user-centric design.
• Red Bull: Exemplifies how strong marketing can elevate a product despite polarizing tastes.
• Ryanair: Demonstrates how fluctuating expectations and delivering slightly better experiences than anticipated can sustain a brand.

Notable Quotes:

• Rory Sutherland ([55:55]): "Google Glass was a brilliant idea with terrible marketing."
• Rory Sutherland ([64:16]): "Red Bull’s marketing genius makes it thrive despite divided opinions on taste."

9. The Unexpected vs. The Expected in Marketing

Rory argues that unexpected elements in products and services can create memorable and impactful customer experiences. He highlights examples like Doubletree's cookies and the importance of surprises in fostering customer delight.

Notable Quote:

• Rory Sutherland ([61:31]): "Unexpected elements garner disproportionate attention and loyalty."

10. Rapid Fire Segment: Personal Insights

In a light-hearted rapid-fire session, Rory shares personal tidbits:

• Favorite Phrase: "Plain or spicy? Because it means I'm in an Indian restaurant." ([68:16])
• Best Compliment: Andy Serkis letting himself go compared to Miriam Margolyes. ([68:22])
• Last Time Cried: Watching "Dunkirk" and crying on planes during terrible films. ([69:00])
• Biggest Fear: Struggling to balance between being extremely busy or completely lazy. ([70:09])
• Guilty Pleasure: Frozen parathas. ([71:21])

Notable Quotes:

• Rory Sutherland ([68:22]): "Andy Serkis has really let himself go, which is a massive improvement."
• Rory Sutherland ([73:15]): "I admire the person who came up with 'cunting' as an extension of curse words."

11. Conclusion

Jamie and Jemima express their admiration for Rory’s insights, highlighting how his perspectives on marketing and human behavior offer valuable lessons for business owners and marketers alike.

Notable Quote:

• Jamie Laing ([67:57]): "Rory, I've enjoyed this immensely."

---

Key Takeaways:

• Mimetics and Social Proof: Human behavior is heavily influenced by imitation, leading to dominant market leaders through social proof.
• Marketing Over Innovation: Effective marketing is crucial for the adoption of innovative products, often more so than the product's inherent qualities.
• Unexpected Elements Enhance Branding: Surprises and extras in products and services can significantly boost brand loyalty and customer satisfaction.
• Evolution of Trends: Rapidly emerging trends tend to fade quickly, while those that grow steadily maintain their presence longer.
• Behavioral Economics Insights: Understanding the psychological aspects of consumer behavior can lead to more effective marketing strategies than purely economic approaches.

Rory Sutherland’s conversation on this episode offers a deep dive into the psychological and behavioral underpinnings of marketing, emphasizing the nuanced interplay between innovation, branding, and consumer behavior.

Transcript

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[Freddie Wong]

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[Rory Sutherland]

Allinone everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but some opinions are more useful than others. And we all want the good ones, the ones that shake things up, spark debates and change minds. Financial Times readers know that their opinions are reliable because they're shaped by trusted journalism. Robust opinions, confident decisions. Source FT to subscribe, go to FT.comSourceFT.

[Jamie Laing]

Hello everyone. My name is Jamie Laing and this is Great Company. Well, Jemima, how are you?

[Jemima]

I'm well. Jamie Lang, the presenter of Great Company.

[Jamie Laing]

That's it. You are the producer of this show.

[Jemima]

Sometimes we do that smooth and sometimes we don't. Was that one a smooth one?

[Jamie Laing]

I think that was smooth. Yeah, I feel like it was very smooth. And welcome back to Everyone who's listening, welcome back.

[Jemima]

And welcome if you're new.

[Jamie Laing]

And welcome if you're new.

[Jemima]

So if you're new, you are able.

[Jamie Laing]

What is it? Go on, give it a go.

[Jemima]

Okay. I was gonna say, we call our listeners owls. Our wonderful listeners.

[Jamie Laing]

You call them our owls?

[Jemima]

We call them our owls. We call you our owls. So if you're. You're very welcome to be an owl.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah. Hoot I. It was on the tip of my tongue as you're saying, hoot. Hoot I. Firstly. So how. How's your. This is what I listen to Louis through episode. And he always says at the end, how's your energy? But how is your energy? Because you're producing a couple of shows. I mean, you're doing. Producing my show, but also plumber, Faith show. Mad, sad, bad. Your energy still good? Is it okay? You tired?

[Jemima]

I was hella hormonal last week.

[Jamie Laing]

You were? Yeah. Okay.

[Jemima]

Just hits you out of nowhere. Suddenly you can't see for it.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay, that's what happens.

[Jemima]

Yeah, that one, I think. I think it was like, hormones and I was probably quite tired.

[Jamie Laing]

I don't notice it really. Maybe I should be more in tune. But that's it. That's the way that you feel. Okay, I get it. Hey, listen.

[Jemima]

But no, otherwise, I'm enjoying it. It's exciting.

[Jamie Laing]

It's very exciting. Hey. And I'm very excited because today we have one of my heroes.

[Jemima]

How's your energy?

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, great.

[Jemima]

Are you good at asking questions back to people?

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah. What do you mean?

[Jemima]

You know, if someone says, like, how's your energy? And you're like, oh, yeah. Blah, blah, blah, me, me, me, me. Do you remember to go, and how's yours?

[Jamie Laing]

Oh, I think I do. There's a big thing about passing the salt, right? You should never say, can I please have the salt? You should always say, would you like the salt? And then they should say, no, but would you? And you go, yes, I would, actually. And so that's how conversation should always work. You should always ask someone how they're feeling, and in the response, they will probably ask you. And if they don't, maybe they're thinking about themselves.

[Jemima]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

So I think I'm a sharer and a giver.

[Jemima]

I find if I've got a big answer, then I'll forget to ask.

[Jamie Laing]

I don't think you forget to ask, do you?

[Jemima]

I am quite bad at saying thank you.

[Jamie Laing]

I don't think you are bad at saying thank you. I think you're bad at saying thank you to your Partner when it comes to drinks.

[Jemima]

Yeah. Just that one example.

[Jamie Laing]

Just that one example. And that stuck with you for whatever reason.

[Jemima]

Yeah. Anyway, anyway. Sorry. Really did what I said I wasn't going to do and monopolize that conversation to talk about me. Tell me about our guest.

[Jamie Laing]

Our guest is. I'm really excited because he's one of my heroes. He's one of my heroes in this.

[Jemima]

Sort of post on the wall as a kid.

[Jamie Laing]

Not post on the wall of this kid. That was Johnny Wilkinson and weirdly, Baby Spice.

[Jemima]

That's not weird. That makes sense.

[Jamie Laing]

That makes sense. But I. He's one of my heroes. He's one of the people that I would probably invite to a dinner party.

[Rory Sutherland]

Really?

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, I think so. And the fact that I get to sit down with him.

[Jemima]

Rory Sutherland.

[Jamie Laing]

This is Rory Sutherland. So Rory is the vice chairman of the Ogilvy Group. It's called Ogilvy and Martha Group of companies.

[Jemima]

What's that?

[Jamie Laing]

Ogilvy Group is a big sort of marketing company, in a sense. And so what Ogilvy do is they do some amazing things in the world. And like if you're Coca Cola are launching a new thing, Ogilvy will get involved. And he's not only that. He's. He's a. He's a international speaker. So he does a lot of talks on how you should. The psychology between sort of brands in your mind and how people look at different things from a psychological point of view. He's very smart. Very, very smart. I would say that Rory is either diagnosed or undiagnosed with adhd. So he goes on.

[Jemima]

Guys.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, he goes on tangents from the times that I've met him and spoken to him. And also he gives talks. But what he has to say is pretty spectacular. And if anyone is interested in marketing or in. Is interested in building brands or is interested in this space, I would get out your notebook and I would just take some little notes throughout this conversation. It might be hard to. Or listen to it a couple of times just because some of the stuff he says is going to be amazing.

[Jemima]

I cannot wait. You've really set that up in a really.

[Jamie Laing]

And now it's going to be let down by me for some whatever reason.

[Jemima]

Oh, no. He's also really having a bit of a resurgence on TikTok.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, he's a. He's a TikTok star now.

[Jemima]

Loving it.

[Jamie Laing]

Because his stuff that he talks about on TikTok is genius. Anyway, are you ready for this?

[Jemima]

I'm really excited.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay. We're gonna get into this. Now, before we do, remember to subscribe to the show. It does us wonders. And also you can find us on social media at GreatCompany podcast and also so slide into our DMS, but you can also send us emails. GreatCompanyamproductions.co.uk everything is in the show description. Are you ready for this?

[Jemima]

Sure am.

[Jamie Laing]

Please enjoy this episode of Great Company with Rory Sutherland.

[Rory Sutherland]

Hello, I'm Rory Sutherland and I'm in Great Company.

[Jamie Laing]

Rory, welcome to the show.

[Rory Sutherland]

Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure as ever.

[Jamie Laing]

No, this is more. I cannot. I've been raving to the team and to not make you blush, but you are sort of one of my heroes. You are.

[Rory Sutherland]

I'm afraid I find this utterly bizarre, by the way. Why? Well, I don't know. Cause I've just always done this stuff and to be honest, you know, people close to me are as likely to find me annoying and perverse as they are to find me particularly rewarding. So the fact that, you know, weird stuff that I might say or think, which I've been saying or thinking for some time, has suddenly gone mainstream is probably too generous a word for it, but has actually sort of. I suppose it's got what you call a crossover hit or a breakout hit in musical terms. It's come as a complete surprise to me and it's very, very bizarre by the way it happened. There was a young guy who effectively started taking my content and putting it up on TikTok. So that's a shout out to Hugo there. And the first I knew about it was when I started getting kind of mobbed by school kids and just didn't know what was. Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

Do you know what's funny? It's okay. So I've just recently been in LA and I was talking to a single person there who is a woman, and she was saying that everyone. What has now changed when you talk to single people, typically men, is that everyone is an entrepreneur. That's what everyone is. Where, you know, 15, 20 years ago, that was not the case.

[Rory Sutherland]

It's a great way to brand rebrand unemployment of courses, but. But nonetheless, you're absolutely right that when I left university, for example, going into business for yourself or even joining a very small company, I Left University in 1988. That would have been considered a deeply weird, risky thing to do and was probably evidence that you couldn't get a job with Price Waterhouse or something. Okay. Whereas now it's actually pretty much, again, a mainstream thing to do. Good.

[Jamie Laing]

It is a good Thing. And I think that's why people are so obsessed with you. Because I think this idea of being an entrepreneur and being is sexy, cool, exciting and fun. And the most sexy thing about being an entrepreneur is it's not. You're not that sexy if you work in the numbers. Really, what kind of is sexy is being a marketeer? Oh, I've got this idea, this brilliant thing and you sort of personify that in your work. So people, I think, take what you say and then regurgitate it on dates and sound like they're clever. I think that's what people are doing. I truly think they are.

[Rory Sutherland]

Oh, I see. I never thought of that. I mean, I'm a very unlikely source of sort of chat up lines, I would have thought so.

[Jamie Laing]

We're always saying that. I think you're a source of chat up lines. I really do.

[Rory Sutherland]

This is fascinating. And I suspect that actually there's a degree to which all podcasts are a little bit like that, which is their conversational fodder. In other words, you know, if I watch quite a few podcasts, if anybody mentions something, I might have something interesting to say about it. That is an interesting approach. I mean, the popularity of podcasts is to some extent surprising in that what it suggests is, I mean, I'm interestingly that maybe mainstream news media and entertainment media neglected human conversation for a long time because it's a very. In evolutionary terms, it's very old, isn't it? Storytelling, along with dance and music and possibly sport, we don't know, are obviously very, very old forms of entertainment going back hundreds of thousands of years. And actually our enjoyment of them might be kind of, you know, an evolutionary adaptation.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah.

[Rory Sutherland]

And you might argue that just long form conversation was always much more popular and better than the people who made entertainment media realized. And it always fascinates me. If you think about it, you leave a home which has Netflix and Amazon prime and Disney and you know, all the entertainment known to man, and you leave that home voluntarily to go to a pub to chat with your friends. Okay. No, lots of people do that several times a week. Now when you think about it, you've got the best that Hollywood has to offer at home, okay? With car chases, you know, absolutely fantastic actors. You go, no, no, I don't want any of that. I want to go and meet six people and have a chat.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, but is that. That's because I hope that there's nothing better than actual real life connection.

[Rory Sutherland]

Yeah, I think that's true. But it's also, I think True. That just good conversation is its own reward in a way. Wow.

[Jamie Laing]

So are you saying that.

[Rory Sutherland]

Well, I think we've probably evolved to enjoy it because it's useful to do so. I mean, that's probably the reason.

[Jamie Laing]

Wait, hang on a second. So that's really interesting. So, Roy, just, by the way, with this podcast, if I go all over the place, it's because I have so many questions for you. So I apologize. And poor producer Jemima is going to.

[Rory Sutherland]

Have to work together. I work in advertising because it's the best way to monetize adhd.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay, great.

[Rory Sutherland]

So no problems. No problems with going off topic at all.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay, great. But that is so interesting because. So that conversation. Right, an authentic conversation is what we are after. I agree with you. And what happened was, is that Hollywood came along in a sense, and basically said, here we go, here's conversation, storytelling. Let's jazz it up. And now TikTok has done really well because it's short form, authentic conversation with no jazzing up. And people just like to see the realness.

[Rory Sutherland]

This was the best thing. There are a lot of people in marketing called futurologists, and an awful lot of what they says utter bollocks, you know? In other words, they'll go and say, look, there's this shop in Copenhagen which makes furniture out of recycled rhino dung. We think it's a massive trend. And you go, how very interesting. And then six months later, you Google it and realize that the shop went bust because, unsurprisingly, nobody wants their furniture made out of rhino dung. But one futurologist told me something really brilliant, which is there aren't really trends, there are vectors, which is that what people often talk of as a trend. You also find there's an opposite trend going on at the same time. So what's interesting about the podcast TikTok World is it's both very, very long and very, very short. Everything in conventional entertainment world was at the kind of, you know, it was at the kind of, you know, one hour, 20 minutes length. That was the kind of thing about a film. And music tracks lasted so long. And what's interesting is that we've discovered, in a sense, through just media experimentation, everything from the box set binge, where I actually find watching one episode of something at a time really painful. Now, so do I. I either want to watch nothing or I want to watch three episodes. And similarly, actually, I have to confess, the only reason I Wasn't a heavy TikTok user is that whenever I used it, my kids used to shout at me. They're 23 and they thought it was deeply inappropriate for a 59 year old man to be watching TikTok. Okay. It was kind of their thing. But I've always enjoyed it. I've always found it. By the way, I also find it quite benign. I mean, we talk quite a lot about the malign effects of social media and there's undoubtedly this component of social media which is driving fomo. In other words, people share the curated parts. Well, you're on Maiden Chelsea. Okay? But people share the most glamorous, most curated parts of their lives. Okay?

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah.

[Rory Sutherland]

Whereas actually usually when you're off camera, you're eating in a KFC on the Old Kent Road. Right. You know, your car's broken down. You know, you know, what I mean is that the parts of your life you share are vastly more exotic than the parts of the lives you live.

[Jamie Laing]

Yes.

[Rory Sutherland]

And that can have a malign effect, I think, on people's expectations. But I would find tick tock, you know, quite often people's backdrop is a pretty shabby house or the house isn't very tidy, or everything's a bit scruffy. And it's mostly just the wholesome business of people using their talents to entertain other people without any particular kind of status component to it. It's just, you know, that healthy business of sharing, you know, jokes, amusements, observations.

[Jamie Laing]

What makes something a trend.

[Rory Sutherland]

Sometimes I think, I think the only way you can look at it is say it's completely arbitrary. In some cases things become fashionable, sometimes marketing drives it.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah.

[Rory Sutherland]

Sometimes marketing accelerates it, sometimes marketing creates it. Sometimes I think it's just genuinely the product of kind of accidental circumstances and time. I mean, give me an example of that. Female fashion. I mean, there is some degree of planning by the fashion houses, but you will get these weird trends which just come from nowhere. One that particularly irritates me, okay. Is when a trend is a perfectly healthy trend and then it becomes all encompassing. So sourdough bread, okay. It's great. I think it's a handy addition to my bread repertoire. I'm glad it exists. Okay. But what's happened is that sourdough has just become effectively a phrase that means posh bread. Okay. So you go into Gale's now, I'm partly Welsh, partly Scottish, and any Irish listeners will also agree with me. There's soda bread, which is magnificent. Right. Fantastic cornbread. If you go to the Southwestern United States, Cornbread, brilliant form. You can't get that stuff anywhere. Very occasionally, M and S sell this actually Black treacle soda bread, which is the greatest bread ever made. But it's like, it's in store, like on alternate Wednesdays, depending on the lunar cycle. Ms. Can anybody listening from Ms. Fucking pull your finger out and make that a daily staple. Okay? So sometimes these trends. If you look at sourdough as a trend, it's fine. I'm glad it exists. It's a useful addition to my kind of bread choices. Okay. But there's a bit of me which goes, okay, it doesn't deserve to predominate at gales. You know, it's like the gray squirrel of the bread world. It's one of these things that starts off as a useful little addition to the gene pool and then becomes basically a pest, you know, the Japanese knotweed. And a lot of trends. The best way to understand a lot of trends are actually through understanding evolutionary biology. Wow. That you get these kind of runaway effects where certain things just become massively amplified through feedback loops. Women's fashion is weird. Weird because it has to keep changing effectively. But someone once very cynically described women's fashion as innovation without improvement. In other words, everything has to keep changing. It's not as if women's clothes have actually got better.

[Jamie Laing]

No.

[Rory Sutherland]

Okay. They haven't got better at protecting you from the elements or better at being hard wearing. It's just needless, gratuitous kind of changes. And so the whole fashion question is really, really interesting. And it's also interesting to study evolutionary biology because the pace of these things is actually very variable. Now, there's one interesting finding. Often you can't predict them, but there is an interesting finding which is that the faster a trend explodes, the faster it dies. And they've done a load of research into this, that there's a kind of symmetry that if you take fashions in, for example, first names in the United States or the uk, names that sudd go from nowhere to big in the space of a year also tend to die off very quickly. Whereas if you looked at the trend for Emma, Emily, you know, Arthur, you know, this is in the uk. I have no idea what Americans are calling themselves, but, you know, if you look at those trends for sort of slightly Victorian names.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah.

[Rory Sutherland]

You'll see that actually, you know, it's been a long period of gradual growth over 15 years. And you can consequently predict that they'll. The fashion will die off more slowly as well. And so there's a kind of interesting idea that, you know, I imagine there was a year where there were loads of girls called daenerys or something. Okay. Because Dame of Thrones was big. Okay. And I can confidently predict that there aren't going to be many daeneryses in your primary school in seven or eight years time. So there are a few things you can know about this. But I mean, acknowledging that some of it is beyond our control, that it is a kind of. It's a kind of version of collective insanity, sometimes is just useful because, I mean, one of the most important things, if you talk about entrepreneurialism, one of the things they've basically found that distinguishes really successful businesses over which the founder doesn't really have full control is purely timing.

[Jamie Laing]

What do you mean? Explain that.

[Rory Sutherland]

So there are ideas which effectively, if you had adopted the thing a year too early or a year too late, you would have got nowhere. So there are ideas that just somehow just impinge on our consciousness at a moment. And it's sometimes it's because the development of other technologies is necessary before your technology becomes. So, I mean, just an example, if you'd invented Uber before there was 3G mobile, okay. Basically, the mapping wouldn't have worked or would have been massively frustrating. Okay. So quite often you have to wait for two or three other things to be developed before your idea, or you have to wait for them to be adopted. So what you're saying, sometimes people will only do thing X if they're already doing thing Y, and therefore you have to wait for Y to become popular for you to. Then. I mean. Okay, here's another one to go alongside Sourdough bubble tea. Okay.

[Jamie Laing]

Oh, God. I really didn't like it.

[Rory Sutherland]

I genuinely don't know whether it's a useful addition to my beverage options or a load of old bollocks. I mean, I do buy the stuff. I quite like it. Good. Yeah, I think. Okay.

[Jamie Laing]

Bubble tea.

[Rory Sutherland]

My theory is there's a thing called variable reinforcement theory in psychology, which is. Oh, go on. I'll go on. Digression.

[Jamie Laing]

Oh, we were going to do that, Roy, don't worry.

[Rory Sutherland]

So they were doing this experiment with incentives to pigeons and effectively the pigeon would peck a switch and you'd give it three food pellets.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay.

[Rory Sutherland]

And what would happen is the pet pigeons would fairly reliably peck the switch. The switch. They'd get the three pellets and then after they eaten enough pellets, they go, that's kind of enough. Okay, I think I'll kind of give that a break now. And they go off and do some other pigeon stuff on people or whatever. Okay. And then while they were doing the experiment, which is supposed to be a simple experiment on sort of Pavlovian incentives and rewards. They ran out of pel. They ran low on pellets for some reason. I mean, it was just an accident. So they. They tweaked the dispenser. So rather than dispensing three pellets, it would sometimes dispense one, sometimes three, sometimes two, sometimes zero. Okay. I think it was pigeons. The pigeons went bonkers. What you'd effectively created was a pigeon fruit machine, okay. Where now they didn't know what to expect when they pecked the switch. And so they just peck at it furiously, a bit like someone at Vegas endlessly feeding coins into a fruit machine. And that was called variable reinforcement theory, which is that if you do something which has a variable effect, it's somehow weirdly more addictive than something that's a kind of constant reward and return. And my theory with bubble tea is because you don't quite know what you're gonna get, that actually there's an element of kind of, you know, what you might call a gustatory fruit machine at work there, where you go, oh, I wonder how many of those blobs are going to be coming up the straw this time round, or whether I'm going to get the gunky stuff at the bottom or the.

[Jamie Laing]

So it's a game within yourself, and that's why you enjoy it.

[Rory Sutherland]

Possibly the very fact that actually you don't quite know what's gonna happen actually makes it appealing. Whereas if you think of a completely conventionally blended drink, you know, there's a pretty clear expectation. It's very interesting because I often ask this question, you know, what are things we'd all like to do if it. There's a wonderful quote from, bizarrely, Abraham Lincoln where he says, so basically feeling socially awkward about something is an unbelievably strong emotional driver. Because whenever we're in public, we're always conscious of how we appear. And so there are things we won't do because we don't want to stand out. I mean, you know, cider, I think, as a drink is just as nice as beer. But what you'll see is that beer, which is the social norm, will outsell cider seven to one and so on. Okay. Guinness, I think, enjoys a lot of its advantages as the best selling beer in Britain, partly because it's very visible when someone's drinking Guinness. And they also came up with clever little things like splitting the G. Exactly. Okay. But Guinness is, it's absolutely obvious when someone's drinking Guinness, the problem cider had, unless you put ice in it, is that people assume you're drinking lager. So it doesn't have the same social visible norm crest. Now, what are the. One of the things. So Abraham Lincoln's quote was. It's a bit dated, but it said, imagine going to church wearing your wife's bonnet. He's writing to a male audience, and you've just got to sit in church, and all you're doing is you're wearing your wife's floral hat. Okay, the hat's not uncomfortable. It's probably less uncomfortable than Abe's traditional top hat. Okay? But you would feel terrible the whole time you were there. You would feel absolutely awful unless you could explain you were doing it for a bet or something like that. If you were forced to do something in public that's just fundamentally embarrassing, you'd experience a kind of physical pain. And by the way, it may well be a physical pain because, strangely, if you're nervous before a party, obviously some people have a few drinks before a party. Apparently, paracetamol. Just one paracetamol works against social anxiety. So there may be some kind of connection between, you know, where we experience physical pain and where we experience social awkwardness.

[Jamie Laing]

Get out of here, Rory. That can't be true.

[Rory Sutherland]

No, no, no. Actually, I'll probably get absolutely slated by the medical authorities for sharing that bit of information. So, anyway, so that' our chance to work with Public Health England. Completely kibosh. But here, this is what we're talking about in the cab, and it's a theory of mine, okay? If you take away social embarrassment, all English men would wear shorts all the time, is my theory.

[Jamie Laing]

No ways.

[Rory Sutherland]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if it weren't for social sanction. Okay, how many people. Yeah, yes. Yeah. Every day you're on holiday, you're among strangers, it's normal to wear shorts. You wear shorts every goddamn day. Now, I. I think English blokes, I think it's true of Australians, it may be an Anglosphere thing, but we basically, except for Arctic Expeditions, we wear shorts because they're just more comfortable. You get a bit more, you know, ventilation where you need it and so forth, but we just prefer wearing shorts. I think about 60 to 70% of people would be naturists.

[Jamie Laing]

No way.

[Rory Sutherland]

No, no, no, no. Seriously. Okay, let's ask this question. You're living alone in a villa that's overlooked by. Absolutely. It's pretty warm weather and you've got a swimming pool. Okay, Would you Wear swimming trunks. No. No, of course you wouldn't.

[Jamie Laing]

No way.

[Rory Sutherland]

And if you're with someone who is. Now, obviously, if you're with a load of friends, you might want to preserve a bit of modesty, but actually, if you're on your own or with a significant other, there's no way you get dressed to go in the pool.

[Jamie Laing]

No.

[Rory Sutherland]

And so, you know, you look. You look at all these things, and you realize when they argue about transgender bathrooms, I had the very perverse argument, which is that the very concept of a bathroom and a toilet is an imposition upon men, because if you had a male planet, we just piss anywhere, wouldn't we? Like dogs. Okay, Right. Okay. The very fact that social society demands that we go into a special role.

[Jamie Laing]

It's true.

[Rory Sutherland]

Okay, But. But, I mean, it is just interesting because you realize that, I mean, what are things. Okay, I always. I once said that. What was it that. That, for example, environmental. A lot of environmentally friendly behaviors are actually what I call the opposite of a hot tub. Okay. Which is everybody pretends to want them, but they don't. Okay. And hot tubs are the opposite because everybody secretly wants a hot tub, but they're too embarrassed to buy one because it looks a bit pervy. Okay. Is that fair? I mean, who wouldn't have. If you had the available money, who wouldn't have a thing in their garden where you can basically sit outside in really hot, bubbly water? Okay. I. You know. Okay, genuinely, I think there's a huge amount of human economic activity which is effectively constrained simply by how will it look. I had to fight with my wife for ages to get a Japanese toilet, which is the most obvious. Have you got one?

[Jamie Laing]

No, but I'm getting one for the new house. They're brilliant.

[Rory Sutherland]

Go. Absolutely. There is no turning back. Okay. There is absolutely. You know, once you've done that, basically anything else seems medieval. But my wife was highly resistant, I don't think, for any practical reason, except that she didn't want other people to think she's English and so she cares what other people think. The great advantage to being Welsh is you don't give a shit. Okay? South Welshness is like a superpower. You just don't really care that much. And so my wife, I think, didn't want us to be thought of as the people with the strange toilet.

[Jamie Laing]

We're going back to that idea then, which I totally agree with you, which is we see that trend as something that. Which is hugely popular suddenly and then dying out. Everyone is after that viral content the viral product, but actually you're saying that's a negative.

[Rory Sutherland]

No, no, no. I think there's a problem with things that spread in the sense that two very big strong forces in humans just. It's a kind of, you know, the default mode in human behavior is both. There's habit, do what I've done last time, and there's social copying, which is do what everybody else does. And in a globally interconnected world, you might argue there's a bit too much of a winner takes all effect in that. It's not that I'm saying that Taylor Swift is shit, just to be clear about that. I'm saying that maybe she doesn't deserve to be that much more famous than the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th best performers in the world. But because of this kind of herd effect, where we're influenced, it's technical mimetics, where we effectively cannot help admiring things that other people admire.

[Jamie Laing]

Got it?

[Rory Sutherland]

So, in other words, we automatically have this reflexive urge. There was a famous guy called Rene Girard who called, coined this whole idea of mimetics that fundamentally we're a copying species. And so things that are fashionable acquire a kind of desirability, not because we ourselves necessarily like or value them, but we can't help being impressed by the fact that everybody else does. You can go back to. Actually, the reason it's slightly problematic is that it does create this winner takes all effect, which whatever the brand leader is, whatever the category leader is, which has the biggest volume of support, that enjoys a kind of disproportionate advantage. It's why I have an Android phone, by the way, as a kind of. As a rebalancing act. You know, I think that the. The thing that's most popular is genuinely speaking a bit too popular.

[Jamie Laing]

Wow. Because you. The first time I ever saw you, Rory, was on stage at something called the TV Festival. It was hosted by Channel 4. ITV.

[Rory Sutherland]

I love that. That was fantastic.

[Jamie Laing]

You were fantastic.

[Rory Sutherland]

It was in the middle of a wood somewhere, wasn't it?

[Jamie Laing]

Correct.

[Rory Sutherland]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

And you were on stage and you gave this talk and I. And I have borrowed something that you said and I say it to our team the whole time, which is where you talk about never following logic.

[Rory Sutherland]

I wouldn't go quite that far, but I think you have to be free to suspend logic in order to explore the solution space for problem solving. Solving, which is the number of solutions you'll arrive at. If you insist that every stage of your journey is kind of reductionist and logical is a very limited part of the solution space. And you have to allow yourself freedom to speculate and to experiment because, well, first of all, an amazing number of really important scientific discoveries happened with a chance observation. And the creative act there wasn't coming up with the idea, it was spotting the significance. And the way I describe this, the analogy I always use is I think that the police, if you think about it, the first question the police would probably ask if they find a dead body is they'd go door to door and they'd say, did anybody notice anything unusual? Okay, Totally open ended question, okay? It has no particular end in mind but simply the fact that if something weird happened and we also have this weird finding, which is a dead body, the two weird things might be connected. And then someone might say, I noticed this white van. For some reason serial killers seem to be disproportionately fond of white vans, but I noticed this white van and it drove past the house three times last night, okay? Now that's got no evidential value, has no value in a court of law, but it does suggest, okay, maybe we need to spend a bit more time investigating white vans and have a look at the CCTV and see who it might be and whether they had a connection with a victim. And that's what I call an investigative open minded phase. And then eventually you've got to appear in a court of law and you've got to prove the person driving the white, white van actually did it. Driving in a weird way is not enough. Okay, that's not evidential, it's merely. But what we've I think tried, we've tried to create in business and in government and I blame economics for this because it pretends that things are physics when they're not not, okay, is we've created this world where unless it's evidential, you can't use it because it's not science. And I think it's a mistake. Because if you look at science, eventually science has to be scientific. You've got to, you've got to be proved to a reasonable level of confidence that what you're claiming is right. But the way you get there, to the right answer is actually much more open ended, much more speculative and actually involves a lot more creativity.

[Jamie Laing]

That makes total sense. And the reason I ask you that, right, is because we're in this world where you, which you've said is that we, we can't bear but copy other people. But if we're in a world where we're copying other people all the time, we're never actually making anything new or discovering new places. We're actually ending up in the same place as everybody else. A place where we shouldn't be.

[Rory Sutherland]

Well, this is an interesting, this is a really interesting thing because I used to think working in advertising, advertising works really well. It works if you're not asking people to do very much. In other words, if you want people to choose Corn Flakes rather than Grape Nuts, okay, then they're moving their hand three feet to the right on a supermarket shelf. Not a very big behavioral ask. Advertising's gonna work pretty well. And sure enough, it does. And then I kind of took from that wrongly. I think the idea that if you've got a really, really great product, you don't need to advertise it very much because its virtues effectively justify itself. In other words, if your product's good enough, you don't need marketing. I used to sort of think that. Then I realized that if you've got a really, really revolutionary product, typically because it's revolutionary, it'll require a lot of behavioral change. And behavioral change requires a lot of marketing. So why I suddenly discovered this is because if you look at some of the best ideas anybody's ever had, like smallpox vaccination.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah.

[Rory Sutherland]

Okay. I always assume naively, cause I hadn't read the history, that basically Jenna notices that dairy maids don't get smallpox. Surmises from his observation. Okay, maybe that's because they all catch cowpox first and cowpox immunises them against smallpox. Hey, I'll take the gardener's son. And he did this totally unethical. I'll infect my 7 year old gardener son with cowpox and then I'll try infecting him with smallpox to see what happens. Which is. But he did and the guy didn't get smallpox. Now at that point I thought you go, wow, this is a brilliant finding. Okay, okay. Whoop dee doo. Have a nice nighthood, Ed, Jenna. And we're off to the races. Let's get everybody vaccinated. It was actually 50 or 60 years fighting all manner of kind of opposition from religious groups, from vested interests that made money out of variolation, which was the prior form, and 60. So you suddenly realised that actually, I mean, mobile phones, you're too young. Okay. Do you remember a world where you had to be persuaded to have a mobile phone? You don't do.

[Jamie Laing]

No, I had to persuade my parents to give me a mobile phone.

[Rory Sutherland]

Oh, yes, yes. Yeah, that's another form of marketing. But actually there was a Whole period where the majority of adults would say, I don't want a mobile phone. Why would I want to make phone calls in the street?

[Jamie Laing]

What? Yeah.

[Rory Sutherland]

No, no, seriously. Okay. So I keep reminding people of this. So in 1989, we had about five work phones at Ogilvy that were shared, okay? They were big Motorola brick phones. And they were kept in a box or charging. And if you had to go somewhere, you'd sign one out. I'm not making this up. Okay? You'd tell your colleagues what your mobile phone number was for the day and say, if you need me urgently, call me on this number. And so I've picked up one of these phones. I'm going off somewhere and I'm trying to, I think, go to Tottenham Court Road tube station. And someone from the office bloody well calls me. And so the phone rings. I'm walking down Oxford street, so I haven't got much choice but to answer the bloody phone. While I'm speaking on a mobile phone In Oxford Street, 1989, two people shout abuse at me from passing cars. Literally wanker. Okay? Someone actually pulls down the window of a black cab and goes, wanker. Now, okay, obviously you could try that now. Okay. Driving down Oxford street and shouting wanker. At everybody using a mobile phone. But you'd have your work cut out. Okay? But back then, it was a socially objectionable thing because it wasn't the practice of most people. Because it hadn't been effectively normalized as a behavior. Using a mobile phone in public in 1989 was kind of a. I was gonna say a subversive act.

[Jamie Laing]

It was seen as something people.

[Rory Sutherland]

First of all, they were sort of obnoxiously yuppie.

[Jamie Laing]

Got it.

[Rory Sutherland]

They were enormous. So that, you know, you couldn't discreetly make a phone call because you were holding them.

[Jamie Laing]

You're seen as a show.

[Rory Sutherland]

Yeah, yeah. Now, I had no. Interestingly, I wouldn't have made a call in public back then. Cause it would have been embarrassing. I didn't have any choice. Cause someone rang me. But what I suddenly realized is that really, really big ideas, we love to think that they're adopted. But because a big idea you1 to put your head above the parapet and do something that most people don't do. And people find that very uncomfortable. Okay? And secondly, it requires you to break your habit. Okay? In other words, don't do something you used to do. Do this other thing instead. That encounters an extraordinary. Okay.

[Jamie Laing]

It's impossible.

[Rory Sutherland]

There are probably four people around us here who are like air fryer rejectors. Is there anybody? Yeah, yeah. Okay, three of them. We don't have the things.

[Jamie Laing]

How do you know?

[Rory Sutherland]

Well, I'm just guessing. It's always the case, okay, that there's no reason to reject an air fryer, but they, for some reason there's a percentage of the population and they just make them angry.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay, just quick, but explain that just really quickly. Why does it make them angry? Because it's going against habit.

[Rory Sutherland]

Well, it, I mean, in a sense you get people who go, oh, it's just, it's just a very small convection oven, which is not true. I mean that, you know, it's a ridiculous understatement of the benefits of air fryer ownership. But, but it was fascinated. So there was hostility to the vaccination, there's hostility to the mobile phone, there's this weird hostility to the electric car. Okay, right. Where, I mean, okay, so you invent the electric car and the first thing the Top Gear team do is they drive an electric car until it runs out of electricity. Right. You kind of go, how is that a useful experiment? I mean you could have done that with every petrol car you've never driven. Right, okay, we're going to take this new Ferrari, you know, LaFerra Ferrari, and we're going to try to drive it up the M1 until it runs out of petrol. Well, yeah, you could do that, but people think that's ridiculous. But for some reason an electric car, there's this innate kind of hostility to the drivers of the electric car or to the early adopters. And so the early adopters of anything you get, ah, effectively have to, you have to be a little bit thick skinned. And so there is this fundamental thing that innovation requires an awful lot of marketing, precisely because if you want someone to do something that's different to what they did before and you also, in the early stages require to do something that most people don't do. The social burden, the kind of pain and discomfort we experience through doing that is just disproportionately high.

[Unknown (Instacart Ad)]

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[Rory Sutherland]

Now I'll give you an example. Anybody here got one of those taps that produces boiling water? Have you got a cooker? Tap?

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, we cook a tap one upstairs.

[Rory Sutherland]

Yeah, yeah. Now the interesting thing about that is that it's very difficult to buy the first one, isn't it? Okay. Because you go, jesus, I'm paying like 800 quid for a kettle here. Once you've had one, you never go back. Okay. So the one thing technology does have, successful technology has on its side is that it's like that old Vauxhall strap line, once driven, forever smitten, that once you've had a mobile phone, you can't go back because you discover uses for it. You've created a new normal. Eventually then social norms reach a point where not having a mobile phone makes you a bit of a weirdo. Okay. And the whole dynamic changes. And so, you know, a lot of these things effectively the fact that there's this mimetic quality to the brain where we essentially take our opinions and value judgments from each other that would affect massively. There are loads and loads of experiments in music where you show people 10 music tracks and you ask them to rate them and they'll rate them fairly, independently and differently. And then you show the music tracks and they're star rated. Okay. So it shows how many people have listened to this track. Those people will automatically like the tracks more. That more people have liked. They'll rate them more highly.

[Jamie Laing]

Because everyone else has their favorite.

[Rory Sutherland]

Because everybody else does. Yeah. So that explains an awful lot of these kind of trends, which is they're kind. The best analogy is contagion. You know, the best mathematics to model many of these trends is to look at, you know, effectively to look at, you know, disease transmission because it's. Now we can use this to our benefit. They're great people like Nicholas Christakis and others who've made the point, for example, that once one person on a street has solar panels in their house, everyone else will. It's much more likely. Yeah. If you, if you have someone stand at the entrance to a pub visibly drinking guinea, the likelihood that people coming into the pub order Guinness goes up by its double digit percentages.

[Jamie Laing]

That's why they put Bloody Marys.

[Rory Sutherland]

Go on.

[Jamie Laing]

Well, when you go into a pub, right, what landlords do or people behind the bar will do, they'll put Bloody Mary, a jug of Bloody Mary at the till. So what you do, you go, I can have a Bloody Mary. And I reckon the markup on Bloody.

[Rory Sutherland]

Mary people drink the Bloody Mary, isn't it? It's highly suggestible. Which is any mention of a Bloody Mary will cause people to drink Bloody Mary. Yes, it does do that.

[Jamie Laing]

So if you. I want to have a Bloody Mary and you see it, they go, I'm going to have a Bloody Mary. And the markup on Bloody Mary's are probably quite high. So they're trying to sell it at the front of a pub.

[Rory Sutherland]

Well, one of my funny ones is that having written my books, you get these people who, you know come up to you on the street and go, I made 4,000 quid because of you. And they don't explain how annoyingly. But I remember someone, someone at a cafe, they could never sell watermelon juice and they read alchemy and they added up a few herbs, they put the price up and they called it watermelonade, which is a sort of anagram, not quite of lemonade. Okay? And they suddenly sell tons of the stuff. Effectively it's the same thing, but presented differently, has a completely different appeal. And so everything, you know, that's another thing about human perception. I mentioned the fact of mimetics, I mentioned the fact of habit, where also we perceive the world contextually. You know, it partly we judge things according to expectation. Now, a lot of people say it's a mystery how Ryanair has survived so long because, you know, everybody affect to despise it. But I always make the point that the genius of Ryanair is that it's always. The real experience is always slightly better than you expect. Okay, so the night before you fly on Ryanair, you're in a state of absolute terror because you're convinced that you'll be fined £70 because your, you know, your clamshell luggage is one millimeter too large. And then you, you, you actually go there and it's kind of all right. And then you get off the plane at the other end and you go, well, I wasn't actually pistol whipped by Serbian mercenaries, so I'll chalk that up as a win.

[Jamie Laing]

You know, also, what's great, Rory, about, about Ryanair, and I don't know if you've seen their sort of social media post, which is so good on Twitter, where people sort of slate them. Their replies are, we'll see you again.

[Rory Sutherland]

Absolutely true. Which they will. Absolutely true.

[Jamie Laing]

It's so, it's so clever.

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[Jamie Laing]

I know there are going to be business owners and people who are starting brands right now, right, who are just trying to. They're writing down everything you're saying and trying to capture everything. How important is it for a brand to be able to say no?

[Rory Sutherland]

That's an interesting question. In what sense? To. To customers, to. I mean, I'm intrigued, but I. You know my theory about the opening a church chain of cafes called Bacon Sandwich. Do you?

[Jamie Laing]

No.

[Rory Sutherland]

Which is. I've looked at successful restaurant chains and various food places and one of them is if you only do one thing, people imagine you're gonna be really good at it. Okay. If you only do one thing, people go, well, if they survive and they only do that one thing, that one thing must be good. Cause they're entirely focused on it. It's why you wouldn't go to a place which was Tool Shop and Oyster Bar. Okay, Right. Come on, come on, come on. You gotta focus, mate. You know? Right. Okay. Tool hire, an oyster bar. Although there is a mystery in capitalism which is why the same places that do heel repair also do key cutting. And I thought it was mechanical, that you needed a thing that went round and round, but apparently it isn't. If you go on the Timpsons website somewhere there is a place where they explain why it was that heel repair and shoe repair places effectively, when Portuguese shoes came in, which were not actually, they were actually glued rather than sewn. The sole was glued rather than sewn. And also shoes became cheaper, so people just chucked them away. Effectively. Cobblers found themselves short of revenue, so they moved into key cutting as a diversification strategy.

[Jamie Laing]

That is because I know where you're headed with this is so interesting. Cause it's what Levi's did. So Levi's made denim jeans and so you knew what you were going for. So when it goes back to the idea of the Paris saying no, you just sort of focusing on one thing and doing one thing well is a really valuable thing to do.

[Rory Sutherland]

People, fundamentally, people respect, I think, what you might call specialization, okay? But the interesting thing is, my theory about bacon sandwich is that you have a couple of choices of bacon, you have a couple of choices of bread, okay? You do it incredibly well. You do a whole load of research into what the perfect bacon sandwich is. You only serve two drinks, which is builder's tea and champagne, okay? Those are the only two acceptable drinks to have at a bacon sandwich restaurant. And there's a rule which is totally perverse, which is, you'll provide HP sauce, but no ketchup. You just refuse to offer ketchup. Now, this defies all economic logic, except if you're really passionate about what you do, you have rules. Okay? This is an extraordinary story which is a friend of mine, quite a wealthy copywriter, went to the Bristol dealership in South Kensington, which is a very, very eccentric car specialist car company, and he said, I'm quite interested in buying one of your cars, actually. And they said, oh, we're very pleased to hear that, sir. Do you have a garage? He said, no, actually, I don't. He said, I'm thinking of building one, but I haven't really got around to it. And he said, well, I'm terribly sorry. If you don't have a garage, we wouldn't really be prepared to sell you a car. But at the point where you've built a garage, perhaps you'd like to. Okay, right. That is. Now, it's actually weirdly, quite clever salesmanship as practiced, okay? The most genius version of this idea is Bernie Madoff, okay? Because Bernie Madoff, who had this effectively bogus investment fund, got billionaires coming to him, saying, I really want to invest. Now, if you're a billionaire, there's one thing that drives you absolutely insane, which is someone saying, no, no. Okay? So Bernie would go, I'd love to have you on, but I'm afraid, you know, I just can't take you on at the moment. I just can't take your money. And this would drive. So as a result, all their normal skepticism about whether Bernie was genuinely legit was completely drowned out by their desperation to be accepted by Bernie. Wow.

[Jamie Laing]

And that's so interesting. That's why members clubs, why golf clubs?

[Rory Sutherland]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, if you advertised. Okay. If you advertised in Metro for the membership of club at the Ivy okay, it's game over. Okay? You have to pretend that membership is scarce. Of course, there are nightclubs which have the bogus queue, aren't there? They create a queue outside. And then my daughter got scammed by that somewhere where you queue for bloody ages. You go, and the place is totally empty. That is so that's again, social proof or mimetics being used as a kind of. Really. But my idea of brown sauce, no ketchup. I've stolen that from a tiny brand called Thrasher's Fry of Threshers Fries in Ocean City, Maryland. I think it is. They got three outlets. I think they close in the off season. They only sell chips, or what American listeners would call fries. Now, this is the weirdest thing of all. They're so good at making chips and they're so cultish that when five guys launched, they went to these guys to ask them how to make chips because they're just absolutely extraordinary. Now, the weirdest thing about this Threshers fries thing in Ocean City. Now bear in mind, this is America, right? Not in the uk. This would be a bit perverse, but it wouldn't be that weird. This is America. You can't have mayonnaise and you can't have ketchup. You can only have salt and vinegar. Now all the Brits are going, yeah, absolutely spot on. Okay, that's correct. Now how perverse that is for an American retailer of fries is almost unique. Unbelievable. There's another one which is in Chicago. If you're a Chicagoan, okay, you will not put ketchup on a hot dog. And it's considered basically in Chicago. It's. Now, this is traced back to a hot dog seller outside. I think it still exists the business. And it's called something like somebody's hot. It's got a Polish name, I think. But they had a stand outside, I think the White Sox stadium. And the guy who ran the hot dog stand made very, very good hot dogs. But he refused to offer ketchup. Cause he said it was just used to disguise poor quality meat. And the quality of their hot dogs was such that you wouldn't need ketchup. And there's actually, if you look on Google images for pictures of this place, there's this massive sign outside which has a big picture of ketchup. And it says don't even ask. And this is a cultural thing spread to the whole of Chicago where even now anybody who considers themselves either by adoption or bir an authentic Chicago won't do it. It's just too Unpleasant to do. They just can't bring themselves to do it. And so my theory is you just have this perverse kind of rule.

[Jamie Laing]

Rory, I haven't told you about flat.

[Rory Sutherland]

White or fuck off, have I? My other business idea, which is that the Starbucks experience is great if you've got 45 minutes to spare, but at a railway station it's completely wrong, okay? Because you want to get a coffee pay and get the hell out of there so you can catch yourself train. Yeah, right. So my idea is you only serve flat whites. You make them in advance, people pick one up, they tap with their card, they pay, they go off. And if you ask for anything other than the flat white, the answer is in the name.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay, that is such a good idea.

[Rory Sutherland]

Because you don't want. You've got a trained catch and then the person in front of you demands some ice based drink that requires whipped cream and a whole load of. Yeah, that's not. That's wrong. Airports, railway stations, flat white or off.

[Jamie Laing]

It's fantastic.

[Rory Sutherland]

That's the answer.

[Jamie Laing]

So, quick answer. If you were going to launch a product now, okay, and someone's listening now and they're saying, okay, what do we do? What do you say is the most important element and the most important element when you're launching a product now, what do you need to look at?

[Rory Sutherland]

What I think you need to do is all I'm asking for. Now, a lot of people, I spend a lot of time attacking economics and attacking finance and procurement and all these kind of banauzic reductionist parts of the business world. And my argument is, point is this. Look, the point about the laws of conventional economics and the laws of physics is you can't rewrite them, okay? You're stuck with them. So the opportunity to be really creative, if you're confined in your thinking to economic logic or the logic of physics, in the case of transportation, say, okay, your opportunity to break those laws, annoyingly, they've been written in stone. And you can't really do anything about grabbing gravity. You know, you're stuck with it, okay? The laws of psychology are gloriously mutable, gameable, okay? And so if you look for a psychological edge or psychological arbitrage, you're much more likely to have a breakthrough than you are if you're, if you're just looking at, you know, what do we provide? How much does it cost? It's much, much easier to actually be creative and distinctive and therefore successful through psychological gameplay and marketing than it is through trying to be cheaper or trying to be faster. Wow. Okay, that's it. Basically, you know, so have a great idea for an electricity company, Greg, but make sure you got a pink octopus.

[Jamie Laing]

Can I ask you then a question? What is a product or a product that you've seen that's been launched, that was a great product that you thought was good, but the marketing didn't work for it?

[Rory Sutherland]

That's really interesting because actually I've asked this question question a lot, which is one of them actually where I think they should have persevered was Google Glass. I think they had a brilliant. I fundamentally believe in augmented reality. I think that having a thing where I can walk around, I mean, partly having a, you know, and occasionally it says, you know, things like, turn right, your next meeting starts in 10 minutes, it's going to rain. Okay. That basically effectively takes my environment and adds subtitles to it without me needing to look at a watch or retrieve a phone or do anything like that. I fundamentally thought it was a good and necessary idea. And they messed up a couple of details. Part of it was cause there was some sort of weird affair going on within Google between somebody and the person who was launching the product. But I won't go into that because, you know, family show and all that. But also they only gave Google Glass to developers initially. You could buy them. It was about £1,200. And it was only on sale to the developer community, who with the best will in the world probably aren't supermodels generally. Okay. And so the user imagery was problematic. And that's by the way, gonna be a problem with the Apple Vision Pro, because the only people who'll use an Apple Vision Pro in public are gonna be weirdos. And so the user imagery is going to be damaged by that very weird sector of the population who are happy walk around wearing a pair of steampunk goggles on their head. Okay, but, but I always thought, I always thought Google Glass was an interesting case. Well, I'll give you the best example of a brilliant idea which had terrible marketing because I, I think that was a brilliant question, which is okay, I always say, you know, of Octopus Energy, which I think is a brilliant and fascinating and innovative company. They always go, yeah, yeah, it's absolutely great what they're doing. It's absolutely mold breaking. We as Britons should be proud of it. But if they decided to call themselves greenecotech.com and they hadn't had a pink cuddly octopus as a logo, they'd still have 20,000 customers.

[Jamie Laing]

Got it.

[Rory Sutherland]

Okay. Marketing really matters and people with an engineering mindset. Hate this because it means that contrary to the kind of deterministic world in which you want to live, you're actually living in the middle of insanity. Okay, so true. But it's. It's basically true. Okay? And so, okay, the worst marketed good idea of all time, nuclear power. Okay? Right. If you think about it, you have this extraordinary green, efficient form of energy, and they had to name it after a kind of bomb. Okay? I mean, come on, guys, you know, if you just consulted the worst copywriter on the planet and said, do you think we should call this nuclear energy? He would have got. I'd probably know, you know, can we call it kitten power or something? Because then you'd be in with a chance. So actually, it's a really, really interesting question because I think a lot of ideas get killed because they go, we tried this idea, nobody bought it, therefore we gave up.

[Jamie Laing]

Yes.

[Rory Sutherland]

And actually what you need to say is maybe the reason you failed isn't because there was anything wrong with the product. It's two possibilities. Okay? The timing was wrong or you didn't market it right.

[Jamie Laing]

And prime example which you talk about is Sam Pellegrini. We know.

[Rory Sutherland]

Do you mean the cans? The foil on the top of the cans. I'm campaigning for them to bring it back because I think it was one of those things where the foil was notionally unnecessary.

[Jamie Laing]

Can you explain this?

[Rory Sutherland]

My argument was that there are lots of things that are extraordinarily potent in marketing, which finance people hate because they're unnecessary. Okay? Strictly speaking, they're unnecessary, but the reason we love them is because they're unnecessary. Necessary. Do you ever do an ocado order?

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rory Sutherland]

You get that bizarre text that says, your delivery will be made by Brian in onion van, you know, eh, 21. Okay? Because it's idiosyncratic and weird. We notice it. And if you talk to any other Ricardo shopper, they're always familiar with those texts. And it's just one of those things. It's like a quirk of personality.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay?

[Rory Sutherland]

Now what's really interesting is that the things you do that you don't have to do, that's what politeness can say consists of. Okay? Politeness is not doing the bare minimum. It's doing something more than you are required to do. And we understand that as humans, which is why we wrap presents. We just don't just go, here's a can of beer. We actually wrap it up first in something decorative, okay? We go the extra mile. Now, what happens with a Business is the finance people go, our customers aren't buying wrapping paper, they're buying beer. Let's get rid of all the extraneous stuff. And in the process, you become more alike, your competitors, and you lose personality. So if you're a cafe, find something weird to do that nobody else does. Okay? Now, in particular, the example I always cite here is the Doubletree hotel chain, where if you check into a Doubletree hotel, they have an oven underneath the check in desk which has warm cookies. They make cookies to their own recipe. And when you check in, they say, and welcome you to our doubletree. Here are warm Doubletree cookies. Now, the finance people hate that because they go, no one in our market research has said they want warm cookies when they check in. Why are we giving someone something that they didn't ask for? It's a cost, therefore we need to cut it. But as far as human perception goes, it's incredibly impactful precisely because it was unasked for, unexpected, and it's surplus to.

[Jamie Laing]

Requirements and it adds a little bit.

[Rory Sutherland]

So we're going back to the foil on the top. The foil on the top of the San Pellegrino. San Pellegrino thing. Someone described it beautifully, one of my colleagues, as an access all areas pass for the drink. In other words, you could have a wedding and have cans of San Pellegrino because it had the foil dressing. Okay. Whereas it'd be a bit weird to have tango. Okay. Right at your wedding. It basically said, this is a posh drink because now it also makes, by the way, it's very difficult. Great book on the subject. By the way, Will Gadara's book, Unreasonable Hospitality.

[Jamie Laing]

So good.

[Rory Sutherland]

Isn't it a great book?

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah. I started reading it. My business brother told me to read. It's amazing.

[Rory Sutherland]

And he. I'm actually very, I'm very. I was very flattered to be quoted in it, but because I kind of venerate the guy. And he, I think, gets to the absolute nub of this, that it's the unexpected. And this could go back to brain science, which is that most of what we perceive is a prediction, it's internally generated as a prediction. And we use our eyes, ears, noses effectively for prediction, error correction. In other words, we're only really using our optic nerve for things that we weren't expecting expecting. So it's the unexpected thing that garners disproportionate attention. Okay? It's the thing we really, really notice. And it, by the way, it makes market research. It's very difficult I think, as Will Gadara would acknowledge, the kind of ideas you need aren't ideas that you can come up with by talking to customers. It's very important for a business just to be distinctive, just to have that little distinctive quality like the pink octopus. Okay. Animals are a bit of a gift in branding if you use an animal because we've of evolved to pay attention to notice kind of animal things.

[Jamie Laing]

That's what you said about candy kittens. He said, well done for cool.

[Rory Sutherland]

Well done candy kittens.

[Jamie Laing]

We're talking about product and we're talking about market, like marketing a product, a famous product, which is because everyone says that, you know, with candy cannons, it was all about making a great product. Right. That's what we had to do. We had to make a great product and then we had to name. Had a great name and you had.

[Rory Sutherland]

Your fame and we had that there's a great combination. So immediately you had a brand spokesman who was well known. So you did start. Start with the benefit. Fame is actually extraordinarily valuable because it means that customers find you rather than you having to find them.

[Jamie Laing]

That's.

[Rory Sutherland]

It fundamentally reverses the polarity of business.

[Jamie Laing]

Growth, which is so interesting. And there's a question about whether content creators are going to be the next business owners. Right, but then, but then you look at something like this, right?

[Rory Sutherland]

Which have a hell of a lot of energy drinks. If that's the case.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay, but going on energy drinks, right? This is a prime example of a product which is terrible, but there is still a rise in the sales and energy drinks. And I know you've spoken about Red Bull before.

[Rory Sutherland]

Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

The product is terrible, the marketing is genius.

[Rory Sutherland]

So product's not terrible.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay, well, it tastes terrible.

[Rory Sutherland]

Yeah. Objectively, if you ask, if you ask people what it tastes like as a drink, they will say it tastes horrible. Okay. Because if you're expecting Fanta, it's like Ryanair. Okay. If you're expecting Fanta and you get Red Bull, you go, yeah, right. Fanta is a drink, I think, which is intrinsically enjoyable. Okay, Right. Red Bull requires contextualization and the contextualization is hugely important, by the way, in drinks for some reason. In that one of the things that most fascinates me is that Perno, which is quite an enjoyable drink in France, is absolutely repellent if you try and drink it in the uk. And I can't get my head around this at all. Okay. By the way, there are finding wine tastes better if you drink it by the sea.

[Jamie Laing]

Yes.

[Rory Sutherland]

What are the other Ones there's some extraordinary findings about. There was somebody who was in the Caribbean drinking a banana liqueur and they bought the import rights to the uk, shipped back a case of this banana liqueur back to the uk, invited all their friends around and said I bought the rights to import this drink. And they all poured themselves glasses back in some basement in Fulham and they were basically retching all over the place. Cause what tastes great on a Caribbean beach doesn't taste great in Fulham on.

[Jamie Laing]

A rainy October day in the summer. Delicious.

[Rory Sutherland]

Yep. They have produced winter Pimms. They have actually tried to make it a year round thing.

[Jamie Laing]

It doesn't work.

[Rory Sutherland]

No, it is fundamentally kind of. It's contextually dependent. And Red Bull, if you think of it as a medicinal thing, the weird taste is actually a benefit, not a cost.

[Jamie Laing]

But I truly. But isn't it right, that Red Bull, quite smart with that. They made it taste medicinal. So therefore you as the consumer would know that it was doing psychological things to your mind to. Therefore you go, I'm drinking this.

[Rory Sutherland]

Well psychoactive because it's we. And it comes in a small can and it's really expensive and 16 year olds or you need ID. I still need ID to buy Red Bull. A fucking fat 59 year old man. Come on. God's sake. You know, you know that must be. You know. Do you really think somebody who's 15 is going to have this much plastic surgery just so they can buy a can of Red Bull for God's sake. Tesco's. But, but no, it's fascinating because Cenatogen, which you may not know of, but it was famously a tonic. Now tonic wine was quite common I think because people who didn't drink. Well, sometimes I think it was people who didn't who pretended to be teetotal but then drank tonic wine as a way of getting alcohol by claiming that it was medicinal. But the last ingredient in the production of Sanatorgen tonic wine, which was a very sweet wine and was therefore probably a bit like port was a weird chemical that didn't taste very nice because they realized if you didn't have that weird taste, people wouldn't, wouldn't believe it had medicinal effects. Effects you can't make. You know, if Neurofen meltlets, I don't really trust them. Cause they're a bit too tasty to be effective. You know what I mean?

[Jamie Laing]

Wow.

[Rory Sutherland]

Okay. Whereas real Nurofen, when the bloody capsule bursts in your mouth, that must be doing a job because it's fucking disgusting. Right? Okay. And similarly, by the way, Diet Coke had to be made slightly more bitter than regular coke so people would believe it was a diet drink. In other words, you had to have that little sacrifice of sweetness for people just to be convinced that it was actually a low cake calorie drink.

[Jamie Laing]

Wow, Rory, I've enjoyed. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed this. And. And Jemima just gave a heart sign from behind because she loved it so much. Got these eight questions and I'm. I'm.

[Rory Sutherland]

We can do rapid fire if you want.

[Jamie Laing]

Do you want to do rapid fire? Are you sure?

[Rory Sutherland]

As rapid as I can be.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay, let's see.

[Rory Sutherland]

To be honest, it's more like small arms fire with me than machine gun fire. But we'll do our best.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, Roy, just to caveat, I've absolutely loved this, so I can't take enough.

[Rory Sutherland]

Anyway.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay, first question. What's a saying or phrase that always makes you smile or cheers you up?

[Rory Sutherland]

Plain or spicy? Because it means I'm in an Indian restaurant.

[Jamie Laing]

Next best compliment anyone's ever given you.

[Rory Sutherland]

Oh yeah, not the best, absolutely, but the best comparatively is Andy Serkis has really let himself go, which appears underneath a lot of my YouTube appearances. Now the reason that pleases me so much is it's a massive improvement on Miriam Margalisa's really let herself go. So comparatively, I consider that a massive bonus. I'm sure we have. Andy Serkis is now actually probably, probably swinging from a light fitment somewhere if he's listening to this. But nonetheless, that does cheer me up massively. Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

When was the last time you cried?

[Rory Sutherland]

Ah, interesting digression here. Weirdly, actually two things. We're much more likely to cry on planes when. What. And it's a weird physiological effect which someone has finally explained. And I can't remember whether it's to do with oxygenation levels or whatever, but I've cried on planes watching utterly shit films. Okay, but the other last time I cried, I'm actually weirdly quite patriotic. Is. Is re watching various scenes from Dunkirk.

[Jamie Laing]

Yes. When they fly over and I. When they. When they fly over, my brother in law stood up and saluted the tv.

[Rory Sutherland]

Absolutely. Absolutely glorious.

[Jamie Laing]

He was so emotional. Well, do you know what's interesting about your answer there? Is that we've had 43 people on the show and every single person says I cry on planes and I don't know why. And you've done it again.

[Rory Sutherland]

There is an explanation. You can Google it. Only recently did they find out why it is. But I'VE watched some pretty crap films and cries. I've still, I've got all this is so, you know, oh my God, this Peppa Pig thing. And the pathos has just about unbearable.

[Jamie Laing]

You know what scares you most about yourself?

[Rory Sutherland]

That I've only got two modes. Being very, very busy or being completely lazy. Okay. So I don't know how I can face retirement because I'll either basically just sit around in my pants, okay, watching YouTube videos about traction engines or I'll be insanely busy. I don't know how to do the middle way. Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

What's something you like?

[Rory Sutherland]

Can't let go of annoying thing. If I have a tech problem, my degree of tenacity in trying to solve it is ridiculous. It's a bit like the old joke that men never asked. In the days before sat nav, there was a joke. Men will never ask for directions. I have to explain it to all you young people, by the way, which is before there was sat nav, you had to use things like maps or you had to talk to passersby and ask where something was. And the joke was that men will never do it. I'll never ask for help with tech. I become absurdly determined. You know, if there's some weird problem attaching something to your television and it's playing up, I'll just reach level of determination where at 4 o'clock in the morning I'm still there trying to fix the thing.

[Jamie Laing]

What's your guilty pleasure?

[Rory Sutherland]

There aren't any unguilty pleasures, are there, really? I mean, guilty pleasure.

[Jamie Laing]

This is the first time Rory Sutherland doesn't have an answer.

[Rory Sutherland]

Well, I could talk about frozen parathas. There we go. There we are. The fantastic frozen paratha. The greatest food innovation. Sourdough. You are dead to me. Your time has come. Yeah.

[Jamie Laing]

What turns you off?

[Rory Sutherland]

I once ditched a girl cause she wore training shoes with a skirt. Now I can't publish that. That's terrible because she won't listen. But it was genuinely. There are certain things. I found it really? Really. I had a female colleague I won't name. She's a brilliant, brilliant client of ours now, but she had a list of no nos when dating men. Like wearing a hat. I think it's very interesting to ask what are the most. Just as you could ask what are the most sexy things you can do. Things that are a massive turn off. I remember talking to the comedian Sarah Pascoe about fashions that women love, that men really, really hate. Okay, okay. And those high waisted Andy Pandy Trousers. Do you remember those? Yeah, yeah. They were a massive fashion with women. There wasn't a single guy who found them anything other than repellent talent, you know.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay, well, next question is, what turns you on?

[Rory Sutherland]

Curiosity in people. And actually I love people who are non neurotypical. I think you know that. Actually, weirdly, you know, it's often. It's often said that, you know, for example, people who are slightly aspergic, I find them conversationally absolutely brilliant because they're prepared to go absolutely deep in. Into something.

[Jamie Laing]

What do you like most about yourself?

[Rory Sutherland]

Oh, well, I'm most pleased. I don't think it's necessarily about myself, but I have managed to find employment in marketing and advertising, which for all its faults, has pretty much allowed me to remain. Me.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah.

[Rory Sutherland]

In that.

[Jamie Laing]

Brilliant.

[Rory Sutherland]

The fact that you can basically remain fairly true to yourself with all the faults and foibles rather than having to bury it, is one of the gifts of working where I. Where I do.

[Jamie Laing]

Bonus. Favorite swear word.

[Rory Sutherland]

There's a Bristolian one, which I don't use, which is literally cunting. Okay. Which. Which I've. I've never. I'm not. I'm only. I'm only like an eighth Bristolian, so I don't feel I qualify to use it. But it does strike me as an absolutely ridiculous extension of. In other words, if fuck has a. Has a present past or whatever it is, we need to do the same, even though it's a goddamn noun. Okay. And I have to go. I kind of admire the person who came up with that one.

[Jamie Laing]

That's a great one. Rory Sutherland, thank you so much for coming on.

[Rory Sutherland]

Great covering. That's been a pleasure. Thank you very much. Nina, what a pleasure.

[Jamie Laing]

Wow. See?

[Jemima]

So good.

[Jamie Laing]

Okay. I mean, how long did we talk for?

[Jemima]

We had to wrap it up. I feel like we could have gone on for like three more hours.

[Jamie Laing]

Did we talk for an hour and a half?

[Jemima]

Like over 2?

[Jamie Laing]

That edit for you is going to be amazing.

[Jemima]

And if you're listening, you won't see, but he was just holding his vape, his lost Mary vape the whole way through.

[Jamie Laing]

Yeah, he loves it. And the way that. And I. My favorite thing about Rory is when you say something to roar and it sparks like a different sort of thing in his mind. Yeah, that was awesome.

[Jemima]

So good, so good. And so many things I think I'm going to like. I'll just have in my pocket now walking around being like the behavioral science behind.

[Jamie Laing]

Behind everything.

[Jemima]

Everything is so interesting. And flat white will off. Fantastic.

[Jamie Laing]

It would just be amazing. As always guys, thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. Remember you can Watch us on YouTube or you can subscribe to the show which would do us absolute wonders. And also we're on Instagram and tik tok@greatcompany podcast. We'd love to hear from you if you want to send us anything and you can send us an email. Great Company Productions co.ukjemima Inter until next week.

[Jemima]

Great Company, Goodbye Great Company. Goodbye.

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