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- [00:00]
Scott Galloway
Foreign.
- [00:06]
John Evans
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the uncensored cmo. Now we have a returning guest in this episode, Professor Scott Galloway. I think it's fair to say Scott is perhaps the most controversial guest we've ever had on the show. Now we got Scott together with Rory Sutherland and it's the very first time they have ever been together in a room. Recorded this in front of a live audience where the two of them go head to head trying to answer some of the biggest questions in marketing. You're absolutely going to love this. Scott does not hold back whatsoever. So strap in, get ready and here we go.
- [00:39]
Rory Sutherland
What a joy. Fantastic. I've been a long time fan and we both suffer from Scottish dad syndrome, which is an interesting affliction, isn't it?
- [00:50]
Scott Galloway
You're Scottish?
- [00:51]
Rory Sutherland
Yeah, my father's family were all from the Highlands, effectively.
- [00:54]
Scott Galloway
Got it. Yeah.
- [00:55]
Rory Sutherland
I'm part Welsh, part Scottish. It's a terrible mix. So half of you wants to be in the grotto and the Playboy mansion and the other half is worrying about how much it costs to heat the thing, you know. But no, I mean, I'm really intrigued actually, by the way, you're the only person other than Daniel Kahneman to make that point about how ill advised careers are kind of creative industries in particular. Daniel Kahneman. I remember saying that the worst thing you could aspire to be was a successful actor. And there were two reasons for this. One, you were gonna fail statistically, almost certainly. But secondly, when you did fail, the few people who succeeded were rubbed in your face every single day. So he said, if you aspire to be a really successful dentist, if you only make it halfway, you're still quite a wealthy dentist. And you don't open your magazine every day and have to read bloody two page spreads about Manhattan's most successful dentists.
- [01:55]
Scott Galloway
Yes.
- [01:55]
Rory Sutherland
Yeah, so I thought that was. Nobody ever mentions this, by the way, with. With sporting aspiration, which obviously there's intrinsic pleasure to sport.
- [02:03]
Scott Galloway
Yeah.
- [02:04]
Rory Sutherland
But there's also, if you look at it, the few people who succeed are very, very salient. Are on television. The extraordinary cost paid by people who never made it doesn't really figure.
- [02:15]
Scott Galloway
Yeah. Another basic lesson I try and impart on my kids. When I say my kids, my students. I've taught 4,500 students over 22 years. And I said, kids, their average age is 27. I teach graduate school is ideally, you want to be in an industry that you get better at as you get older, not an industry you get worse at as you get older. Sports, modeling, acting, Mostly acting for women. You get worse at it as you get older. And I mean, you personally get worse at it. I mean, the industry doesn't want you, whereas the industry you're in, you get better at as you get older. I mean, it's really difficult. You're really setting yourself up for failure because our species believes, because for 98% of our time on this planet, we haven't lived past the age of 35. We have trouble imagining how long we're going to be here. So if you're doing well in modeling or bartending, okay, you start to believe, well, I'm not going to be around that long, so let's do it. It's like, no, you're going to be around a really long time. And you got to ask yourself, do I get better at this job as I get older? I was a bartender in college, and I was making 200 bucks a night, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. And I said, I'm not going to take the job with Morgan Stanley. I'm making more money as a bartender. My mom said, okay, and then what? In 10 years, you're going to be making 200 bucks a day anyway, in sports. I was an athlete growing up. I thought I was going to. I wanted to make my living in sports. And then I got to UCLA and realized what real athletes were, and that was a blessing. I think the worst thing that can happen to you is to be blessed with extraordinary athletic skill because you just don't realize what's required to make a living as an athlete and how much money you have to make so quickly.
- [03:52]
Rory Sutherland
Yeah.
- [03:52]
Scott Galloway
To support yourself the rest of your life.
- [03:54]
Rory Sutherland
The only sport which pays if you're kind of in the. I guess in the sort of top 10,000 of the world, probably golf, isn't it? So it's such a wealthy sport that you. You'll be able to find yourself a job as a pro, you know, as some sort of advisor at a golf course somewhere. But, I mean, if you're number 200 in the world in tennis, you're practically living out of your car. I mean, it's extraordinarily much a winner takes all problem.
- [04:19]
Scott Galloway
I grew up with the most extraordinary. I lived in athlete housing at ucla and I grew up with the most extraordinary. Like, I know two of my three roommates went to the Olympics, and they were all calling me a 28 for jobs because they spent their whole life playing water polo or track. And then they're 26 or 28, and they have A bronze medal from the Seoul Olympics, and they're looking for something to do. And that industry is just impossible or near impossible to make a living at. And then because it's such a romance industry, people say they want to be in the back office and the industry can just pay you nothing. I mean, I was so disappointed. Even I read today wme, I don't know if you know them, I'm represented by wme, so I'm going to bite the hand that feeds me. It's the best biggest talent agency and they have img. They're taking it private and the top two guys are making about a quarter of a million dollars. And as far as I can tell, I read this stuff is financial engineering and they pay new assistants 15 bucks an hour. And the reason they do that is because they can. And I'm going back to the notion that not calling on people's better angels, but I'm thinking like Jesus Christ, is that really what you want to do? You want to make a quarter of a billion bucks? You can make pay your assistance 15 bucks an hour, but because that industry attracts so much human capital, they can find really talented people who will work for 15 bucks an hour.
- [05:42]
Rory Sutherland
It's interesting you've made this point for quite a while that I think in your words, capital has been kicking the shit out of labor for about the past 50 or 60 years. What interests me is that, for example, consumer goods companies, it would be in their interests to have a more equitable distribution. And yet I've never heard a consumer goods company, a Unilever or a P and G actually campaign for some form of wealth redistribution. I mean, after all, you know, billionaires don't really buy much more shampoo than anybody else. You might be able to sell them a fancy French variant. Yeah, but it's not really that exciting. And actually the other thing I've never heard consumer goods companies talk about is the extraordinary, effectively the extraordinary sump on personal wealth that is the growing property market which has benefited the old at the expense of the young to an absurd degree. Really?
- [06:36]
Scott Galloway
Yeah. You're singing my hymn. Look, look what's happened in the last since 2019, since COVID housing prices. I don't have the Data on the UK housing prices have gone from $290,000 average to 410 just in the last 5, 6 years. In addition, with interest rates going from 2 1/2 to 7%, the average mortgage has gone from $1,100 to $2,300. My industry has raised tuition three times as fast as inflation. So the kind of indicators for improving your own human capital and establishing a life and moving towards mating and procreation and building a family, I've become out of reach. At the same time, people over the age of 70 in the United States are 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. People under the age of 40 are 24% less wealthy. So everything's more expensive and they make less money. And what do you know, 40 years ago 60% of 30 year olds used to have a kid, now it's 27% and they're more anxious, more depressed, more obese than any generation in history. And we like figure out what's going on. Well, oh no shit, wouldn't you be if everyone around you and everyone above you and to the left and right on social media was killing it and you can't afford to move out of your parents house and you're working your ass off and you need a second, second job, then yeah, that feels really, really difficult. And in the United States, the incumbents, I mean there's a few things going on we talk about. They get us fighting left and right, progressive and conservative, because what they don't really, they want a weapon of mass distraction. The real fight is between rich and non rich. And America has essentially become an operating system where the bottom 99% is basically a dopa bag to get the 1% more money. Everything we do in the U.S. is to get the 1 percent more money. I think every piece of legislation, right, my tax rate is 17%. When I was in my 20s and 30s and making hundreds of thousands of dollars, I made a lot of money. I, I was paying 30, 40% tax rate. Now that I make millions of dollars a year, my tax rate has plummeted to 17%. And in America, the reason they put up with that is that America's superpower is its optimism. And the majority of people believe at some point they're going to be in the 1%. But effectively with Social Security for example, old people have figured out a way to vote themselves more money. And so the $120 billion increase, the cost of living adjustment flies right through Congress. But the $40 billion tax credit for children gets stripped out of the infrastructure bill. So you've had this massive transfer, this unprecedented transfer of wealth from young to old and from the entrance to the incumbents. The bailouts that took place both here in the UK and the US were the greatest intergenerational theft in history. A million people dying in the US would Be bad. But what would be worse is if I got less wealthy. So we flushed $7 trillion into the economy, PPP care loans, and effectively 85%, not effectively 85% of that money wasn't spent. Didn't go to medicine, didn't go to rent, didn't go to food. So where did it go? It went into the market. Housing prices go like this. Markets hit new highs, right? You think, well that's fine. No, it's not. The reason I'm here and I get to live the life I lead is because in 2008 when we had a, a natural economic cycle that happens in any economy, we let the markets fail. And I was just coming into my prime income earning years and I was able to buy Apple, Amazon and Netflix for eight, ten and twelve dollars a share. Netflix is at $940 today. Where does a young person find disruption? When you bail out the baby boomer owner of a restaurant, all you're doing is robbing opportunity from a 26 year old who that wants to come in here and buy this for 30 cents on the dollar and have her shot. So bailing out the economy and the incumbents is bailing out old people. Young people need disruption. Where do they find value right now? Where can they buy anything of any reasonable value? Because what we've decided is we need to keep the rich richer, right? And we're willing to use your credit card. I'm saying you or people under the age of 30. I'm in the club doing ketamine and champagne and the closest a young person gets is they get to throw their credit card in and I run it up and I give my nation the illusion of prosperity with $2 trillion in deficits. We need to start calling deficits deficits. They're tax increases on the young.
- [10:55]
Rory Sutherland
You might argue too that you mentioned air travel, which is when your parents emigrated. It was a sea voyage and it cost a fortune. To some extent, the extraordinary improvement in the quality of consumption has probably blinded the young to the extent to which they are now poorer than they once were. It also creates a kind of angst in me as someone working in advertising and marketing, in that I feel that all, all the valuable contributions that free market capitalism, or whatever we want to call it, have made to the quality of life in terms of innovation and, and indeed reduction in price have effectively been mopped up by asset price increases enjoyed disproportionately by the old. So effectively, if you're a typical person, now work. I mean the other bizarre thing in a sense is that income inequality isn't that huge. In the UK, there are people who earn 10 times median wage. There are people who earn 20 times median wage. There aren't that many of them. And there's a mechanism called income tax which redresses that fairly effectively. But there's no corresponding measure for wealth. Whereas wealth inequality is inordinately more extreme. I mean, you can actually have Bill Gates walking into a football stadium and the average person becomes a millionaire. Okay, there's nobody earning a salary that has that effect.
- [12:16]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, well, the transfer of wealth has gone from super earners. So the people who get screwed the most in our tax code are the super earners.
- [12:24]
Rory Sutherland
So what happened at Morgan Stanley?
- [12:26]
Scott Galloway
Actually, yeah, so most of you are probably considered super earners. If you make between 100,000 and a million dollars a year, you're a super earner. You may not feel rich, but you're already in the top 10%. If you're making more than 4 or $500,000, you're in the top 1%. You may not feel that way because the quality of life is so expensive here. But here's the thing. When people say we need to raise taxes on the rich, you think, what if you're making that kind of money through current income, you're probably paying 40 or 50% tax rates. But once you become a super owner, once you make the jump to lightspeed, and that is, it's kind of escape.
- [13:03]
Rory Sutherland
Velocity, if you like.
- [13:03]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, 100%.
- [13:04]
Rory Sutherland
Got it.
- [13:05]
Scott Galloway
I make all of my money starting and selling businesses and buying assets and selling them stocks. And my effective tax rate is 17%. It has been for the last 17 years. I'm very open about my wealth and my tax rates because I made the jump to lightspeed. So the people who get screwed the most, the bottom half, pay almost no federal income tax. They pay a lot in consumption and usage tax, but they don't pay a lot in federal income tax. It's the workhorse. Mom's a baller. She's a lawyer at a blue, you know, an amazing law firm. Dad is a chiropractor, makes a really good living. They have to live in a city center. They make six £700,000 a year. They're killing it. They're paying 50% tax rate. But if dad rolls up, uses other people's money to roll up 6, 12, 18 chiropractic clinics and can take a lower salary and then his shop, his business gets acquired by a private equity firm in the US the first 10 million last two businesses I sold. The first 10 million in proceeds were tax free. What? I'm testifying in front of Congress, in front of the Small Business Committee and I did a pre, pre call and they said, I said, that's ridiculous. And they said, well, we want our most productive citizens like you to start businesses. I'm like, no entrepreneur knows tax rates when they start a business. It's not where we start businesses. But again, it's another transfer of wealth from the poor and the young to the rich and the older corporations.
- [14:28]
Rory Sutherland
We even have a National Health Service which does that very effectively because the young derive almost no value from the nhs, yet interestingly, support it passionately.
- [14:37]
Scott Galloway
Insurance. In the US we have insurance. Insurance is a transfer of wealth from the young to the old. You know who doesn't need insurance? Young people, they don't get sick. Occasionally have a baby, but they really don't get sick. It's people our age that are taxed on the health care system. This freaks people out in the us, Won't freak you out because I canceled my health insurance seven years ago. My health insurance. I'm a narcissist. I want the gold.
- [15:01]
Rory Sutherland
You self insure, Effectively, I self insure.
- [15:03]
Scott Galloway
I don't have homeowners insurance, I don't have fire insurance, I don't have flood insurance, I don't have health insurance. 45 cents on the dollar in insurance goes to profits and administration, meaning for every dollar you give to an insurance company, you're getting 55 cents back. Because humans will do anything to avoid pain. So we will take a small series of guaranteed losses to avoid a huge loss. Now, I have saved in seven years, $350,000 in insurance premiums just on my health insurance. That'll buy a lot of health care, but I can do it because I'm wealthy and I could absorb a real unfortunate health incident. The middle class and the lower class can't take that risk. So it's yet another transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class. And that's one thing I think that the UK gets, right? I know you guys, you know, I see a lot of calls about the NHS. 40% of American households have some sort of dental or medical debt, right? Can you imagine how humiliating that is? You have medical or dental debt, can't send your kid to college because you're paying off your loans for that time you went into the hospital with some sort of incident. So I believe almost everything we do in America, I don't know enough about your system, is nothing but a thinly Veiled transfer of wealth from the young to the old and from the poor to the rich. I think it just continues to happen. The US has become an operating system for transferring rights and capital to the top 1%.
- [16:22]
Rory Sutherland
So we'll move back to that question you raised, that the most successful companies don't advertise very much. Although Amazon actually advertise a lot. They're actually a fairly major.
- [16:30]
Scott Galloway
Do you know what percentage of the revenues they advertise?
- [16:32]
Rory Sutherland
No, that'll be revenues relatively small because their revenues are immense.
- [16:36]
Scott Galloway
Isn't that the true test?
- [16:37]
Rory Sutherland
Probably, you're probably right. I mean, I mean they're a significant advertiser, but they are, as you say, absolutely massive. The only point I would make is I don't think Nike's failure has anything to do with a failure in marketing. It was basically a deranged CEO under the influence of McKinsey and a kind of weird cult of efficiency who as far as I can see conceived the idea that the future for Nike was to sell shoes direct. Which seemed to suggest that at no point in his life that he observed how people actually buy shoes in reality, in real life. So I mean one of the things I'd argue is that the shareholder value movement is actually deeply damaging to the long term health of brands because it generally militates against the kind of longer term investments. The first thing you'll cut will be a marketing budget, for example. It obsesses over cost cutting rather than investment in customer service, for example.
- [17:32]
Scott Galloway
Well, the thing I would offer is that the biggest companies and your biggest clients are obsessed with shareholder value. And the best ones, the Unilever's and the Nikes of the world recognize that unless they continue to make those marketing expenditures they're going to pay a price and so will their shareholders. So the good companies, even in recessions say no. We might take down our marketing budget but they continue to invest because they recognize that they have to maintain that brand equity. I would argue in the case we're probably into Tactical or Nike, I would argue that, and I agree with you, an overly distracting focus on direct to consumer by a guy who ran ebay and was a consultant and not focusing enough on their distribution channels which tend to be fantastic sources of creative ideation and product development.
- [18:19]
Rory Sutherland
Often independent shoe stores, the little guys which are also selling to people because the shoe purchase is now an impulse buy to a large extent, isn't it? Yeah.
- [18:27]
Scott Galloway
And their product. I think most people would say that their ads are still pretty good, but their product, their merchandising is stale. I think how you would diagnose because I just think the products from Adidas or on running are just superior. I'm not sure their advertising is better. I mean, on embracing influencers, Federer and Zendaya, that was sort of genius. And it'll be interesting to look at what the forensics are.
- [18:54]
Rory Sutherland
I mean, one of the examples you gave of the kind of death of brands was that you now choose a hotel in London through TripAdvisor rather than relying on a familiar brand.
- [19:04]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, I think of a brand as a weapon, a shorthand, and that is. I've been molesting the earth for 30 years. I spent 180 days a year on the road. And I always, until about 10, 15 years ago, I always stayed either I told my assistant and my client, I either stay at the Four Seasons or the Mandarin Oriental. And the reason why is because someone else is paying. And two, they're always an eight. They're always an eight. They kept great brands. But now in an era of TripAdvisor, my social graph, and I don't need to defer to the weapon, to the shorthand of a brand. I have these weapons of mass diligence called Instagram. So when I used to come to London, I started staying at the Ferndale hotels and then I started staying at Chiltern because I would type in where do hot young people stay? Right. And it was Chiltern Firehouse. I have different priorities when I'm in Berlin. What I got AI bear in mind.
- [20:03]
Rory Sutherland
By the way, the Chilton Firehouse was the most hyped hotel launch of any launch of any kind of hospitality venue. So the guy came from the Chateau Marmont in La Andre. It was actually a massive PR coup, which explains how they can afford to operate a hotel in a slightly ridiculous part of London. If I'm being slightly controversial, I mean, it's a weird place to stay, Scott. I mean, I just got, I just got Marybourne Road. Wouldn't be everybody's first anyway. But I'll park that.
- [20:28]
Scott Galloway
This is the hottest room in London. Yeah, Crazy face control. You can't get in. They're not gonna let a guy like me in. I get in somehow with some friends. The door woman comes up to me and says, are you Scott Galler? She's like, can I have lunch with you? I'm doing a podcast. I have lunch with her and she goes, at the end of lunch she goes, here's my private WhatsApp. Whenever you need to come in, I'm like, oh, My God. I'm like Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, getting the gold ticket. I am there twice a week for the last year. I love to drink. I love to be around people hotter and cooler than me, which is pretty much everyone. I am so dialed in. Friends in town. Oh, does anyone know anyone at Chilton? Uh huh. Right. Amazing. Burned down. That was literally the universe saying something is out of whack when this guy has access. But back to the hotel. I will now go on AI and say, what has the best gym in Berlin? Oh, it's the Sohaus. What is the coolest old luxury place to take my wife in France? Hotel Du Cap. I don't need to defer to the brand anymore. I can find using these weapons.
- [21:27]
Rory Sutherland
Pretty amazing brand actually, I might add.
- [21:30]
Scott Galloway
But it's a singular brand. And I would bet the majority of people in the US have never heard of the Hotel de Cat. I hadn't heard of it.
- [21:35]
Rory Sutherland
Would you do the same if you're staying somewhere for one night? Because I would argue that was just.
- [21:39]
Scott Galloway
A South by Southwest. I'm a. I type into AI and I put this on stage. I'm a guy in the midst of a raging midlife crisis that wants to be around people cooler than him. And I am totally price insensitive. Right. I value cool. I value cool over service. I don't even be embarrassed. See you above. We're all going to be dead soon. I value cool over service. I am totally price insensitive. Austin proper, right? Get a corner suite. I do this everywhere I go. I'm headed to Miami. I'm going to be there four days. I want to host. I want to do a place where I can do podcasts. I want the coolest place with the coolest people. Find a hotel or addition. Those aren't big brands. They aren't. I mean, the reality is technology has basically obviated the need for shorthand and a lot of that capital is being reinvested back into the actual product or some sort of celebrity. I gotta imagine the Four Seasons can be sold out in Thailand for about the next five years. So it's different ways of raising awareness. But I think hotels are a really interesting example of product is a new innovation. And this goes back. I want to try and answer the questions. Is the era of brand over? Should we talk about that?
- [22:53]
Rory Sutherland
Yeah. Perfect. Yeah.
- [22:54]
Scott Galloway
I think from 1945 to the introduction of Google, the way you created shareholder value was you took a mediocre car, shoe, salty snack, consumer product and you wrapped it in these Amazing brand codes of youth, American masculinity, European elegance, maternal love. And he used this incredibly cheap mechanism for imbuing this mediocre product with great brand codes called broadcast media. And you could sell a shitty peanut butter that cost 20 cents for two bucks or fairly uninspiring, not that interesting shit to put on your face for seven bucks that cost 20 cents or a crappy beer that costs 9 cents. You could sell it for a buck 99 or $2.99 or $3.99. And then Google came along and all of a sudden I no longer needed to buy Norelco to shave my head. And I found out there's this company in East Germany that used to make propellers from Messerschmitts, that makes the best clipper in the world for bald guys. I would have never found that without Google. You can now, and quite frankly, mediocre products with great brands no longer work. I mean, to a certain extent, if self express have benefited, they do amazing things. But it's much more difficult now to maintain that unearned margin with mediocre products. With great branding, it just isn't. It's just much harder. So these weapons of mass diligence, it sounds sort of passe, but kind of product is the new bomb again. And your brand is a function of innovation. I don't need to run ads with Sam Shepard saying like a rock. I'm just going to. I'm going to have a car that gets. Gets tuned up over the airwaves. That was Tesla. Now their brand has really gone down, in my view, in the last two years. I'm not going to have dealerships in a bad part of town. I'm going to put them in the mall and I'm going to have this guy who gets me billions of dollars in free marketing every year because he's so outrageous and so good on Twitter. So I just think the era of quote, unquote, traditional branding is in fact over. I think the sun has passed midday. I think I say Don Draper's been drawn and quartered. The idea of an emotional brand campaign. It used to be. I remember in the 80s and 90s, I ran a brand strategy firm called Profit. A great ad campaign could literally change the trajectory of the company. My first consult engagement was I was asked to sit in the board meetings of Levi Strauss and company. They'd spend half the meeting talking about their ads. And an ad campaign could literally change the trajectory of the entire firm that year they had. And what was interesting is most of their Best ads came out of, came out of Europe. Bbh, I think was the name of the agency used to do this breakthrough work. And you would see a 30 or 40% lift in a product they were charging 80 pounds for that cost, seven pounds to produce. Oh my God. Ka Ching. What ad campaign has changed the trajectory of Levi Strauss and company in the last 20 or 30 years? It's just not, it's not what's going to move the needle. I'm not saying you don't need to do it. I'm not saying you don't need to be out in the market, but you're no longer. I go to board. I'm probably in 20 board meetings a year. Other than the boards I'm in. When I used to go to board meetings, it would be guys like Lee Clow would come and present the I, Shelly Lazarus. I haven't seen an ad woman or an ad man in a board meeting in 15 years. No one gives a shit what they think. I mean, they're just not invited to these meetings anymore. And they used to be the bomb. The smartest ad man or adwoman used to be the person that everyone wanted to know and wanted to hear from. That's why I sold my company. Profit brand strategy. I thought, I think this era is over. I literally started a company that said, manage your brands as assets. Intangible associations are the only competitive advantage. That's it. We can reverse engineer all manufacturing quality. So it's all about intangibles. That was the basis for starting my company my second year in business school. And then when Google came out, I thought, all of a sudden there's going to be an unlock around products focused on digital innovation and brand is no longer going to be as important. It's just how we think of brand.
- [27:09]
Rory Sutherland
What you might mean is advertising created brand. I mean, experience created brand, obviously. Products great brand. Yep. I'd also argue your customer service. There are lots and lots of purchases where we want someone who's always an eight, as you refer to who's always where always an eight. So it's what you might call variance reduction or downside minimization. So my, my comment is that McDonald's is the most successful restaurant in the world, not because it's brilliantly good, but it's incredibly good at not being bad. So if you want to eat somewhere, you don't want to spend, you know, an hour searching for the best place to go and you want to be sure that you'll have a reasonable meal and you won't get the shits insistent it fundamentally wins. And there are a large number of.
- [27:47]
Scott Galloway
Except for the last part.
- [27:48]
Rory Sutherland
Okay. No, no. I mean don't forget the reputational vulnerability keeps. I mean fame keeps organizations honest. Because the consequences of bad news. I was once actually watching the TV news in the UK and they mentioned the fact that a McDonald's in Schaumburg, Illinois had had an outbreak of norovirus or something. I remember thinking, you know, unless that had been McDonald's it would not have been newsworthy. Okay. So it makes people reputationally paranoid. They've got reputational skin in the game. You have reason to trust.
- [28:21]
Scott Galloway
Being big.
- [28:21]
Rory Sutherland
Yeah. Being big or being famous or just having a lot of reputation stake.
- [28:26]
Scott Galloway
But let's talk about McDonald's. McDonald's started this little company called Chipotle. They don't do a lot of advertising.
- [28:33]
Rory Sutherland
No.
- [28:34]
Scott Galloway
They put all the money into the food and the customer service. Chipotle's worth More than McDonald's now.
- [28:38]
Rory Sutherland
The McDonald's ad campaign where you take celebrities and their own McDonald's has been game changing.
- [28:44]
Scott Galloway
Has it?
- [28:44]
Rory Sutherland
I would argue, I would argue that the problem is not necessarily that it doesn't work anymore. It's that people have stopped trying to some extent. Okay. Yeah. There's a narrative about fragmentation of media, etc, etc.
- [28:56]
Scott Galloway
McDonald's is a tough one because I don't think McDonald's is priced to market because I think the diabetes and colon cancer gives people it probably should be have more taxes levied on it. I'm not. I think the industrial food complex just addicts young people to shitty fatty food and then hands them over to the diabetes industrial complex so they can make more money on them. I think the whole thing's the axis of evil.
- [29:18]
Rory Sutherland
So I mean there is this weird thing with these GLP drugs which is Walmart has its own pharmacists so it can tell who's been prescribed GLP drugs and then it can use loyalty data to see how this affects their consumption. An impulsive consumption of all kinds seems to decline, by the way. It seems that they work against things like gambling addiction as well, which is weirder and completely unexpected.
- [29:41]
Scott Galloway
Every year I pick a technology of the year. A technology that will win, a technology that'll fail. Headsets is my favorite. I just thought that was so ridiculous. Headsets, I love that.
- [29:49]
Rory Sutherland
Yeah, I love that.
- [29:50]
Scott Galloway
It's a prophylactic. You put a headset on, it means you're not having kids, you're being starched from. You're being starched from the genes.
- [29:56]
Rory Sutherland
Like Crocs.
- [29:57]
Scott Galloway
100%. The kids love Crocs, right? The technology I picked in 2024 was GLP1 or I picked it in 23. This is, we talked about our instincts. It's scaffolding on our instincts. They don't know how it does this, but you not only are buying less shitty food, you get hungry for things like kale. It decides, no, you need to eat more fruits and vegetables. People are biting their nails less. 60% of people on GLP1 are drinking less. They're starting to talk about using it for kids who have social media addiction. It's as if it says, it's as if it says, I'm going to update your instincts to the entirety.
- [30:37]
Rory Sutherland
It's a satiety creator in all kinds of areas.
- [30:40]
Scott Galloway
Porn addiction. I think a lot about young men and I worry, I think not only about the things that got me here, State sponsored education, irrational passion for my well being and my mother, American entrepreneurship, American, American infrastructure. But I think about what might have happened that might have gotten the way of my success. And one of those things is, and it's an embarrassing thing to say, but I think it's important we talk about this. If I'd had porn when I was a young man, I think it could have derailed me because I barely graduated from UCLA. I graduated with 2.27 GPA. For those of you not from America, that's not very good. And probably the only reason I graduated was I used to leave my fraternity and go onto the campus at UCLA because I wanted to see my friends. And in the back of my mind I thought there's a non zero probability I'm going to meet someone, establish a relationship and have sex with them. That was really motivating for me. And if I'd had porn on demand on my phone and my computer, I think there's a lot of days I might not have gone on campus and I think I might not have graduated, might not have gone on to graduate school. And I think so many young men are opting for porn over the risk, the humiliation, the effort of showering. Have a plan, Demonstrate excellence, smell nice, for God's sakes. Engage in persistence. Do you know the scariest stat I have seen? This absolutely wrecked me that I saw about young men. Do you know 51% of young men in America think about this. 51% of young men in America, the, the majority of young men have never asked a woman out in person. Think about that, think about that. I coach a lot of young men and I have all these exercises and I call it getting to know. Right. The key to success is a shit ton of no's to get to success. The ability to ask someone for friendship. Ask them for a job that they're not in your weight class, they're better looking than you are, it's a better job than you deserve. It's a cooler guy than they wouldn't be friends with you. But the only way you get in those circles is with no. And you got to get used to no. And when you have porn and you can find friends on Reddit and Discord and you think you can make money on Robinhood, on Coinbase, you never get to know because why take those risks? Because it's really upsetting and damaging. So young men aren't getting used to know because they can go online and have some reasonable facsimile of the dopa they get from sex.
- [33:03]
Rory Sutherland
Are you suggesting that. Which is not an unreasonable suggestion, that it's the only. The urge to be attractive to women that's really socializes men to some degree, that it forces them to go out, meet people. I think it's become reasonably, effectively, reasonably well groomed, tolerably sanitary.
- [33:20]
Scott Galloway
Not only. Not only go out, get out of your room, be successful.
- [33:24]
Rory Sutherland
Yeah.
- [33:25]
Scott Galloway
Be a better man, demonstrate kindness, demonstrate excellence, look good, be persistent, endure rejection. 75% of married couples that have been married longer than 30 years say one was much more interested in the other and it was always the man who was more interested. Because the downside of sex is so much greater for women than it is for men. Men want to spread. We think our job is to spread our seed to the four corners of the earth. Right. If there was alcohol involved, the majority of the men in this room would have sex with the majority of the women. The majority of the women in this room would have sex with none of the men. Women have a much finer filter for screening.
- [34:02]
Rory Sutherland
They have to.
- [34:03]
Scott Galloway
They have to for screening. The smartest, strongest and fastest seed, right?
- [34:08]
Rory Sutherland
Robert Trivers. It's parental investment theory, isn't it?
- [34:11]
Scott Galloway
Hundred percent. But the question is, the question is, all right, unless men have motivation for going out and enduring rejection and developing the skills such that what these women say who weren't interested in the men, they say, I saw him at work. By the way, one third of relationships begin at work. Work's a great place to build, find a mate. And 99.7% of those relationships are consensual. There's nothing wrong with it. Once you get above a certain level, your fly's up and locked, I'm on boards. Once you're making a shit ton of money, you take it off campus full stop. And if you have any relationship here, you're out. I find that it's the easiest thing to do in corporations but the neither 98% of the employees. It's a fantastic place to find a May. But what the women will say that have been he was really good at work. I liked the way he treated his parents. I found over time I really liked his hands and his body language. I liked the way he smelled. He was really funny. Where do young people, specifically young men now find a venue to demonstrate excellence? They're not going to work with remote work, they're not going to bars. 40% of the bars in London have closed since 2019 where they're not a non profits, they're not going to church, they're not serving for their country in the military. Where does a young man find a venue to demonstrate excellence such that much more selective women anthropologically can find. Yeah, I will give this guy a shot.
- [35:40]
Rory Sutherland
I mean, dating apps pose a problem because interestingly, when they did research, one of the most important facets in an enduring relationship and an attraction which is entirely at the subconscious level is smell. And we're apparently attracted to people whose smell indicates they have a kind of immune system that's complementary to our own.
- [35:59]
Scott Galloway
Let me, let me.
- [36:00]
Rory Sutherland
You don't get that on.
- [36:03]
Scott Galloway
Let me do it in imitation of every woman that's had sex with you. I'm laughing, I'm laughing, I'm naked. You have a great sense of humor. You have a great personality. That's how you have made it would be my guess. I'm just going that it's certainly.
- [36:15]
Rory Sutherland
Yeah, I've got a, I've got a great face for radio. It's probably, probably fair to say.
- [36:20]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, but you've had a chance to demonstrate excellence. Let's talk about online dating. Online dating is a disaster because when everyone has access to everybody, you develop these criteria. And this is what happens online. And this triggers a lot of people. 50 men on Tinder, 50 women, that's the most popular dating app, right? 46 of the women will show all of their attention to just four men. The same four men. Which leaves 46 men fighting for the attention of four women. And the two criteria online which you can now filter are income and height. And when you ask women what are their minimums for height and for income, they say 6ft and $100,000. That doesn't seem unreasonable.
- [37:05]
Rory Sutherland
But we don't care, by the way. I just thought I'd make that point. Genuinely. Men do not care about the earnings of a.
- [37:11]
Scott Galloway
She looks nice.
- [37:12]
Rory Sutherland
Yeah.
- [37:12]
Scott Galloway
I get the sense she's fun. Swipe right. She looks like. I can't see it, but I get the sense she has a great body. Swipe right. We are, you know, gloriously indiscriminating. We're ready, we're down, right? And then what you have is if you look at over 6ft and over 100,000, that doesn't sound that reasonable. If you take out men, over 50 married men, men who are obese, it's 2% of the available men, and this is controversial, but a woman who's of average attractiveness can have sex with a high attractiveness male. And then she oftentimes believes online that that's her weight class for mating. And it isn't. He'll have sex with her, but he's not interested in a long term relationship. And so. And then what you have is the top 10% of men are getting 80% of the mating opportunities. They can have a date every night, which quite frankly doesn't incent good behavior. And, and it doesn't in long term relationships. So what you have is, it is Lollapalooza, right? It is amazing for the top 10% of men. It is terrible for the bottom 90, and it's just a little bit shittier for every woman. Online dating has been terrible for mating. It used to be seven single women, seven single guys at the local temple. They kind of figure it out and slowly but surely they figure out their weight class and they pair off. Now everyone's online, women believe this is their weight class. And I know that sounds horrible to say you can't tell a woman to lower her standards. I get it, I get it. And the bottom 90 of men feel rejected and they give up and they stop trying to be better men. And even worse, they start blaming women for their problems. They become much more prone to misogynistic content. They become much more prone to nationalistic content. They become less likely to believe in climate change. And if a man doesn't develop the skills to want to be better and want to demonstrate excellence that are often acquired during the pursuit of mating. He doesn't develop professional skills. Find me a guy who's good in this environment at a bar, I'll find you a guy who's reasonable in a boardroom. The skills acquired to get a job and the skills acquired to be a reasonable person in terms of Mating. What do we want from our young men? We want someone invaluable in a shipwreck and acceptable at a dance. Right. They never develop those skills because they get so discouraged early on. And I want to be clear. No one has an obligation to service young men. Women deserve to have higher standards. They're doing much better than us. They have outpaced men economically and men have not kept pace logistically and domestically. So now 70% of divorce filings are from women. It's like, okay, you're making less money. Maybe I could deal with that. Maybe not. Less can deal with it than they can say, right? Likelihood of divorce doubles when the woman starts making more money than the man. The man becomes three times more likely to take ed drugs because of his own self esteem problems.
- [40:02]
Rory Sutherland
Interesting fact, men never leave women except to go with somebody else. Women will leave men to be alone. So men will basically maintain the resilience of their sexual supply chain at all costs.
- [40:16]
Scott Galloway
Men leave to marry.
- [40:17]
Rory Sutherland
Very, very rare that that happens.
- [40:18]
Scott Galloway
Men leave to marry a younger version of their wife when they're economically insecure. Women leave because they just want a better life. And the man has not. The man is not bringing. Maybe he's economically not doing as well, but he hasn't replaced it with emotional or logistical or domestic. He doesn't feel. He does. He hasn't filled the void with other things. So the woman goes, we're making huge generalizations here. The woman says, the fuck am I doing here? You got to add something, boss. Right? You got to add something. You got to bring something to the table.
- [40:45]
Rory Sutherland
It comes down. It comes down.
- [40:46]
Scott Galloway
Sorry.
- [40:47]
Rory Sutherland
It comes down to that, by the way. It all comes down to that 1980s feminist joke, which is, why did God invent men? Because a vibrator can't mow the lawn. But you said that the Jaguar one, just for about three minutes. We could take that to the bar. We can take it to the bar. Or do you want.
- [41:03]
Scott Galloway
I'll go. Jaguar. Really simple. What a stupid decision. You want to talk about a great British brand?
- [41:09]
Rory Sutherland
I'm going to caveat this. Yeah.
- [41:10]
Scott Galloway
Oh, my God.
- [41:12]
Rory Sutherland
My only argument is this gentleman rebranded Lucozade in a similar way. It was a drink for ill people.
- [41:18]
Scott Galloway
Do you remember that symbol? That is the greatest visual metaphor in the history of automobile company. Jaguar is the only, only cat that will come back and hunt the hunter. You see that thing? It's out. It's finding prey. It's sleek. I mean, that thing was so amazing. And they come up with something that looks Like a cheap AI consulting firm.
- [41:39]
Rory Sutherland
They've kept the Leaping Cat. In their defense, they've kept the Leaping cat. It was wrongly depicted that they got rid of it. They got rid of the face on Jaguar, but they've actually kept the Leaping Cat. They haven't got rid of that.
- [41:50]
Scott Galloway
So the car still has the same badging with the cat.
- [41:52]
Rory Sutherland
It will still have the same badging with the cat.
- [41:54]
Scott Galloway
I think that's. I think that is one of the greatest visual metaphors in history. I love that thing.
- [41:59]
Rory Sutherland
But my argument would be that when you have a kind of tectonic shift in the car industry, so the relative status of different brands suddenly gets completely changed by electrification, it's not always wrong to upset your existing core audience. If you need it to some extent to find a new one.
- [42:16]
Scott Galloway
Bottom line is, it's a product problem. We'll argue over branding.
- [42:18]
Rory Sutherland
Yeah.
- [42:19]
Scott Galloway
Jaguar hasn't put out a great car in a while. That's.
- [42:21]
Rory Sutherland
I mean, the I Pace was good. It sold 7,000 in America in a year. It wasn't selling. So at some stage, I would argue that you can actually roll the dice. I'm. I'm actually something of a kind of, you know, you're a car guy. Yeah. I've had about six Jags.
- [42:36]
Scott Galloway
Which, Which. Which Jaguar.
- [42:38]
Rory Sutherland
I've had. I've had the xj. I've had a. I've had actually the earlier xj. I had about three of those.
- [42:44]
Scott Galloway
You're sexy. Yeah.
- [42:45]
Rory Sutherland
No, absolutely.
- [42:48]
Scott Galloway
Can you see that? You can totally see that. Right.
- [42:51]
Rory Sutherland
But my argument would be that, fundamentally, you can't manufacture a car in Britain with impending Chinese competition unless you go super premium. Range Rover. Have already shown they know how to do it.
- [43:02]
Scott Galloway
Agreed.
- [43:03]
Rory Sutherland
Okay. And actually, the audience they need isn't that vast. It's probably a niche, but it does exist. The other point I'd make is that, bizarrely, the media budget for that film, which caused all the controversy, was zero. It wasn't an ad, it was a brand film. And yet I was speaking to people in Hawaii the following day who'd heard about it. So in terms of getting an extraordinary amount of publicity for a car launch at zero cost, you can't criticize them for that.
- [43:31]
Scott Galloway
You're going to forget more about this than I'm going to know. So I'm going to defer to your judge.
- [43:34]
Rory Sutherland
Okay, well, I think that's probably a perfect time at which to end. We kind of agree to differ on this one. What a pleasure. Thanks very much indeed, Scott. Thank you. Brilliant.
- [43:45]
John Evans
Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show, so please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do I'm over on XenSoredCMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.