Skip to content
Modern WisdomModern Wisdom

How Your Brain Gets Tricked By Clever Marketing - Rory Sutherland (4K)

Rory Sutherland is one of the world’s leading consumer behaviour experts, the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Advertising and an author. The advertising industry creates a unique intersection between psychology and creativity. By looking at what works in the world of ad campaigns, we can learn even more about the human mind and Rory might have the best insight on the planet for this. Expect to learn what dating apps can learn about advertising from property websites, why women actually wear engagement rings, Rory’s thoughts on Jordan Peterson, how you can become more creative every day, what Rory thinks of Twitter changing their name to X, how hotel rooms have residual sexism baked into the design, why rational people ruin creativity and much more... Sponsors: Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) - 00:00 Comparison is the Enemy of Happiness 03:27 Choice Architecture in Online Dating 23:18 The Philosophy of Comedy 30:57 The Biggest Problem With the Purity Spiral 43:45 What Happened to the Welsh Identity? 47:36 Why We Buy Engagement Rings 51:38 How to Think Like Darwin 59:45 The Convenience of Tribal Thinking 1:08:27 Is David Ogilvy a Genius? 1:21:49 Should HS2 Be Abandoned? 1:30:20 Rory’s Advice to Cultivate Creativity 1:35:11 Why Rory Didn’t Move to America 1:41:58 Rebranding Twitter to X 1:53:25 Being an Air-Fryer Pioneer 1:56:03 Rory’s Opinion of Jordan Peterson 1:58:50 Rory’s Current Obsessions 2:09:30 What’s Next for Rory - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Chris WilliamsonhostRory Sutherlandguest
Jan 22, 20242h 12mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 3:27

    Comparison is the Enemy of Happiness

    1. CW

      I heard a quote from you. Our mutual friend, George Mack, uh, sent me a quote that said, "A rich man is anyone who earns more than his wife's sister's husband."

    2. RS

      Yeah. That actually isn't me. I wish it were me 'cause I would have retired on the basis of that quote-

    3. CW

      (laughs)

    4. RS

      ... happily. I think, uh, it's... What's the, what's the chap called? Um, brilliant American humorist called The Sage of Baltimore. The Americans will know. Um-

    5. CW

      No idea.

    6. RS

      Uh, he, he... Uh, a fantastic comic writer and I've briefly forgotten his name.

    7. CW

      Right.

    8. RS

      But it is interesting how... Um, interesting, I was having a conversation yesterday with someone at a, a, an addiction clinic in Switzerland, which I can't name. I wasn't there as a patient, just in case you... Uh, I was there as a very, very interested outsider, and he said that, you know, comparison is the enemy of happiness.

    9. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    10. RS

      That, you know, one of the things that seems to be a curse for all humankind, and you've obviously read... I don't... You probably interviewed the author of The Status Game. Have you-

    11. CW

      Will Storr. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    12. RS

      Will Storr.

    13. CW

      He's great. Yeah, yeah.

    14. RS

      Which is a fascinating book 'cause it's this kind of terrifying invisible force that drives us, and we're in denial about it. And in some ways, the game only works because we pretend we're not playing the game. You see what I mean? And that comes down to other, other phrases about status-seeking, which is, I think the famous one of Aristotle Onassis, where he said that, uh, if there were no women, all the money in the world would be worthless. Now, I think he's probably overstating that. I mean, you know, there are presumably pleasures to be derived from sort of jet skiing and... I'd, I'd like to have one of those yachts, not for the yacht, but just for... I know it's not called parking, you know it's called mooring, okay?

    15. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    16. RS

      But, uh, the actual business of sailing around on one of those yachts wouldn't appeal to me at all, but docking the fucking thing, that must be an absolute joy.

    17. CW

      That's the coolest part. Yeah.

    18. RS

      Do, do you ever watch that guy called Super Yacht Captain on YouTube?

    19. CW

      No.

    20. RS

      And what they do when they dock those things is they actually send up a drone, so they've got an aerial view of the ship-

    21. CW

      Right.

    22. RS

      ... and then they use the bow thrusters and the stern thrusters to actually-

    23. CW

      Wow.

    24. RS

      ... maneuver the thing in.

    25. CW

      I mean, you get that now on, um, cars, right?

    26. RS

      Yeah.

    27. CW

      You know, the, the fanciest Range Rover gives you what appears to be an overhead shot.

    28. RS

      Yeah, my mine does it actually. I, I, I've got the electric car. They tend to come with more gizmos.

    29. CW

      Are you still in your Mach-E?

    30. RS

      A fantastic car.

  2. 3:27 – 23:18

    Choice Architecture in Online Dating

    1. RS

    2. CW

      What have you learned about the choice architecture of online dating sites and how it relates to property websites?

    3. RS

      Well, this is, this is kind of interesting because one of the reasons, one of the reasons I like working in advertising and marketing is, I think the correct way to solve problems and to understand what's going on is really bottom-up, not top-down. By which I mean, um, actually open-minded inquiry and observation of all kinds of things, okay? Tends then, over time, patterns start to emerge. And I think the better way... What we try and do, in politics in particular, is we start with a theory. We then impose the theory on reality. We trumpet the areas or the scale at which that theory succeeds, and we sweep under the carpet those areas where the theory basically fails. Okay? So if you take something like... Okay, uh, if you take something like the efficient market hypothesis, it probably has an application in a few fields, and those are well-celebrated and measured by economists. It's a complete nonsense to apply, um, the same rules of a market to, say, the property market or the dating markets as you do to the market for a commodity, like iron ore or something of that kind. Okay? They're fundamentally different. In particular, if you look at the property market, there's a problem because when people go and buy most things, you know, uh, if you went out to buy a car... I've got to ask you about your car. Uh, uh, I... You, you... I'm a big Mach-E enthusiast. Have you gone electric? Or in Texas, does that get you vilified?

    4. CW

      It will. It would get me killed in my place.

    5. RS

      Not in Austin, though?

    6. CW

      Uh, yeah. Austin's sufficiently-

    7. RS

      Austin's be, Austin's gonna be okay.

    8. CW

      It's sufficiently progressive. I think I'll get Camaro, uh, a Camaro for my first car in America. Uh, FYI, there's no license equivalency between the US and the UK, which means that I need to retake my theory test 18 years after I took it in American.

    9. RS

      Which is weirdly difficult. Yeah.

    10. CW

      It's gonna be impo... It's... All the road signs are different. What does this particular thing mean? I, all of my knowledge about roundabouts is totally fucking useless, obviously.

    11. RS

      Uh, my car, which is obviously American, uh, has an interesting American feature, which is you can set the cruise control to effectively go at the speed limit plus or minus X miles an hour.

    12. CW

      So it's using the sat-nav to work out-

    13. RS

      Uh, well, it uses a mixture, I think, of sat-nav and actually optical character recognition-

    14. CW

      Just reads the road sign.

    15. RS

      ... of reading the road signs.

    16. CW

      Wow.

    17. RS

      Which does raise the question that people in residential areas are gonna put up fake seven miles an hour signs along their streets so that electric cars all automatically slow to a crawl.

    18. CW

      How hilarious.

    19. RS

      But, um, uh, so I imagine... You know, because you noticed that wonderful thing where people, as I predicted, were hacking autonomous taxis in San Francisco-

    20. CW

      Yeah, putting cones in specific-

    21. RS

      ... where you put a cone on the, on the hood, as they'd call it, and the thing was basically immobilized in a state of complete confusion. And I predicted that, I'm proud to say, five years ago. I said, "People will hack self-driving cars, and they'll discover that all you gotta do is put a pattern of weighted balloons on the road, and the things will go absolutely delally." And sure enough-

    22. CW

      Yeah.

    23. RS

      ... someone discovered that.

    24. CW

      Okay. Dating sites.

    25. RS

      So dating sites. Okay.So let's look at something here, which is... So to go back to my original point, the market for property is highly problematic because what most people do when they buy, uh, they look for property to buy, is they work out how much deposit they have, they then work out how much they can borrow, they add those two together, and they start looking for houses around that price. Okay? So the basic heuristic question they're asking is, how much can I afford? And then they start looking. Now if you notice, we don't buy anything else like that. We don't buy cars that way, okay? If you went and said, "Okay, how much money can I raise as a deposit? How much can I borrow?" people would be driving around in Bugattis and, you know, Bugatti Veyrons and Bentleys all over the place. We don't do that with cars. We kind of take a balance on how much property, uh, how much car do I actually need?

    26. CW

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    27. RS

      How much do I care about cars? Et cetera. But because we have this heuristic that effectively property is the only tax-free big bet you can make in your life, okay, with huge tax advantages in terms of the capital gains, everybody maxes out. Now unsurprisingly, people who sell property have noticed this fact and consequently, property prices go up and up and up because everybody's effectively... So as interest rates go down, it doesn't make anybody richer, it just means that they set their target price for the property they're prepared to buy even higher than before.

    28. CW

      Mm. Mm-hmm.

    29. RS

      Sellers of property aren't complete idiots, so they basically put their price up to get whatever they can get, and so consequently you end up with an absurd spiral, okay? So the property market is fundamentally unlike, say, the market for, as I said, you know, whether it's iron ore or indeed whether it's, you know, uh, high quality energy drink-

    30. CW

      Yeah, there it is.

  3. 23:18 – 30:57

    The Philosophy of Comedy

    1. RS

      Rock did a whole routine on this, didn't he? Which was... What was it? Men can't go backwards sexually, women can't go back in lifestyle was-

    2. CW

      Yeah.

    3. RS

      ... I think the Chris Rock routine.

    4. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    5. RS

      One thing that I think deserves study, um, which is interesting, is a huge generation of, um, the most successful comedians are also amateur or u-... amateur, effectively evolutionary thinkers, aren't they?

    6. CW

      Yeah.

    7. RS

      So if you look at Gervais, absolutely fascinated by kind of Darwinian evolution and so on. Um, a- absolutely true of say Andrew Schulz, true of Jimmy Carr. Um, Jimmy Carr actually wrote that... co-wrote that book with Lucy Greaves, The Naked Jape, which is a absolutely fascinating kind of investigation into the evolutionary origins of comedy. And a- a- actually there are a few more than that. I mean, you know, I think you can see it in Dave Chappelle, you can see it in Chris Rock, a lot of that stuff. There's a huge influence, and there seems to be a significant correlation between interest in kind of evolutionary psychology and, um, comedy.

    8. CW

      Well, ultimately, it tells us why we are the way we are, right? And that is one of the insights to say the thing that everybody knows but no one has named or no one dares say-

    9. RS

      Yeah.

    10. CW

      ... is one of the greatest forms of comedy that you can find. There was something else. I remember...

    11. RS

      But also, I suppose, it's all about...... um, I mean, I suppose, you know, re-contextualization.

    12. CW

      Yeah.

    13. RS

      So comedians are going to be very, very open to different ways of looking at the world because it is, to some extent, the source, you know, that contextual flip-

    14. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    15. RS

      ... is at the root of quite a lot Misdirection. Misdirection, exactly. Yeah. Um, but it is fascinating because like music, we have this debate, what is the evolutionary function? And one of the things that strikes me as odd is that we don't look at comedy, uh, as a source of inspiration for wider problem solving. So I did an interview with Jimmy Carr at, um, Adweek, which was a kind of advertising festival, uh, which by the way is, uh, uh, as you must have found, um, I mean, people like him, for example, the, what you might call brain-to-mouth speed is extraordinary, isn't it?

    16. CW

      Terrifying.

    17. RS

      There's that great phrase in television which is called brain to mouth, and you know, J- Jonathan Ross or whatever, people like that are very, very good as interviewers because they can basically form a thought and speak it more or less in parallel. And I found, I found that really interesting in terms of, you know, talking to Jimmy Carr because it's rather like, you know, you fancy yourself a bit. There was a wonderful (laughs) thing I saw actually, uh, on, I think it was the A299 in East Kent, which was one of, you know, you know those sort of hotted up Citroëns which are like the hot hatch with enormous kind of, um-

    18. CW

      Unnecessary tailpipes.

    19. RS

      ... uh, uh, unnecessarily large tailpipes-

    20. CW

      Yeah.

    21. RS

      ... and a ludicrously large woofer-

    22. CW

      Yeah.

    23. RS

      ... that takes over the whole of the, um, uh, the boot. And, um, one (laughs) of those on the A299 decided to take on a McLaren F1, okay? And I have to say, it w- it was comical to watch, and the guy actually, you know, acquitted himself in the first sort of five seconds reasonably well. But I felt a bit like that, you know, talking to Jimmy Carr 'cause, you know, you work in a business where-

    24. CW

      You were the Citröen with the big subwoofer.

    25. RS

      I, I wa- I was the Citröen with the, uh, unfeasibly large tailpipes, okay?

    26. CW

      (laughs)

    27. RS

      And, and, and similarly I've, I've always been in awe of Andrew Schulz for the, the crowd work, just has a-

    28. CW

      Terrifying.

    29. RS

      ... just has a speed which is just terrifying.

    30. CW

      Yeah. Yeah, mate. I, uh, so w- someone asked me the other day, um, who are the easiest people to speak to and who are the most difficult people to speak to on the show, and I definitely find that comedians are the ones that I need to be the most switched on for.

  4. 30:57 – 43:45

    The Biggest Problem With the Purity Spiral

    1. RS

      you know, what's interesting is those comedy audiences are really fascinating just in terms of their demographic constituency.

    2. CW

      It's, uh, teaching people a sort of a degree of, uh, intellectual humbleness, uh, being able to cast off the- the tension that you have when watching something occur by laughing. So I've noticed as I'm preparing for my first live tour, which is happening around the UK and Ireland in a couple of weeks time, and as a part of this I did a ton of work in progress shows, and we could feel, I could see in the room and feel in the room tension arising as I'm talking about whatever the thing is that I'm talking about. This section about confidence or this section about regret or this section about whatever. And there was bits where you needed a laugh almost kind of like how a dog shakes its coat when it's wet.

    3. RS

      And once the laugh happened...

    4. CW

      It needs to just cast it off. Yeah.

    5. RS

      So here- here's an interesting analogy, okay, in terms of being right versus solving the problem. Okay? Now if you want to win arguments or if you want to win the respect of a peer group who hold a particular set of political views, what tends to happen is you get into a virtue spiral. I think that's what it's called in the book.

    6. CW

      Purity spiral.

    7. RS

      Purity. Thank you. Purity spiral. You become absolutist. And then because conflict is inherently interesting and argument is inherently interesting, so if we hear outside some people having an amicable conversation, we won't even bother to get up. If we hear a fight starting to break out or two people shouting at each other, we'll have our noses pressed to the window to see what's happening. And journalists and newspapers and media know this, so they focus on those areas where there's the greatest polarization, which means you're focusing on the part of the problem which is most difficult to solve.

    8. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    9. RS

      So the example I give, 'cause I- I'm gonna move away from politics, 'cause when you mention politics everything suddenly drives people to this polarization, I ref- I try, I aspire to be the most left-wing person on the alt-right, okay?

    10. CW

      (laughs)

    11. RS

      Which is, which is, which is... I find the conversation of the alt-right-

    12. CW

      Yeah.

    13. RS

      ... inherently interesting, but I try not to become part of it and I occasionally... You know, I write for The Spectator, but I g- I'm, I occasionally write about the virtues of Henry George or the insights of Karl Marx just to shake the whole thing up again.

    14. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    15. RS

      Bloody interesting guy, Marx, by the way. Okay, right? I mean, the... I think, I think the actual, the- the, um, uh, the way I put it is the diagnosis is fascinating and the prescription is terrible.

    16. CW

      Correct.

    17. RS

      Okay?

    18. CW

      Correct.

    19. RS

      Um, now... Okay, the- the perfect exemplar of where this problem goes wrong, and this is very difficult if you work in advertising and marketing because quite often you're not criticizing the intentionality or the aspiration of the person. You're merely saying that the way you're going about this isn't working very well. Okay? So yes, uh, you know, nearly all the aspirations of, say, the diversity and inclusion movement are those which we should all generally support. And I don't want to ever get into that kind of weird, you know, uh, uh, weird thing where you start getting angry about trigger warnings, because if you give it about 10 minutes' thought you realize that trigger warnings, although they're a bit funny and it's a bit weird when Netflix says, "May contain nicotine use," okay, which, you know, never put anybody off going to the cinema in 1946. You know, imag- imagine if you had to do that. Casablanca: Warning: nicotine use. It's a bit weird, okay? But it's a great idea, okay? Some people may be deeply upset by certain forms of content and you should at least give them the opportunity to kind of opt out or to avoid it. I don't... I... You know, yeah, okay, we- we can debate what is triggering, but nonetheless it's broadly speaking an intelligent principle, I think. No, so the example I'll choose won't be from politics, 'cause politics automatically leads people to become tribal and therefore they have to take a side, okay? And I... The example I think is perfect is Cycling Mikey. Do you n- Cycling Mikey is a YouTuber, okay, and he goes around, he stands at a place in London called Gandalf Corner and if he sees a car ducking round the wrong side of a keep left island, he just stands in front of it and refuses to let them move, takes a photograph, reports them to the police. He's- he- he's, um, uh, he's got, uh, Guy Ritchie, um, I think he got... Did he get Guy Ritchie banned because he photographed him using a mobile phone while stationary waiting for a set of traffic lights? And he sends his film footage to the police, he puts it up on YouTube, okay? Now I basically support what he's trying to do, okay, because I think cycling safety is incredibly important and these people are doing bad things, okay? We've all done it, let's be honest, okay? We've all used a mobile phone, uh, when driving, we've just been lucky enough to get away with it and I wish I'd never done it, okay? Where Cycling Mikey is less effective, however, is his mode of delivery which is so combative and so effectively polarizing, okay, that it actually becomes counterproductive. Now where he... You know, he- he- and he's- he's well-intentioned, which is he wishes to increase cyclist safety. No- no one's disagreeing with that, okay? Where he's less effective is in disabusing people of the well-established stereotype that all Afrikaners are bastards, um, because he does things which are inherently... First of all, he- he's a little bit unfair because when he catches... When cyclists misbehave, one, you can't report them to the police 'cause they don't have a license plate. Secondly, he claims that if you stand in front of a cyclist or a motorcycle they might fall off, so he can't actually stop motorcyclists and cyclists performing egregious and illegal acts, so he concentrates entirely on the motorist. But then he basically goes, stands in front of them on the road and then...... effectively does things which are- I mean, we don't really have a massive culture of vigilantism in this country. Reporting other people to the police is something we're pretty reluctant to do. You know, it's- it's not a hallmark of a nice culture when people are blagging, you know, basically, you know, lagging to the screws-

    20. CW

      Yeah.

    21. RS

      ... as it used to be called in-

    22. CW

      Yep.

    23. RS

      ... Prisoner of Cell Block H.

    24. CW

      Yep.

    25. RS

      Right? Okay. It's something you just don't do. But secondly, I'm there as a marketing guy going, "Look, I support what you're trying to do, but you've been driven into this extreme position where your purity spiral is so extreme that actually it's counterproductive."

    26. CW

      Yep.

    27. RS

      And so you- you know, you're very, very good at- at feeling confident in your own opinions, but actually your ability to bring... Now if you notice in advertising, it's very rare that you're nasty to users of your competing product, okay? You don't get Ford ads going, "If you drive a Vauxhall, you're a twat."

    28. CW

      Yes.

    29. RS

      Okay? Because genuinely, people want to win over people who are either undecided or in a rival camp. And it's not a good idea, and you won't see much advertising-

    30. CW

      Patronize them or mock them.

  5. 43:45 – 47:36

    What Happened to the Welsh Identity?

    1. CW

      at the, uh, exports of national identities from the UK and Ireland to the rest of the world, uh, England, English people-

    2. RS

      Mm-hmm.

    3. CW

      ... we have a, a position, although we get referred to as being British.

    4. RS

      Yep.

    5. CW

      Uh, Northern Irish people kind of do, Southern Irish people absolutely definitely do.

    6. RS

      Yep.

    7. CW

      Even Scottish people do.

    8. RS

      Oh, Scottish marketing's brilliant. I mean, as a, as a, as a nation brand, it's absolutely potent as hell. Yeah, mm-hmm.

    9. CW

      Why does no one... What, what's happened to Wales? Why has Wales not managed to establish itself on the global geopolitical branding...

    10. RS

      There's an interesting debate about this. One, one Welsh commentator, I'm not, I, I... And don't shoot the messenger here, suggests that Welsh people who move somewhere else very rapidly kind of lose their Welshness and assimilate anywhere. That's his argument.

    11. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    12. RS

      So if you look at the contribution of Welsh-Americans, okay... Now, you've never heard, you've never heard that hyphen before, have you? Okay.

    13. CW

      (laughs)

    14. RS

      Welsh-

    15. CW

      Irish-American, Scottish-American.

    16. RS

      Yeah, absolutely. You've never heard of Welsh-American. Includes like Thomas Jefferson, okay? It includes arguably Elvis, about 50% of country singers, Tammy Wynette, real surname Pugh, okay?

    17. CW

      Oh (laughs) .

    18. RS

      Right? If you actually... Hilary Clinton, funnily enough, um, is, uh, I think half Welsh. Okay? So you have this, um, but, but there is ab-... I mean, if, if you ask people, uh, who are American about their Welsh ancestry, they may dimly know, uh, that they have some Welsh ancestry. It barely extends to knowing where it is. Whereas if they've got Scottish or Irish ancestry, it informs every fucking cell of their being, even if they're like a 16th Irish.

    19. CW

      Right.

    20. RS

      They start wearing green things, and-

    21. CW

      Yeah.

    22. RS

      Uh, uh, and, and, you know, um, w- t- to the slight annoyance, by the way, of real Irish people, I might add (laughs) . Okay (laughs) ? Um (laughs) , to be honest, okay (laughs) ? And quite a few people who are very proud of their Irish heritage are actually descended from Northern Irish Protestants, what's sometimes called in the United States Scots-Irish, but they don't even know that. Okay? So, you know, I, I think Henry Ford, there's a huge Irish-American contingent, uh, of people who are effectively, um, uh, from Northern Ireland. Um, but again, that distinction isn't really made. Uh, uh, there's an argument that it was at the time of the American Civil War, where people tended to take sides on that basis. I'm not quite sure. Um, but generally that doesn't, that hasn't pervaded until the, you know, 2023. But the Welsh have done a bad job. And, and there's actually a group called Global Welsh, which I belong to, which looks at this question of kind of... Uh, I mean, the greatest Welsh-American, by the way, was a guy (laughs) called Russell "Camel" Humphreys, who was number two to Al Capone (laughs) . Okay, I'm not making this up, okay (laughs) ? So this guy, who was, um... By the way, he was known by the, by the various feds and people out for him as the nicest man in the mob. Okay? And big Welsh from, I think he was from Carno, which is in kind of the middle, you know, kind of mid-Wales. Tiny little village. His parents were. Okay? And he was entirely Welsh, and, uh, R- R- Reed... Sorry, Mur- did I say Mur- Russell? Murray, Murray "the Camel" Humphreys. And, um... Or Murray the Hump, he was known as, which is s- either to do with Humphreys or to do with the fact that he wore a camel coat. But I think, I think, uh, um, he, um, uh, effectively... He, he, he would occasionally kill people, but he'd only negot- he'd always negotiate first. And th- I think one of the senior feds who were supposed to arrest him, uh, actually refused to turn up to arrest him because he liked him personally, okay, and didn't want to be part of the arrest. And he was also, uh, violently against cussing, by the way. Okay?

    23. CW

      Right, okay.

    24. RS

      So you're part of a massive organized crime-

    25. CW

      So he's a ki- a killer, but not a swearer.

    26. RS

      A killer, but not a swearer. No, no. He didn't, didn't like any of that, any of that vile language.

    27. CW

      Very Puritan.

    28. RS

      But, but research him 'cause it's really, really f- (laughs) it's comically funny, the idea of a Welsh guy in the mob.

    29. CW

      I looked at a

  6. 47:36 – 51:38

    Why We Buy Engagement Rings

    1. CW

      study recently that showed an inverse correlation between marriage length and cost of engagement ring and wedding combined, that the more that is spent on the engagement ring, and the more that is spent on the wedding-

    2. RS

      Which you'd almost... In pure economic terms, you'd expect it to be the other way around, because the sunk cost of a wedding-

    3. CW

      Correct. Skin in the game.

    4. RS

      ... should... Skin in the game should ensure the duration of the wedding. Equally, what are you trying to prove?

    5. CW

      Yes, yes. Yeah.

    6. RS

      Okay?

    7. CW

      Yeah. What, what have you learned... You must have some insights about engagement rings and their heritage and their history.

    8. RS

      I mean, what is, what is interesting is that, um, uh, there is a degree where what you're practicing there is a form of commitment device. In other words, it's an unrecoverable sunk cost, which is upfront expense being proof of long-term commitment.

    9. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    10. RS

      And I've made that point that some advertising works that way. Okay? In other words, you wouldn't spend a fortune advertising this car if it were a waste of time for me to test drive it.

    11. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    12. RS

      Okay? So once you've spent the money on advertising, it's gone. Therefore, the only possible value of the a- of advertising is that it leads to a sale. Therefore, if you are advertising a new product heavily, you are confident, rightly or wrongly, but it doesn't matter, you yourself who know the product better than the buyer does, is confident in terms of its long-term appeal and, um, desirability when test driven.And so, you know, some part of advertising undoubtedly works through sheer-

    13. CW

      Costly signaling.

    14. RS

      ... expenditure, yeah. Sheer costly signaling. Yeah.

    15. CW

      Wasn't it you- you guys did a study where heavyweight paper was the most effective thing to increase charity donations?

    16. RS

      Uh, that's right, yes. Now, you'll never, ever get an... What's so interesting about some of this research is it uncovers things which people feel but don't even think or say. So there's this quote, probably wrongly attributed to David Ogilvy, that he said, "The trouble with market research is that people don't think what they feel, they don't say what they think, and they don't do what they say." Now, I know everybody would say that a charity donation, uh, should be sent out on the cheapest paper possible because you should minimize your marketing cost. What we found is that when you put slightly more expensive paper in the donation envelope, which for Christian Aid Week actually, uh, slightly more people give but people give much more large donations. So the volume of donations over 50 or 100 pounds was significantly increased. Now, that's unconscious. It's probably, uh, you know, if this thing's flimsy, uh, then there may be a certain degree of reciprocation in that, which is they've sent me a bit of- nice bit of paper, I owe them 50 quid. I mean, now, you know, we, w- how it works, by the way, why it works, you could come up with four or five different possible explanations. But, um, those kind of things are really fascinating because they are, they belong to that field of activity which you can only prove through testing. Market research won't tell you the answer. Pure theory won't tell you the answer. You have to test.

    17. CW

      Well, I'm not a very prejudiced man, but given my background as a nightlife club promoter-

    18. RS

      Mm.

    19. CW

      ... uh, living and breathing flyers and paper for a very long time-

    20. RS

      Did you do that nightclub game where you created artificially long queues?

    21. CW

      Oh, of course, I did.

    22. RS

      (laughs) Of course, you did.

    23. CW

      Of course, I did.

    24. RS

      Exactly, yeah. (laughs)

    25. CW

      I, let me, lemme, lemme give you this one first. So one of the few prejudices that I have in my life is against single-sided flyers. Single-sided flyers are around about 90% as expensive to do double-sided flyers-

    26. RS

      Yeah.

    27. CW

      ... because almost all flyers are double sided. My second-biggest prejudice are against s- double-sided flyers with the same thing printed on both sides. You have two sides of a piece of paper, right?

    28. RS

      That basically says, "I can't even be bothered here. What should we put on the back? Oh, I'll just put the same thing."

    29. CW

      Command + C, Command + V, send it. I don't care. Then after that, just tiny, tiny little things that you can do. We found that if you go... there- there's something called, um, uh, uh, spot UV, which is a kind of gloss that you put over the top of a piece of paper that gives it a smooth finish. If you go uncoated-

    30. RS

      Mm-hmm.

  7. 51:38 – 59:45

    How to Think Like Darwin

    1. RS

      is this brilliant thing, okay, which is, it's very simple if you want to solve problems, okay, which is stop trying to think like Newton and come up with universal- universally applicable, context-free laws, okay? That's been done, okay? It's called physics, okay? We've done that. Instead, you gotta think like Darwin, okay? Now, we mentioned earlier this- this difference between effectively evolutionary thinking, which I think, um... The evolution is the study of how things change, not how things are, okay? That's a fundamental difference.

    2. CW

      What do you mean?

    3. RS

      Well, evolution come, uh, the- the most banal description of evolution but which is also incredibly insightful is things are the way they are because they got that way, (laughs) okay? Which sounds like abs- an absurdity, but when you f- when you actually think a little bit more deeply, then it forces you to ask the question, "Well, how did they get that way?" Okay? And, "Where else could we go from here?" You know, "What are the tools at our disposable to- to get from here to somewhere better?" Okay. Now, one of the things I think that is an obstacle to problem-solving, I think the reason that comedians are often evolutionary thinkers, Ricky Gervais being an obvious case, but John Cleese, another one, okay, absolutely fascinated by, um, you know, evolutionary thought, is because it's a gate- it's a gateway to complexity. It's a gateway to thinking in terms of complex systems and complex systems changing over time. And, and it- it's an escape from the idea that there must be universal laws. I've got a friend called Jag Bhalla, known on the web as Hanging Noodles, who always argues that we monotheistic cultures, like Christianity, have a disadvantage in our thinking because unlike Hindus, um, we're prone to what he calls monotheorism. We need one theory to explain everything.

    4. CW

      Mm. Mm.

    5. RS

      Okay? And he points out that actually in Hinduism, you- you know, we don't have that problem because we're used to the fact that there's, you know, the- the elephant and the... Uh, and I think- I think he said his mother prays to... o- on an altar which has an elephant, a monkey, and Jesus on it.

    6. CW

      Right.

    7. RS

      And there's no- there's no inherent contradiction to that. Now, actually that's why I'm quite hopeful about having a Hindu prime minister, because I think if we unleashed his, uh, lack of monotheorism-

    8. CW

      Yep.

    9. RS

      ... and freed him from political dogma-

    10. CW

      Mm.

    11. RS

      ... uh, he could be creatively really quite interesting.

    12. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    13. RS

      But that complexity thing is really interesting because one of the things that you- you need to lose in order to understand complex systems is an idea of what you might call discussing things that make you look important. One person called it the higher twaddle. And that's talk- that's, you know, "I noticed this with a former chief executive." You know, if he was interviewed, instead of talking about advertising, and, you know, he'd always talk about, like, the Fed and Janet Yellen, you know, and likely interest rate rises, okay? Right? And that's kind of an im- that's a self-important thing to talk about. Weirdly, people in Britain, instead of solving British problems, somehow weirdly adopt American problems.

    14. CW

      It's a signaling thing.

    15. RS

      And it's a signaling thing, which is, "I care about these things at- and I'm- I'm so important that I'm only going to debate them at the very highest level."

    16. CW

      Yep.

    17. RS

      Okay? And so, I mean, there are always people- (laughs) there are people going around trying to defund the police in the United States and I go, "I'm a Brit, right? First of all, my responsibility for what I think is a terrible criminal justice system in the United States, my responsibility for that ended in 1776, okay? I don't think it's great, but it's not my problem, okay? Secondly-"... I wanted to start some Brits demonstrations going around going, "Disarm the police." (laughs)

    18. CW

      Ah.

    19. RS

      Because it's, it's... What's so interesting is if you're American, this, defund the police is debatable, but the idea that the police shouldn't carry guns is probably to them so bizarre that they think you're insane, okay? Other things in the United States, four weeks of paid vacation, okay? I've never met anybody in Britain so right-wing that they think we should have less holiday time. Nobody. Zero. Nobody's ever said, "We'll get another 2% on GDP growth if we just got rid of people's holiday." Doesn't happen. Never exists, okay?

    20. CW

      If we cut maternity leave down-

    21. RS

      Yeah. (laughs)

    22. CW

      ... to just two and a half weeks.

    23. RS

      Exactly. No, no, no. No. Those things actually, once you have them, they're air fryers, they're Japanese toilets. Once you have them, there's no going back.

    24. CW

      Everyone's an evangelist-

    25. RS

      Exactly.

    26. CW

      ... and they get grandfathered in.

    27. RS

      Yeah. O- Once you, once, once, once you've got there, you never go back.

    28. CW

      Yeah.

    29. RS

      Okay. And I'm kinda going, "Well, look, you know..." First of all, you, you have to p... Now, if you look at what Darwin did to have what is probably one of the five biggest insights... To be honest, I mean, I'm gonna stand up for Alfred Russel Wallace, not the least 'cause I was born in Llanbadoc, which is the same village that he was born in, tiny Welsh village. Um, and my, my ambition is to be a, I, I think I've probably already succeeded, is the, the second-best evolutionary thinker born in Llanbadoc. I think that's a kind of attainable, sensible ambition.

    30. CW

      (laughs)

  8. 59:45 – 1:08:27

    The Convenience of Tribal Thinking

    1. CW

      come up with this idea of the unreliable ally. So if I know one of your views and from it I can accurately predict everything else-

    2. RS

      Yeah.

    3. CW

      ... that you believe, you're probably not a serious thinker because you've put your entire world ideology on as a onesie as opposed to-

    4. RS

      Incidentally, Dominic Cummings' great insight was he said that effectively the language of left or right is a, is, is a tribal convenience for people who are into political cosplay. Okay?

    5. CW

      Correct. Correct.

    6. RS

      Right? It's, it's rather like, you know, okay, most people are kind of interested in politics in the way that I'm interested in Star Wars, which is I'll watch it if it happens to be on, but I'm not gonna go to a convention and dress as Darth Vader. Okay? And politics is full of the kind of people who dress up as Darth Vader and, you know, get unbelievably involved in insane details of, you know, how the federation is actually (laughs) the governance of the federation or something, okay? Most people aren't like that. The other insight of Dominic Cummings was he said most people in reality are both more left-wing and more right-wing than politicians fully understand. So ordinary people in a way are saner and more diverse politically than the people who've been forced to take sides.

    7. CW

      Yeah, they get reduced down to a dashboard though, right?

    8. RS

      Mm-hmm.

    9. CW

      And that isn't able to fully capture... You know, one vote from somebody doesn't fully encapsulate just how far right and how far left you are because on balance you aggregated that you are a bit left, so you voted Labor, or you are a bit right, so you voted Conservative. This idea of this-

    10. RS

      So avoiding that identitarian thing, I mean, you know, I, I, I mean, I write for The Spectator partly 'cause the weird thing is it would've been compl... Actually no, that's not fair, okay? Actually, that's not fair. I was gonna say that in the 1970s it would've been the opposite where the right-wing press got much more annoyed about you writing something left-wing-

    11. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    12. RS

      ... than vice versa. Actually, that's probably not fair of the British pr... It's very interesting by the way, which is if you're American-... okay? There's quite a simple narrative which you can reasonably believe, which is that most progress socially, not necessarily economically, but most social progress happens under a Democratic regime, okay? So you go back to, say, wom- votes for women. That was my cousin Woodrow, who was def- he was, bizarrely, he's like my fourth cousin, twice removed. His mum was English from a Scottish family, okay? Um, uh, uh, I, I, just, just to even things out, my, my other traced American relative is in prison in Washington State for kidnapping and attempted murder. So swings and roundabouts, right?

    13. CW

      Yeah.

    14. RS

      Um, but, um, uh, the, the interesting thing there is that, you know, most of those kind of, uh, forward movements, the civil rights movement, et cetera, happened under a, in a Democratic regime, okay? And so it's very easy. If you take the American narrative on board, which is basically, they're these well-intentioned Democrat people who do nice things, and then Republicans tend to be nasty, okay? I don't think that maps very neatly onto the UK, okay? So if you look at the UK, uh, votes for women was actually a Conservative government. Uh, the NHS was set up undoubtedly by a Labor government, aptly, but actually on the recommendations of Beveridge, who was a Liberal, okay? Um, I think, um, same-sex marriage was a Conservative government. I think the legalization of... By the way, if you go back, the Guardian supported the South in the American Civil War, okay? (laughs)

    15. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    16. RS

      The Spectator, a right-wing publication, was about the only publication in the UK to support the, uh, union against the Confederacy. The Spectator in the 1960s, okay, was known as the bugger's bugle for its campaigning for the legalization of homosexuality, okay? And another force that was absolutely decisive in that campaign was, bizarrely, the Church of England. So there was, well, not that bizarrely, I suppose, if you consider that homosexuals (laughs) in senior church positions, perhaps.

    17. CW

      God.

    18. RS

      Okay. No, no, no, no, no. At the time, no, no, no, there were quite a few, trust me, okay? But, but I mean, actually, there was an Archbishop of Canterbury at some point in the '60s who kind of needed protection because of his position on that matter. If you want to, if you want to see a really advanced group in terms of being ahead of the curve on anything, it's the Quakers. I mean, if you're an empiricist, everybody would become a, you know... What we really need is a Quaker revival, okay? But the thing is, you can't have a demonstration, can you, as a Quaker? "What do we want?" Shh.

    19. CW

      (laughs)

    20. RS

      Okay? It doesn't really work. But, but my point is that actually, if you look at it, if you look at the British social progress, uh, is, I mean, you know, the anti-slavery campaigners, some of them were Tory, okay? Shaftesbury was. It's actually, British progress is much, much less easy to, uh, kind of stereotype than in the United States. And so, you know, you actually look at the hi- you know, you look at the history of different publications and their opinions on different things. The idea, actually, which my kids seem to have absorbed, which was everything was horrible until left-wing people came along and made it better-

    21. CW

      Yeah, they were this civilizing force.

    22. RS

      ... which is more or less this, this sort of civ- this force of history thing, is kind of a bit borne out, I have to say, in the U... You know, it's complicated, obviously. It's a bit, you know, you could say, well, there is some empirical evidence for that in the United States. Although you had a Democratic Party which was completely weird for le- you know, while the South was overwhelmingly Democrat, you had that kind of weird unholy alliance thing going on. But it's not really safe. And this business of taking American concerns because they're the most important, because it's America, okay? And getting wildly excited about them in the UK, even though our problems are different, okay? So I'll, I'll give you just a very simple example of this, which is, you know, if you talk about white privilege, okay? And yeah, I, I, I'm to some extent the beneficiary inarguably of exactly that. But the only point I'd make is that when I was... One of the reasons I'm white, okay? (laughs) Apart from the obvious ones, one of the reasons I'm white is I was born in the UK in 1965, when I think, someone correct me on this, the population of the UK was 97% white, okay? In 1965. So, you know, the odds that I'm gonna be white, it's not like... It's not a, it's not a situation like the United States where you've had generations of people effectively unfairly disadvantaged, okay? The people who are disadvantaged hadn't arrived at the point when I was being born, to the, to the most part, okay? Now, as a consequence, simply transplanting, uh, American history and American preoccupations and American narratives and imposing them on Australia, the UK, France, okay? Doesn't really work. And yet these people do it because they want to identify themselves with the highest profile, um, uh, you know, biggest debates de nosjo so they can take sides.

    23. CW

      Mm.

    24. RS

      And that's completely inimical to... You know, we got, we got other things to be guilty of if we're Brits, let's be honest, okay? It's very interesting actually, I, I had a great aunt who was an anthropologist called Beatrice Blackwood, who spent her mo- her life kind of connected to the Pitt Rivers Museum. And her diaries survive, and sometime in about 1923, she went to Memphis, I think. Might have been, I think it was Memphis, okay? I thought it was really interesting to see, you know. How, how does, you know, fairly, you know, obviously she's an anthropologist, fairly conventional Englishwoman of 1923, upper middle class family. How does she react to going to the American South in the 1920s? And I thought her reaction would be, "Gosh, this is really, you know, tiny bit, you know, this is a bit dodgy, you know, it's a bit off," you know?

    25. CW

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    26. RS

      She was absolutely horrified. I mean, there's th- there's just these pages of her raging against the fact that she wasn't even allowed to visit a Black household because they wouldn't allow her in because if word got out that a white woman had been in their house, there'd be trouble, okay? Now, you know, we got, we got loads of flaws over here which we can solve and we can look at. But I don't think... There's a wonderful case from your part of the world, isn't there? Which is a battle where the pubs refused to deny access to-... colored servicemen when, when they were billeted somewhere in the Northeast, isn't it?

    27. CW

      Not sure.

    28. RS

      Are you a monkey hanger? Are you, or?

    29. CW

      Technically a smoggy.

    30. RS

      Oh, you're a smoggy. Okay.

  9. 1:08:27 – 1:21:49

    Is David Ogilvy a Genius?

    1. CW

      that I've learned over the last couple of years about David Ogilvy that I've never got a chance to talk to you about was when Fortune published an article and titled it, "Is David Ogilvy a Genius?" question mark. "I asked my lawyer to sue the editor for the question mark."

    2. RS

      Um-

    3. CW

      Is there any truth in that?

    4. RS

      Gosh. Uh, funnily enough, uh, he's an interesting case in point because he's a university dropout, okay, so he didn't have a degree. He was, when he started the agency, he was former chef, failed tobacco farmer. I think during the war, he'd been in MI6 somewhere in Washington as well. He was kind of Ian Fleming character in many ways, actually.

    5. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    6. RS

      Um, you know, he, he... And Ian Fleming, by the way, was also successful in a sense relatively late in life. Um, and by the way, we need more of these stories because y- you know, you can re-in- you know, it's never too late. Colonel Sanders, you know, sorry, (laughs) was 65 when he founded Kentucky Fried Chicken-

    7. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    8. RS

      ... as then was.

    9. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    10. RS

      Okay? Um, uh, and David Ogilvy was a kind of Colonel Sanders of advertising. He was relatively late, and he had the advantage of surviving for a long time. There are people within Ogilvy who think that his brother, Francis, who tragically died young and was based in the UK rather than the US, was as much the brains behind the operation as David was. But I m- I met him once, fortunately, and I knew his wife quite well, his widow now. Um, and, yeah, I think he had some advantages, okay? So he was doing advertising at first for fairly aspirational products at a time of great American Anglophilia. So he was advertising Guinness, Rolls-Royce, um, Schweppes, um, the, uh, English Tourist Board, for example, which allowed him to do a particular style of kind of urbane, aspirational advertising at a time when most American advertising was quite crash, crass.

    11. CW

      Yeah, it was to an educated audience-

    12. RS

      Y- e- yeah, yeah.

    13. CW

      ... that could work out the inference.

    14. RS

      Eh, eh, I mean, famously, that Rolls-Royce advertisement at 60 miles an hour appeared only twice, and it was in the Wall Street Journal, I think.

    15. CW

      What was that?

    16. RS

      Uh, "Sixty miles an hour, the loudest sound in this new Rolls-Royce is the ticking of the electric clock. Uh, what is it that makes the r- Rolls-Royce the best car in the world? There really is no magic about it, it is simply patient attention to detail," says an eminent Rolls-Royce engineer. I even memorized the subhead. But it's, um, he was very, um... The, the one thing everybody can learn from him is, uh, writing. And he is closest, I think, as a prose writer, i- if you read his books. One of his books is terrible, weirdly, which I think is called Blood, Brains, and Beards, his autobiography. The rest of the books are excellent. Um, I think everybody's allowed one bad book. Uh, but, um, uh, it's a wonderful prose style, very similar to Conan Doyle in that it's very, very simple and easy to read with every sort of 57th word being a slightly more complicated or slightly more highfalutin word just to remind the reader that the writer isn't an idiot.

    17. CW

      Yeah.

    18. RS

      And I think it's a, it's actually a great approach to communication, which is that little signaling of, in the Rolls-Royce advertisement, "If you are too diffident to drive a Rolls-Royce, you can drive a Bentley."

    19. CW

      It's not for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    20. RS

      Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He actually says you could have a Bentley with a less kind of grandiose radiator grill, effectively.

    21. CW

      Mm.

    22. RS

      And, you know, h- and so he was, it, it, it was actually, it's a b- probably actually in the, you know, other people who are big fans of that kind of prose style. Kingsley Amis was a big admirer of Conan Doyle, and it's a particular way of writing which is incredibly easy to read, but at the same time, really intelligent and quite urbane.

    23. CW

      What I really, what I really loved about, uh, at least my research that I have managed to do with David Ogilvy is, uh, his approach to engendering, which you guys have obviously continued now, uh, engendering this, uh, there are no wrong answers creativity kind of culture, which I think is really great.

    24. RS

      Well, it's a, it's huge. I mean, I was saying to some clients the other day, we, we actually, we make it easy for ourselves in one way, which is it's one of very few corporate se- This is why I'm very interested in the comedy world, I'm very interested in other forms of, uh, anomalous economic activity, if you like-

    25. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    26. RS

      ... where you're actually paid to be weird. And you, you don't realize how rare and precious it is until you move into, until you encounter management consultants, okay, where the whole thing is kind of templated, formulaic. They recruit engineering graduates, which by the way is a terrible waste of engineering talent. I want engineers going and making bloody things. I don't want them bloody well producing PowerPoint decks at sort of 200 pounds an hour. What a waste, you know. You know, those people could be producing, I don't know, space rockets or something, but instead they're going and producing these effing PowerPoint decks for management consulting firms. And the, the value of actually having... So most organizations, first of all, regard logic as a good proxy for, um... In other words, the course of action that has the best argument attached must be the best course of action. And what's unusual about advertising and comedy and a few other things, music obviously, I guess, um, is that we don't buy that, that we don't buy the idea that whatever has a good argument attached to it must be right.... because there's probably a better idea which comes from left field, which you won't arrive at through pre-rationalization, you can only post-rationalize it. Now, that distinction, by the way, is quite interesting. Um, I won't go into the whole thing about Charles Russell Peirce, brilliant American philosopher of the 19th century, and, um, I won't go into the stuff about, um, uh, you know, uh, the whole thing of abductive inference being a different form of mental process. But if you look at actually quite a lot of pharmaceutical progress, okay, it actually happens backwards. Okay? It's not, "We have this disease. We need to cure it. Oh, look, let's do these things. Here's a cure." Those processes generally lead to fairly rel- well, actually not that reliable, you know, tolerable incremental progress over a very long period. Now, d- let's not discount that, because over a period of 80 years, we do get better at things. The real breakthrough things happen backwards. Okay? Which is Viagra, penicillin.

    27. CW

      Yeah.

    28. RS

      In other words, um, it's almost a cure for which there is no known disease, rather than a disease for which there's no known cure. (laughs)

    29. CW

      What can we use this for? It's giving people erections.

    30. RS

      Uh, well, what happened was, it was intended as an angina remedy, Viagra, and there are two stories about it, one of which is that the nurses noticed that when the guys came in for their kind of... people on the trial, when they came in for their kind of checkup, they were sitting in a really weird way. (laughs) Okay.

Episode duration: 2:12:33

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode DaYTvwe0Wo0

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

Add to Chrome