There is a common belief that AI will simplify decisions by providing the single perfect option, like finding the ideal skiing holiday. However, Rory Sutherland argues this misunderstands a fundamental aspect of human psychology. People don't make decisions in a vacuum; they need comparison. We can only truly like something if we have chosen it in preference to something else. This is why real estate agents might show you a slightly overpriced, less suitable house before showing you the one they want you to buy. The contrast makes the second house seem like a clear winner. Similarly, almost nobody ever clicked Google's 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button, which took you directly to a single result. People want to see a few options and choose for themselves.

This ties into a larger problem where we often look for efficiency in the wrong places. Businesses, especially when influenced by tech or management consultants, tend to focus on easily measurable numerical factors. This leads them to prioritize cost reduction over value creation, disregarding the psychological factors where the greatest gains might be found. Rory calls this the 'doorman fallacy'.

A hotel has a doorman. A consulting firm comes in and says, 'Your doorman currently costs you x thousand dollars a year. We have defined his or her function as opening the door. We will replace said doorman with an automatic door opening mechanism... and we'll save you 30, $40,000 a year.' And then they walk away.

The problem is that the doorman's function was never just opening the door. They also provided security, hailed taxis, handled luggage, recognized regular guests, and conferred status upon the hotel. These value-creating activities are not captured in the narrow, cost-saving definition. As Roger L. Martin says, any idiot can cut costs. The real skill is cutting costs without destroying value. The human component of an experience does a lot of heavy lifting that is often invisible to those with a bias for quantification.

Brand perception often has little to do with objective service levels. Rory Sutherland explains this using the example of Royal Mail. They found that customer satisfaction didn't correlate with the reliability of mail delivery. Instead, the main factor was whether customers liked their local postman. Areas with a less reliable service but a friendly, helpful postman often had higher satisfaction than areas with perfect service but an impersonal delivery person.

This principle applies to any service organization. Even if 95% of interactions with a utility company are online, the few times a customer speaks to a person on the phone disproportionately shape their entire perception of the company. Rory argues that for many clients, the best advice would be to reallocate a significant part of their marketing budget to improve human touchpoints.

Take 10 to 20% of your marketing budget and spend it on upgrading the call center. Pay the people too much, get the best practitioners... If every time you have a personal experience, you have a good experience, then broadly speaking, in the human brain, that's a good organization, which I can trust.

This happens because our brains are highly evolved to judge people, not complex systems. We have half a million years of experience deciding who to trust, as it was a critical survival skill. We have very little experience evaluating things like postal efficiency. Therefore, our brains use human judgment as a proxy. To answer a complex question we don't have the expertise for, we substitute a simpler, heuristic question: do I trust the person involved? This is illustrated by buying a secondhand car. Your valuation of the car changes dramatically depending on whether the seller is a trustworthy-seeming vicar or a man in his underpants. You use your judgment of the seller as a stand-in for your lack of technical knowledge about the car.

This is also why real estate agents try to prevent buyers and vendors from meeting. If one party dislikes or distrusts the other, the deal can fall apart, regardless of the house's price or condition. Rory recounts his own experience of backing out of a house purchase because the seller was being difficult over a trivial item like a fridge. His distrust in the person translated into distrust about the entire property, an instinct that later proved correct.

People want to feel good about a transaction, and that feeling involves more than just maximizing value. Rory Sutherland highlights Richard Thaler's work on 'transaction utility' to explain this. Thaler's thought experiment involves you and a friend on a hot beach, very thirsty. Your friend is going to a nearby place that sells ice-cold beer and asks for the maximum price you're willing to pay. The beer will be consumed back on the beach, so the ambiance of the place selling it is irrelevant.

The interesting part is when the seller changes. In one scenario, the beer is sold by a boutique hotel. In another, it's sold by a shack. People's willingness to pay changes based on the seller, even though the product—a cold beer—is identical in both cases.

Your price changes and your readiness to pay changes partly in accordance to what you imagine to be the overheads of the establishment selling the good. Even though the utility of the beer as distinct from how good the transaction feels, the actual utility of the cold beer is identical in both cases.

This principle is well-known in sales. Car salesmen know the importance of making the transaction feel good. As Robert Cialdini noted, people are more likely to buy from you if they like you and trust you. However, Rory cautions against immediately labeling these techniques as manipulation, suggesting a more careful distinction is needed.

Minor social annoyances can sometimes serve as an unconscious "psychopath detection test." According to a theory from Geoffrey Miller, a woman might arrive a bit late for a first date to see how the other person reacts. Someone with poor emotional control, potentially a psychopath, might get angry and lose their temper. In contrast, a more well-adjusted person would likely be gracious and understanding.

The psychopath will lose his rag. And can't control this. And likewise, if you turn up late, there's a chance they'll go, 'look, I've been sitting on my own like an idiot for 15 minutes.' Whereas you and I would go, 'oh, I know. I only just got here myself. The traffic's terrible.'

This illustrates a broader principle: we use personal qualities as a proxy for decisions that are too complicated to reduce to numbers. It's not about optimizing for the best outcome but about reducing the risk of a disastrous one, a concept known as "downside variance reduction." This is often an unconscious process. If you consciously run these tests, it might be a reverse signal that you're a bit off-kilter yourself.

Rory applies this logic to his own life, for example, when deciding whether to rent a car on holiday. He argues that holidays where he's rented a car have consistently been better because the car provides optionality. If the hotel or the area is disappointing, you have the freedom to just get in the car and find a better beach elsewhere. The car doesn't guarantee a perfect holiday, but it significantly reduces the chances of a terrible one.

This kind of heuristic thinking also applies to navigating airports. Airports cater to two very different groups: frequent flyers who want maximum efficiency and occasional travelers who view the airport experience as part of the holiday. Frequent travelers might join a priority security line even if it's longer, assuming the people in it are more competent and the line will move more smoothly. This is a seemingly irrational choice that can be a reliable mechanism for a better experience.

The value of intermediaries, like real estate agents, can also be viewed through this lens. In the 19th century, dealing with a posh, established estate agent was a rational choice. That agent had significant reputational skin in the game within the community, serving as a form of insurance against being treated poorly, especially since the person selling the house was often moving away and not vulnerable to local reputational damage.

A "brand quake" happens when a company does something remarkable, like resolving a customer's problem with exceptional effort and intelligence, and then following up to ensure it was solved. This builds incredible loyalty. Rory Sutherland shares an anecdote about his father, a typically frugal man, who owned multiple Dyson vacuum cleaners. This loyalty stemmed from Dyson's excellent customer service, which Rory connects to it being a privately owned company.

Privately owned or founder-led companies are contrasted with publicly listed companies (PLCs). PLCs are often incentivized to behave like psychopaths, optimized for short-term transactional value rather than long-term relationship building. Their focus on quarterly numbers can override the real purpose of marketing, which is investing in long-term customer value. This creates a conflict between short-term optimization and long-term effectiveness.

There's always somebody making more money than you, but maybe they're cutting corners, maybe they're doing things that are unsustainable. You can always save money in the short term but do damage your brand in the long term.

In contrast, private companies are often not run solely by the finance department. They can prioritize the customer, embodying what's known as the customer value movement over the shareholder value movement. This aligns with Warren Buffett's directive to his CEOs: run the company as if your family's entire fortune is invested in it for 100 years, with no way to sell. Companies like Costco and Enterprise Rent-a-Car, which are family-owned or influenced by this long-term thinking, tend to look after their customers and staff better, and customers notice this.

Rory suggests that privately owned or family-controlled companies should have a special mark or badge to signify their trustworthiness to consumers. He notes that in the UK's IPA Advertising Effectiveness Awards, four of the five gold winners were family-controlled companies, including McCain and Specsavers. This suggests these types of companies are better at marketing because they can invest for the long term.

Dyson's effectiveness comes from marketing and customer experience, not just advertising. Rory Sutherland distinguishes between the two, noting that advertising is merely a subordinate part of marketing. He cites Peter Drucker's definition: the purpose of business is to find and keep a customer profitably. This is the essence of marketing – creating mutually advantageous relationships with customers over time.

A story from a former Dyson employee illustrates this focus on customer experience. During a presentation on call center efficiency statistics, James Dyson's perspective became clear. Rory is fanatical about call centers, especially in an age where many businesses are looking to automate them with AI. He believes they should be made smaller but significantly better. AI empathy might be possible, but there will always be situations requiring a human touch, akin to asking to 'speak to the manager'. A person is needed to understand specific, unusual circumstances and have the power to override rules to do the commonsensical thing.

I don't think you can substitute for the human in cases of unusual problems, special circumstances, empathy generally... There will be situations where you want to speak to a person who can understand your specific situation and has the power to intervene to override the normal rules and regulations to solve your problem because it is commonsensical to do so.

Furthermore, call centers are a crucial source of business intelligence. They are the only way to discover problems that customers cannot solve through other channels. Rory shares an example from Microsoft where a manager placed the product's call center in the middle of the development team. He argues that the call center for British Airways should be on the same floor as the boardroom because it's where the company learns where it's failing its most important people: its existing customers.

Businesses are often run by the map, such as spreadsheets and wait times, but the territory is the actual customer experience. When you don't touch reality, the map can distort your perspective. Rory Sutherland explains this is why being a customer-value company is a huge advantage over being a shareholder-value company. Customers live in the real world, rooting the business in reality. In contrast, the shareholder value movement can be incoherent because it's never clear over what time frame or for which shareholder a company is optimizing. This approach often prevents companies from innovating effectively or investing properly in customer relationships.

Rory shares a story about Dyson. The company was initially evaluating its call center on standard operational efficiency metrics, focusing on how quickly they could end customer calls. James Dyson intervened, completely changing the perspective.

The way we should look at this is we should treat it as an honor if one of our customers chooses to get in touch with us, and we should therefore respond to them accordingly as if we're flattered by the contact, not as if we're bothered by the interruption.

This philosophy built immense trust. Rory's father, for example, owned four Dysons because whenever he called, the company was incredibly helpful, solved his problem, and even sent replacement parts for free. This trust made him willing to pay a premium for their products.

In a world moving toward AI-driven call centers, there's a significant opportunity to take the opposite approach. A great service organization should offer both streamlined, efficient service for those who know what they want and empathetic service for those who are uncertain or in unusual situations. The mistake is seeing technology only as a one-way street toward efficiency. When tech-focused individuals have too much power, companies optimize for things that are often distant from what real-world customers care about.

This leads to a phenomenon Rory calls "technoplasmosis." Tech companies and consultants have influenced finance departments to prioritize marketing metrics that are conducive to selling tech solutions, rather than those that build long-term brand and customer value. The focus shifts to short-term, transactional, bottom-of-the-funnel data like click-through rates. While this data is important, it represents only a fraction of the whole picture. The other crucial parts, like upgrading a call center, are often dismissed as a cost rather than an investment in the customer relationship.

Warren Buffett's investment focus wasn't just on the quality of management but on their predictability. He used private investigators to determine if a leader's words aligned with their actions. If they did, he knew what to expect. If they didn't, for example, a CEO claiming to be a penny-pincher while driving a Ferrari, the investment was less predictable.

I feel like he was always just trying to assess the predictability of people, if that makes sense. In other words, by looking at their consistency. Did the management do what they said they were going to do?

Buffett sought predictability over massive disruption. He and Charlie Munger learned this lesson in the late 60s with a turnaround situation. Munger explained they realized they had made a mistake, would never make much money, and had no competitive edge, so they got out quickly. This philosophy led to investments in predictable assets like railroads, which will likely still be in use in 50 years. The predictable earnings of such businesses allow for the strategic use of debt, even though Berkshire Hathaway as a whole avoids it.

This strategy is echoed by John Bragg, a billionaire from the small town of Oxford, Nova Scotia, who started three multi-billion dollar companies. Bragg wasn't afraid to use massive leverage for predictable assets like his telecommunications company, Eastlink. However, he was very nervous about debt for more volatile businesses.

Bragg also had a counterintuitive view on price, stating, "I don't mind paying the most." He reasoned that some assets only become available once. For a private company with a long-term horizon, paying a premium for a unique opportunity that won't be offered again makes sense, even if it takes five years instead of three to recoup the investment.

A lot of these things only come up once. I don't get another shot at it. And if I'm a private company, I don't have public company shareholders and it takes me five years versus three years to get my money back out of the deal. Why do I care? I'm never going to be offered this again.

This mindset can be applied to personal decisions, like buying real estate. A lake house that is over budget might be a rational purchase if it's a once-in-a-generation property. Prime properties with features like proximity and privacy don't come up often, making the higher price justifiable in the long run.

Society has suffered from the over-intrusion of law and regulation into areas that should be left to human judgment. Rory Sutherland points to the work of Philip K. Howard, who argues this has created a culture where people fear making subjective decisions. They instead fall back on often inappropriate rules and procedures.

People are much more interested in adherence to approved procedure than they are in quality of outcome. Because you can't get fired for following the rules.

This reliance on regulation ignores that much of quality human decision-making is tacit and instinctive. Our brains are designed to adapt to context, but universal rules often fail to account for this. Legal solutions have become the default for resolving conflicts that were once handled through amicable discussion. This can lead to ludicrous second-order consequences. For example, a ruling that forces a town to cut down a tree because a child is allergic to its nuts could set a precedent for widespread deforestation. Similarly, requiring a theme park to post warnings about shallow ponds could logically extend to making all natural lakes and playgrounds unusable due to liability fears.

This ties into a broader issue: we have made rationality the 'gold standard' for decision-making. Rory references John Ralston Saul, who argued that rationality is just one of many human mental capabilities, alongside imagination, creativity, and common sense. In most institutions, a rational argument is the goal. But in fields like advertising, it's merely the starting point, or the 'bronze standard'. A rational ad is considered acceptable, but the aim is for something more emotionally engaging, funny, or memorable. This distinction is captured in a quote from physicist Niels Bohr:

You're not thinking, you are merely being logical.

This misunderstanding of value creation extends to how advertising agencies are paid. They used to be paid on commission, which rewarded big, successful ideas. Now, they are paid by the hour, like lawyers. This is a catastrophic model for a 'fat-tailed' industry like marketing or R&D, where a small percentage of the work, perhaps 5-10%, delivers over 100% of the value. An agency might have a billion-dollar idea that runs for a decade, but they only get paid a small fraction of that value for the hours worked, disincentivizing true innovation.

Marketing is not a game of incremental improvement; its purpose is to find a way to hit the ball out of the park. While business operations can score a thousand points through gradual gains, marketing aims to score a hundred points in a single stroke. This creates a problem when marketers are evaluated quarterly, as it underfunds long-term, high-payoff ideas. It is like telling J.K. Rowling she can only have royalties on the first edition of the Harry Potter books.

Rory Sutherland argues that the people running organizations for financial predictability are trying to turn a high-variance game into a low-variance, predictable process like chess. In reality, marketing and entrepreneurship are more like poker or backgammon, games of chance with occasional high payoffs.

You don't find entrepreneurs in chess clubs. You find entrepreneurs in casinos. They're playing poker, they're playing backgammon. They're playing games of chance with an occasional very high payoff. And a lot of life is exactly like that, but you don't know where the huge payoff's gonna come in advance.

About 50% of your effort, once basic survival is assured, should be attempts to get lucky. This means increasing your exposure to positive upside. However, marketing also has a downside; it can destroy a company, as seen with brands like Bud Light. Rory defends Bud Light, arguing they were a victim of "confected outrage." He believes this type of outrage is manufactured by narrow groups on both the political right and left for signaling purposes.

He contrasts the Bud Light situation with Gillette's controversial ad. He views the Gillette ad as a genuine misstep, an act of "deliberate effrontery" to its core audience because it conflated the MeToo movement with everyday activities like barbecuing. In contrast, the Bud Light incident was a small influencer marketing campaign where personalized cans were sent to various influencers, one of whom was Dylan Mulvaney. It was not a major campaign making her the face of the brand. Rory notes that gender expression is not the same cultural flashpoint in the UK as it is in the US, where it has a long history in entertainment like pantomime. He concludes that in any communication, it is crucial to understand the context and intent.

Jaguar made a fundamental mistake by benchmarking itself against its most obvious competitors: BMW, Mercedes, and Audi. This is a losing strategy because those companies have a scale advantage that Jaguar cannot replicate. Rory Sutherland explains that trying to compete head-to-head with them is a recipe for failure.

Don't benchmark against your most obvious competitor. All you'll do is make yourself a copy of them.

If a customer is considering a Jaguar alongside a BMW, they will likely end up buying the BMW due to scale and winner-take-all effects. To survive, especially in the electric car era, Jaguar must find a different target audience. Targeting the wealthy, younger, creative class is a reasonable bet. For instance, someone like Rory, who works in advertising and wants to project a "left field" image, avoids cars like Audis because they scream "financial services." He needs a car that signals something different, which is why he has always bought slightly weird cars.

This ties into a broader point about the need for variation in society and business. Just as we need different kinds of people like Elon Musk, we need companies like Jaguar to take different approaches. Progress comes from variation, not conformity. This is how new categories are created. The survival of Land Rover and Range Rover is a prime example; they succeeded by creating and dominating a category of their own.

Economists often operate on the false premise that people know what they want. This leads to a focus on direct competition, driving down prices and increasing efficiency. However, Rory Sutherland argues this misses the point. When companies create differentiation, everyone benefits. The overall market becomes more valuable to investors, companies can achieve reasonable profits, and consumers get more choice. Without it, markets become a 'red ocean' of competition where nobody wins.

This discussion of value extends to marketing, where outrage can sometimes be a strategy. Controversial campaigns can press the 'hot buttons' of a small part of the population, who then amplify the message with their outrage, resulting in free media coverage. This is often fueled by a 'purity spiral', where people signal their moral virtue by showing heightened sensitivity to anything that might offend someone, even if the group they claim to defend is unconcerned.

This leads to a society on a hair-trigger, but social media isn't the only culprit. The mainstream media has a vested interest in conflict. Rory explains that this is a core problem in journalism.

It's always in your interest to provoke a fight because then you have something to cover. Nobody's interested in reading about peace and harmony. They're interested in reading about discord and argument and dispute.

This taps into an evolutionary tendency to pay attention to conflict. Social media simply makes it easier for journalists to find outraged voices. What used to require legwork is now just a simple search on X. This is compounded by willful misunderstanding, where people intentionally misinterpret things to fuel outrage.

The language used in these disputes has also become problematic. Phrases like 'inappropriate behavior' are now so vague they are almost meaningless. This creates real-world problems, as it's impossible to distinguish between a minor misstep and a serious crime.

I have no idea whether they're the next Epstein, or whether they told a knock, knock joke that two people found unpleasant.

When an accusation is made, it can become the defining narrative, making it impossible to know if the person is guilty of a minor infraction or not guilty at all. The accusation itself becomes the frame. Rory Sutherland finds this highly problematic, particularly in the UK. He notes a worrying trend where people can involve the police simply because they found something disturbing, even without a direct physical threat.

Simply being disquieted by something can't be a police matter unless it involves a direct threat of physical action.

This points to a broader issue in various countries: a growing intolerance for people with different ideas. Media in countries like Canada and the US often shows a clear bias, favoring one position over another. This environment makes it difficult for people to think for themselves or engage in reasoned discussions. It's a stark contrast to past eras, like the Churchill era, when political opponents on both sides of the House would talk, have dinner, and find common ground.

Rory Sutherland expresses concern over the media's practice of labeling people with certain views, such as opposing uncontrolled immigration, as "far right." He argues this is dangerous because it vilifies an opinion held by a large portion of the population. This can lead to a breakdown in democratic discourse. People may either internalize the label or stop voicing their opinions, which prevents genuine debate and the consideration of different perspectives. As he points out, calling people 'deplorables' is a terrible way to engage with them; it just causes them to band together.

Calling people deplorables is a terrible, terrible way of getting deplorables to gang up against you. And then people don't speak up and they held their opinions. And then you lose debate and you lose perspective because you don't hear the other side of it.

To illustrate the complexity often lost in these debates, he cites the work of Oxford economist Paul Collier on migration. Collier's analysis shows the issue is far more complicated than a simple pro or anti stance. For instance, when a poorer country like Nigeria invests in training doctors who then move to a wealthy country like the United States, it represents a significant brain drain and a net loss for the nation that can least afford it. The debate should be about what reasonable immigration looks like, and it should be decided democratically, not just by one group with a vested interest.

This leads to a broader point about conflicts of interest, using the analogy of never asking a barber if you need a haircut. He argues that groups like human rights lawyers or management consultants have an incentive to expand their own influence. Their salary depends on believing in the importance of their work, which can distort their perspective.

It is difficult to get someone to disbelieve something when their salary is dependent on believing it.

Just as a management consultant is always likely to recommend a digital transformation program, a human rights lawyer has an interest in human rights law encompassing a larger part of public discourse, potentially at the expense of democratic processes. This can shift the focus from the dispensation of justice to what Rory calls "the amplification of grievance business."

When considering why someone might spend €30,000 on a purse, it's important to understand the concept of Veblen goods. These are items whose value depends on being perceived as expensive. Some products, like the Hermès Kelly bag, are so exclusive that they can be resold for more than the purchase price because the brand will only sell them to established, reliable customers. The resale market price on eBay can even be higher than in the store.

A large part of purchasing luxury items is not just about signaling to others, but also signaling to ourselves. Rory Sutherland points to the hidden truth in advertising slogans, like L'Oréal's famous tagline.

The l' Oreal end line, because I'm worth it. Some part of that is the person advertising to themself.

This self-signaling provides an ego boost or a sense of reassurance. While a flashy sports car might be about visibly showing you have resources to spare, it is often more about reinforcing one's own identity. Handbags and watches became particularly powerful status symbols because, unlike high-end clothing that can only be worn in specific situations, they can be displayed every day.

Another way to rationalize expensive purchases is by considering the "cost per entertainment hour." For example, Professor Paul Dolan of the London School of Economics justified his Rolex by its daily value.

It's extremely good value for money because it makes me feel good every single day when I put it on. And in 20 years time I'll give it to my son.

This metric also explains why a $100 video game is a rational purchase for a young person. If they play it for 100 hours, the cost is just $1 per hour, which is much cheaper than going to the cinema. Similarly, buying a large television can be a very rational decision for those with less disposable income, as it provides a spectacularly cheap source of long-term entertainment. This is especially true when more expensive hobbies like Porsche racing or attending the opera are not feasible options.

However, this behavior is complex. Books like "The Status Game" by Will Storr suggest that deep down, many of our actions are driven by a desire to show off or establish status, which can be a depressing realization. While conspicuous consumption might make a neighbor feel worse by changing their comparative frame, it's not always the case. A car enthusiast might be delighted if their neighbor buys a Ferrari, as it gives them something to share and discuss.

The drive for status is an innate human instinct that we cannot simply turn off. While the currencies of status change over time—what was once a high-status digital watch is now commonplace—the underlying mechanism remains. As a social species, we are deeply calibrated to care about the opinions and repute of others. This is why some things need to be expensive; the cost itself becomes a meaningful signal, much like a peacock's tail.

Rory Sutherland illustrates this with the British sparkling wine industry. A producer successfully revived his brand not just by improving the quality slightly, but by increasing the price by 150%. The price acts as a critical signal in this market.

In the champagne business, it doesn't matter how good the drink is, if people think you've bought it for 8.95, it's not doing the job it's supposed to do, which is to signal generosity, to signal hospitality, or to mark a special occasion.

The crucial question is whether this innate drive for status can be harnessed for good. The pursuit of status can result in both positive and negative outcomes, depending on the chosen currency for signaling. For example, one tribe might signal desirability by fighting with axes, which is a negative-sum game. A neighboring tribe might do so by hunting and sharing meat, which is a positive-sum game that benefits everyone. Even the pursuit of luxury goods can have positive long-term effects. Many affordable goods we have today, like the dishwasher, started as incredibly expensive status symbols. Their initial high price funded the innovation that eventually made them accessible to all.

Rory Sutherland suggests two simple things people can do for environmental responsibility. The first is to run appliances during times of abundant clean electricity, which changes when you do something, not what you do. The second is to switch to a heat pump dryer, which is far more energy-efficient, even if it is slower. This leads to a broader point about social norms, such as the stigma in the US against drying clothes outside, even in sunny climates like Arizona. This behavior is often reinforced by strict housing association rules.

The power of social norms is illustrated by the unsupervised freedom children had in the past. Rory recounts cycling 11 miles alone at age 11, something his parents were later horrified to learn. He explains that behaviors exist on a threshold. When an activity is common, it's considered normal. However, once it drops below a certain tipping point, it becomes strange and unacceptable. This changes how blame is assigned.

If I'd been hit by a car cycling to Monmouth or I'd been abducted by a pedophile, my parents would have been described as unlucky. You get past a threshold where that behavior becomes weird. And now my parents will be held as irresponsible and would be blamed.

This same dynamic applies to other areas, like the normalization of tattoos among the British middle class, which would have been deeply weird in the 1970s. Social norms also dictate smaller behaviors, such as whether men wear shorts. Rory also points out how we often measure the narrow effects of a behavior but not the broader ones. For example, a Swedish study found that while sunbed users had a higher incidence of skin cancer, they also had a higher life expectancy, possibly due to improved cardiovascular health. This highlights how our understanding of risk can be incomplete.

When it comes to writing good copy, the skill is largely tacit; we know more than we can tell. However, there are some general rules. Good copy should be conversational, much more so than people think. Rory Sutherland points to David Ogilvy, whose books are incredibly readable. Ogilvy used a clever trick: he wrote very plainly for the most part but would occasionally include a long, complex word to flatter the reader. Arthur Conan Doyle is another master of clarity. His Sherlock Holmes stories are models of thinking and deduction, but also of prose.

You read a lot of stuff that's written in 1880. What does that mean? Hold on, I'll have to go back to page 27 to work out who on earth Mr. Homer Angel is. At no point in reading a Sherlock Holmes short story have I ever had to go back a page to work out who somebody is.

Other rules include using verbs of movement, preferring verbs to adjectives and adjectives to adverbs, and using Anglo-Saxon words over Romance words. The core task is to convert a product's feature into a benefit for the user. Sometimes, however, persuasion isn't about clever phrasing but simply providing a key fact. Much like a difficult geometry puzzle that becomes obvious once you draw a single extra line, marketing can sometimes just require presenting one piece of information that reframes everything for the consumer.

This is crucial because marketing often works against two powerful human defaults: doing what everybody else does (herd behavior) and doing what you've done before (habit). These behaviors are rational from an evolutionary standpoint, as they are less likely to be catastrophic than trying something new. As a result, big, innovative ideas don't require less marketing; they require more. They need to provide conviction and reassurance to overcome the anxiety of deviating from the norm. Rory notes that his astrophysicist brother provided the one-on-one reassurance he needed to buy his first electric car.

The common tech belief that a great idea will sell itself is a fallacy. Stuart Butterfield, the founder of Slack, says the only real measure of innovation is behavioral change. This leads to the idea that the best technology doesn't always win. This is an engineering point of view that judges technology by its technical qualities rather than its human appeal. For example, PC makers in the early days competed on processing power and RAM, but their machines were ugly beige boxes.

The slight problem with this PC isn't the fact that the clock speed or the processing power or the RAM is insufficient. The problem is if I put this device in any room of my house, it turns that room into an office. You might as well put a fucking photocopier in a bloody filing cabinet in the room.

The success of products like the iMac wasn't based on technical specifications, or "nerd metrics." It succeeded because it understood the wider context of its use. Unlike typical computers of the time, the iMac was an adornment that could enhance any room in a house. This focus on aesthetics and user experience is often missed by those who prioritize raw performance. Small details, like the bounce at the bottom of an iPhone scroll, matter immensely when multiplied by a billion users and hundreds of daily interactions.

Rory Sutherland expresses disappointment that Apple cancelled its car project. He believes Apple had the unique brand power to create a new category of cool and efficient micro-transport for cities like London and New York. Strong, trusted brands have a special ability to introduce disruptive new products that consumers might not accept from a less-established company.

One of the gifts of having a strong brand is your power to really disrupt and create new categories.

Companies are often driven by motivations beyond pure profit. For example, Korean companies produce fantastic technology and cars not just for money, but also to compete with and "wind up the Japanese." This dual motivation stems from deep cultural and historical roots. Rory points out how Christianity became a patriotic religion in Korea because its followers refused to acknowledge the Japanese emperor's divinity during the invasion.

This pattern of non-financial motivation is also seen elsewhere. Many German businesses are driven by intense sibling rivalries, such as Puma versus Adidas or Aldi North versus Aldi South. When companies harness motivations besides profit, the consumer often benefits. Most employees aren't inspired to get up in the morning to enrich distant shareholders. Instead, they are driven by natural human motivations like serving customers and helping colleagues.

Success can be defined as expanding the "adjacent possible." For Rory Sutherland, this means hearing that someone made a different decision because of something he said. He emphasizes that problem-solving requires more than just one approach. It's a mistake to discard rationality for creativity; instead, you need two strings for your bow.

This means using a complementary mode of problem-solving where creative, psychological approaches work in parallel with rational, data-driven measures. The quantitative should not be allowed to crowd out the qualitative. He offers a practical example for house hunting.

When you're looking for a house, don't optimize because everybody will want that house. Instead, find something the house has which most people won't like but you don't care about... Go and look for those things where you can arbitrage what's possible.

He suggests looking for homes next to a pub or a railway line. These are negatives for most buyers, which creates an opportunity for those who aren't bothered by them. This is analogous to the "feels like" temperature in a weather forecast. The raw ambient temperature is objective data, but the "feels like" temperature, which includes factors like humidity and breeze, is more useful for a human being. It's a more intelligent metric because it considers the psychological experience.

When solving problems for people, objectives shouldn't be defined in purely psychology-free terms. A problem might be solved more cheaply and efficiently by changing the psychology rather than changing the technology. The issue, Rory clarifies, isn't with professions like accounting or law, but with the monopoly they have achieved over decision-making, which often excludes these crucial human factors.