Talented managers lead successful brands… The company is its own product, owned and managed by the right person with the right culture.” First, I requested a review because the subtitle presented ("The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life") caught my attention and I'd hoped to glean some tidbits for my wife's business. It was a curiosity that another subtitle...and a different title were associated with the ISBN! Another subtitle: "The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense." The other title: "The Thing Which Has No Name". Huh. I knew that this was previously published in some form in the UK, but normally I can find a match for what was on the available list. (I did find a TEDTalk of a similar name to the "The Thing" version.) Sutherland is in advertising, hence the subtitle of my edition. Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself. Rory Sutherland makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value -- and his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life. A Management Consultant would define something narrowly, automate or streamline it, and then regard the savings as profit -- regardless of it's downside consequences. Be wary of narrowly defined problems Complex plans are designed to compensate for small vision or low self-esteem… The world is chaotic and complex — don’t try to cram the infinite detail of the real world into one neat grid.” 4. Design your future

So...despite the raw beginning, and plenty of quibbling points, there are nuggets of value here. They just take work to find...which may quite be intentional, but I don't know. Stir things up, take risks, definitely question "we've always done it this way" (that's my reduction...he dances around similar concepts), always question anyway (mine again, but like art, it's what I took away. And I got another jumping off point, a book to find : Nassim Taleb's Antifragile. In the Introduction, Sutherland claims the "alchemy of the book's title is the science of knowing what economists are wrong about." I don't quite agree with that...oh, he does cite science here and there, but I think his thesis is more empirical in nature. He sees T as the irrational entity he is, and cites his irrational approach to trade as being more effective than a logical Hillary because "[i]rrational people are much more powerful than rational people because their threats are so much more convincing." Probably true...but no reason to ever put an irrational person in charge of anything. In my opinion. Sutherland says Being slightly bonkers can be a good negotiating strategy: being rational means you are predictable, and being predictable makes you weak. Hillary thinks like an economists, while Donald is a game theorist, and is able to achieve with one tweet what would take Clinton four years of congressional infighting. That's alchemy; you may hate it, but it works. So Alchemy is chaotic lunacy. And I don't know that "it works"...despite the rest of the book. On the surface, and the whole, so many of the successes illustrated seem like accidents. (That quote was painful to type. T as a "theorist"?! And no rational adult can ever not feel immature using that term to twit something - guess that pegs me, right? But you might be wrong...)Here's a good quote: "Behaviour comes first; attitude changes to keep up." That flies in the face of convention that attitudes drive behavior. Give people recycling bins and require them to separate...they probably become more environmentally aware. He says "Give people a reason and they may not supply the behaviour; but give people a behaviour and they'll have no problem supplying the reason themselves.

Sutherland, the legendary Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, uses his decades of experience to dissect human spending behavior in an insanely entertaining way. Alchemy combines scientific research with hilarious stories and case studies of campaigns for AmEx, Microsoft and the like. This is a must-read." —Entrepreneur ("Best Books of the Year") Big data carries with it the promise of certainty, but in truth it usually provides a huge amount of information about a narrow field of knowledge. It is often easier to make something very, very cheap than it is to make what was expensive (but good) much cheaper and still be profitable… We think we want quality — but actually, we just want value: we don’t want a fair price, we want a great deal.” After a spell teaching at a grammar school (and finding his colleagues far more challenging than the pupils), Rory applied to a number of advertising and marketing agencies and was offered a planning role by Ogilvy & Mather. He was asked to leave the Planning Department and moved to the Creative Department instead as a junior copywriter. He worked on accounts including American Express, Royal Mail, and the relatively obscure software company Microsoft.

Retailers:

You can never be fired for being logical. If your reasoning is sound and unimaginative, even if you fail, it is unlikely you will take much blame. It is much easier to be fired for being illogical than unimaginative. Major markets have banned/rejected vaping/e-cigarettes although its better replacement. Its difficult to get a man understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. – More from the Introduction - and why I was wondering if I'd ever get out of it - Sutherland has a subsection of a subsection where he warns "Be careful before calling something nonsense." Ordinarily, ,that might be good advice, but he explains with an example of a "1996 survey on the place of religion in public life in America [he's British]" by the Heritage Institute that found 1. Churchgoers are more likely to be married, less likely to be divorced or single and more likely to manifest high levels of satisfaction in their marriage. Sutherland has a great gift for explaining things by often hilarious analogy, and it makes the book a genuine pleasure to read (in the author's language, he "scents the soap"), while it shows readers the benefits of pursuing the seemingly illogical, the non-obvious, the counter-intuitive... or at the least, doing something that's never been tried before. "After all, if it worked and made sense, someone would have done it already." The greatest hope for a brighter future lies in adapting transport to more human wants and needs. Behavioural science has immense potential to improve the design of vehicles, roads, railways, planes and pavements– as well as the ways in which we use them – but only when we embrace the messier reality of how people travel.

Transport is desperately in need of good ideas and innovation. This highly original and entertaining book is filled with both. " People do not choose brand A over brand B because they think brand A is better, but because they are more certain it is good. (minimising variance) Promoting a more balanced diet of transport optionsbreaks free of 'fast food' thinking. People should be free to travel in healthier and more sustainable ways, overcoming the default to drive. By thinking in terms of user capability, opportunity and motivation to travel (and sometimes not-need-travel) we can (re)build more inclusive and resilient transport systems. Flower is just a weed with an advertising budget. A flower can be worth stopping at, worth going out of your way or destination in itself.

The regular practice of religion also encourages such beneficial effects on mental health as less depression, higher self-esteem and greater family and marital happiness.

Despite approaching Microsoft with the idea of a system whereby people could share Office documents over the nascent internet and being roundly rejected, Rory went on to help found OgilvyOne, the group’s dedicated digital and direct agency. He remains an advocate of so-called ‘360 Degree Branding’ ensuring brands have a coherent, joined-up presence in all relevant media areas. Rory was appointed Head of Copy, and shortly afterwards Creative Director of Ogilvy. He has also served as the president of the Institute of Practioners in Advertising (IPA) - the first ‘creative’ to do so. Ogilvy is now part of the massive WPP ad and media group and count Ford, Unilever, IBM, American Express, BP, and British Airways amongst their top accounts. Rory Sutherland is an icon in the advertising world. As one of the founders of the agency AKQA, he has helped found 11 startups. He also has a lot of great points about how our society overvalues rationality and logic, and, as a result, we miss out on some pretty good ideas because we think they’re not rational.

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