In this edition:

• Column: How Irrational Decisions Can Propel Your Business Forward

• Inspiration: IKEA Life Collection Campaign

• Upcoming Events: Confluence YYC: Marketing (Dec 7)

Column: How Irrational Decisions Can Propel Your Business Forward

Lately I’ve been fascinated with a gentleman by the name of Rory Sutherland.

He joined Ogilvy in the late 80s as a trainee — met David Ogilvy himself along the way — and climbed his way up to his current position as Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, founding its internal behavioural science practice along the way.

Rory’s most recent book titled “Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense” delves into a series of psychological paradoxes of the human mind.

I have yet to read it, but in the meantime I’ve been listening to his talks available on YouTube and as podcast appearances, and I feel like he’s put a lot of what I’ve been feeling into words.

Why does chocolate taste sweeter if the blocks of it are round instead of square? Why do countdown boards on platforms take away the pain of train delays? And why do we prefer stripy toothpaste? Why do our cars drive better after we’ve just had it washed?

These are some of the questions Rory spends much of his time ruminating about, which I believe to hold a lot of wisdom in the world of marketing and advertising.

We’re Used To Fixing Problems Rationally

There’s a classic example that displays the irrationality of our primate brains, in which a building had been getting loads of complaints about how slow their elevators were so they called in a consultant to assess the situation.

The consultant’s recommendation was to spend $1 million dollars to replace the cables, add a new motor at the top floor, and all of the complaints would be certain to go away.

But then comes the adman, and says — wait a second, before you go on spending $1 million dollars, why don’t you add floor to ceiling mirrors at the lobby and every floor so that people get to stare at themselves while waiting for the elevator?

You see, this solution reframes the entire question as opposed to directly solving the problem: people aren’t actually mad that the elevator is slow, rather they’re just bored with all the waiting.

The issue I often see in business is that people are taught to solve problems logically all the way from school to throughout their careers, when in fact humans don’t make decisions that way.

People most often than not make decisions based on emotion and impulse, meaning that our entire framework to solving challenges in the world starts from a faulty crack altogether.

What If We Solved For The Subjective Experience?

In his talk, Sutherland gives another hilarious example on how to circumvent rationality in problem-solving:

“I achieved a kind of undeserved weird fame because of my suggestion back a few years ago when the UK spent 6 billion pounds building high-speed rail tracks from St Pancras station to the coast of Kent [to complete the high-speed line from Paris to London] I simply said: what's the creative opportunity cost here? You're trying to improve a journey by making it shorter, in other words by the objective use of engineering. But what if we tried to make it ten times more enjoyable? And by the way, most of those trains still do not have Wi-Fi on them. So, I said if you spent 1% of that money putting really good Wi-Fi on the trains my contention is that it would make more difference than reducing the journey time by 40 minutes.”

If you walk into any marketing department in any major multinational company nowadays you’ll notice that the “Marketing 4Ps” — price, place, promotion, product — has largely been reduced to the 1.5Ps (promotion and input in product development).

Why is that? What happened to marketers’ credibility in the business world?

Rational Faculties Rule The World

Oftentimes when businesses are faced with a big decision to make, the CFO always needs to sign off on it — and not only that, but actually the finance department is often where the solutions will come from: reduce price, make X capital investments, produce only Y amount of the innovation, etc.

Creatives are typically relegated to the kids’ table — marketers’ input are not seen with the same weight as supply chain’s or sales’. But here’s the caveat: in a world where consumers make decisions with their guts instead of their heads, creatives can serve a pivotal role in determining the best course of action.

Let’s go back to pricing and place for a moment. When I say that marketers should reclaim the lost Ps, I don’t mean that we should be making decisions on profit margins and geographical expansions. It’s never been about that.

How often has a solution to lack of sales been to raise prices? Well, according to research humans perceive higher priced items as more credible, meaning that, unconsciously, people will buy from those who have more to lose.

This approach is not rational at all. As a matter of fact, the very fact that it doesn’t make sense is why it should be considered more seriously. Humans don’t think with their heads.

Here’s another interesting case study: much of what makes a Ferrari desirable is its perceived value, which comes from psychological factors like social status, exclusivity, and the emotional experience associated with owning and driving such a car.

For this exact reasons, marketers at Ferrari noticed that if they kept showing their expensive cars next to Fords, Hondas, and Dodges, their luxury cars’ price tag would just look absurd. Which is why they shifted from displaying Ferraris at car shows to showing them at private jet events. When someone is shopping for a $50 million item, a Ferrari is an impulse buy.

The Role Of Creativity In Solving Pressing Problems

Now, of course we wouldn’t want the guy who checks the lug nuts on your airplane wheels to apply “creative thinking” in his job.

But the point Rory Sutherland has been making for years now is not about broad stroking creativity to everything. As a matter of fact, creatives work best when constraints are in place — and for that we need the more rational folks to partake in the process.

But what I have noticed over the years is that the marketing and advertising profession has been demoted to an “after thought” in most organizations. Why is that, it’s hard to say.

One could suppose that the work that we do is too fun to be taken serious. Or too fancy to be doubled down during hard times.

But the fact of the matter is that without Paul no one would know who Jesus was.

The work of those who spend their lives spreading the word, or finding counter-intuitive solutions to problems is critical for innovation and the churning of the economic system.

So, the next time you have a big decision to make, ask the creative on your team what they would do — they are likely eager to help, understand your customers unlike anyone else, and can tap into a territory in problem-solving that often gets overlooked by your competitors.

Inspiration: IKEA Life Collection

A decent portion of a strategist’s existence is consumed by searching for truths — human, category, and brand truths.

But that’s not enough. Truths will only take an advert to ‘good’.

To get to GREAT advertising you then need to present it in an interesting and breakthrough way.

The IKEA campaign below (which won a GOLD in Cannes this year), is a masterful encapsulation of doing that.

Upcoming Events: Confluence YYC: Marketing

• Thu Dec 7th 5:00pm - 7:30pm

• Venue 308, 308 11 Ave SE #110, Calgary, AB T2G 0Y2, Canada

Join me at the Calgary Chamber for the fifth and final installment of the 2023 Confluence YYC series, focused on marketing strategies that make an impact.

As part of the panel, we will discuss our experience developing unique marketing campaigns that utilize social media, email marketing, compelling messaging, and out-of-the-box approaches that will help you reach new audiences and retain existing clients.

Attendees will have the opportunity to network and discuss shared challenges and celebrate wins with like-minded professionals from all corners of the Calgary business community.

I’ll be part of the panel alongside other great marketers.

More of PPA:

• 🤝 Connect with Pedro on LinkedIn and/or X

• 🍻 Come by the WJ office for a brew

• 💌 In case you missed it:

  • Why Black Friday Is Killing Your Brand

  • Building Campaigns That Last

  • Why Are Ads So Bad These Days?

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