This interview is well worth a listen Rory Sutherland from Ogilvie talks about advertising as an influencing tool (not just to encourage people to buy but to fix problems and influence behaviour). The discussion is wide-ranging and interesting. I listened to it lying in bed on a Sunday morning, and i can say i felt it was an excellent use of my time!
Here are some quotes:
- if video conferences were sold as the rich man’s telephone call rather than the poor man’s travel it would have been better off
- using advertising or marketing [to solve a problem] is the ultimate in organic low impact change there is no rubbish
- there is a strategic value to emotions
- our psychology is an evolutionary advantage
- he recommends the book “Spent” about evolutionary psychology
- we are not rational animals, we are post rational animals
- In the 80’s ad agencies, only senior people had an assistant. It was worth spending 30 mins per day “Terry Thomasing” the typing pool. Everything had to be done and proofed twice then: written (in long hand), proofed, then typed and proofed again [things are different now, we have way more correspondence because an email can come from anyone, not just someone who’s spent 3 days thinking about the comms]
- marketing is a “costly signal of faith in your futurity” it may not be better but it’s less likely to be the worst
