11 rules I learned from Rory Sutherland book Alchemy
Rory Sutherland Is the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group in the UK. He also writes for The Spectator. His main job is to figure out how marketing works and how it can be improved.
“To be brilliant, you have to be irrational.”- Rory Sutherland
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.
“A flower is simply a weed with an advertising budget.” — Rory Sutherland
This article is based on the book “Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense” by Rory Sutherland. This book changed my way of thinking, and I would like to share 11 rules with you, which can help you make better decisions and life choices. (Note: This post is made as a summary and should not be used verbatim in any other context. If you want to use the ideas, please buy the original book)
The book covers several different ideas, but ultimately it all comes down to the value of “psycho-logic”:
“My word to describe the way we make decisions — to distinguish it from the artificial concepts of ‘logic’ and ‘rationality… I have chosen psycho-logic as a neutral and non-judgemental term. I have done this for a reason. When we do put a name to non-rational behaviour, it is usually a word like ‘emotion’, which makes it sound like logic’s evil twin.”- Rory Sutherland
1. Competence before confidence
“Insecurity leads to over-thinking and paralyses the ability to take action… If you want to get started, believe that you can do it or be good at something — but don’t expect yourself to be the best.”
2. The delusion of control
“The world is much more random than we like to think… Don’t obsess over outcomes, and don’t try to project too far into the future. Think through decisions and choices as they come to you — but don’t agonise over them.”
3. Don’t plan too much
“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
“Design is about having a go — trying something and seeing what happens. Planning is how to try — you plan for things to happen as they should, rather than designing to turn them into something else.”
5. Understand that branding is everything
“Brands are just products with no price tag… People don’t buy images or messages; they buy better versions of themselves.”
6. Think like a designer
“If you can design it, you can make it happen… If you know the price of something, you control the supply; if you control supply, you can charge whatever prices suit your market. You will always have sufficient demand because there are always people who will do anything to get what you’re selling, whether or not they can afford it.”
7. Bet on the jockey
“Talented managers lead successful brands… The company is its own product, owned and managed by the right person with the right culture.”
“If there were a logical answer, we would have found it by now.” — Rory Sutherland
8. Make it personal
“Concentrate on what you can deliver to each person, not the group. By selling one at a time, you can deliver more than by selling ten at a time… Every relationship is an individual one; every customer has different wants and needs; never forget that they all use your product or service in different ways.”
9. The luxury of care
“Every marketer can sell a product, but to create an emotional bond, you need to be able to give something away… It is much harder and more effective to make someone feel they deserve something than that they simply want it.”
10. Aim for your pains, not for your pleasures
“The more pleasure you promise, the less effective your advertising is likely to be. Aim for people’s fears or their pain rather than their desires or pleasures… The best marketing only has to work once — it just sucks people in by tugging at something they already feel but don’t yet understand. Once trust is established, people will buy almost anything.”
11. Good is the enemy of great
“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.”
“Don’t just copy what works, Copy how it works.” — Rory Sutherland
Rory’s rules of alchemy taken from the book “Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense” — I am using affiliate links so if you click on them it helps me create more book reviews like this; I am a massive fan of his work and I really enjoyed reading this thought-provoking book. And I recommend it to anyone interested in marketing or behavioural psychology. I have linked to it here and the author here.
