Rory Sutherland

There's also the capacity for imagination, creativity, common sense, you know, etc.

We have a whole variety of different mental mechanisms at our disposal gifted to us by, you know, a few million years of evolution as a social species.

And yet we've made rationality

the gold standard.

This is what's weird about working in advertising, by the way, and I think it's probably similar to theoretical physics, and it's probably similar to entrepreneurialism, okay, which is what's unusual about those fields is that rationality is the bronze standard.

In advertising, if someone says, you know, this is the problem, and you come up with a completely rational solution,

People don't go, right, that's perfect, let's go and do it, as they would do in a finance setting or a compliance setting.

In most of decision-making in institutions, rationality, i.e.

quality of argumentation, is the gold standard.

In advertising, if you came up with a rational ad, people would go, yeah, that's all right, but can you do a bit better?

You know, is there an ad that says the same thing but in a more emotionally engaging way?

Is there an ad that says the same thing in a way that's funny?

Is there an ad that says this in a way people will remember or will act on?

So what is funny about being an advertising creative, you know, I spent 20 years of my life either in or managing those departments, is, you know, the rational solution is where you start.

He uses a springboard to something better.

There's a famous quote, you know, fascinatingly from Niels Bohr, who said, you're not thinking, you're merely being logical.

I think you'll know that.

He was an interesting guy, wasn't he?

In terms of his, because he also was the person who said the opposite of a good idea.

In boring physics, the opposite of a good idea is wrong.