Rory Sutherland

Right.

So I want more variety.

This is where your wonderful compatriot, Roger L. Martin, raise me upon him, makes this point that economists have this fantasy of the world of companies in direct competition driving down price and increasing efficiency while supplying the same thing.

which is based on a false premise that people know what they want to begin with.

Now, I would argue when you don't create differentiation, everybody suffers.

Now, let me explain.

Because if you have a differentiated car market, it makes the car market more valuable overall to investors because, you know, there is more variety within the market.

It benefits the companies because they can achieve a reasonable profit on what they do because it has some degree of scarcity or uniqueness.

And it benefits the consumer because the consumer ends up with more choice.

What often happens is you have something like a regulated telecoms market or you have a regulated insurance market.

And everybody is forced to compete along the same dimension.

And what you end up with is just red ocean competition and nobody wins.

I can speak for Gillette where the evidence was that it was

And by the way, the research showed it was deeply problematic with a large swathe of people.

Has American Eagle suffered?

I doubt it.

In some ways, you could argue it's an ingenious marketing strategy, which is that you press the hot buttons of 1% of the population.

So they then repeat your message accompanied by their own signaling outrage.

Meanwhile, you get free media coverage practically everywhere.

But maybe I'm naive.