Rory Sutherland is one of the world’s leading consumer behaviour experts, the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Advertising and an author. Every moment of the day, you're being marketed to. From the instant you check your phone in the morning to the subtle strategies behind political campaigns. So how can you decode the world around you and master the art of marketing? Expect to learn how effective companies will be at getting their employees back in office, Rory’s thoughts on Jaguars rebrand, what Rory thinks of the current state of British culture at the moment, what causes Overton windows to shift, what the Myth of Collective Wisdom is, the assessment of Trumps successful marketing campaign for president, If people who pay more taxes should get special privileges, how to make a boring product interesting, what makes a brand cool and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get a 20% discount on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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So talking about lockdown, how effective do you think companies will be at dragging people back into the office?
It's interesting, actually, because in the UK, for whatever reason, There are exceptions. If you go to tech companies, there's tumbleweed. You know, companies which are very strongly kind of tech engineering driven still seem to be very empty. What I know best is the ad industry. And actually, they're generally a fairly gregarious bunch.
And I think it's returned to a pretty acceptable kind of equilibrium. And by the way, personally, I don't want to see people in the office five days a week because everybody who's engaged in some sort of part of the knowledge economy, 20% to 40% of your working week is going to be stuff where you just need to truckle down, choose your own environment, and get on with it.
And you're much more likely to be more productive if you have some degree of discretion over where and when you work for those tasks that you perform on your own. But there is this value of what you might call serendipity, coaching, for example, co-creation, collaboration, which I think still requires some degree of co-location.
You know, it helps to have people in the same place at the same time for all kinds of reasons. However, what's weird is that the level of absenteeism, if you want, I don't want to call it that, but you know what I mean, okay, is much, much higher in the US and Canada than it is in the UK. Was sick leave?
Well, some of it's probably geographical in the simple sense that there are people who've moved. In other words, it's difficult in the UK to move so far away from the office that you can't come in for one or two days of the week. You have to choose an island somewhere or go to Scotland, I guess.
Um, in the US, there does seem to have been a sort of widespread dispersion of people to a distance away from their place of work, where it's a flight away, not a train ride away. But it's not, it's absolutely not what I would have predicted. Because if anything...
The US had a very strong culture of presenteeism, of people effectively getting in early, staying late, being absolutely desperate to show their face. And the office occupancy rates are much, much lower in the US and Canada than they are in Europe or the UK. Yeah.
One of our mutual friends has a team that works remotely around the world. So they speak to each other on Slack, but they don't see each other in the office. And as part of a team building exercise, I think every so often they bring people together. And he thought this would be brilliant. Everyone's going to get to know each other. They're going to become friends.
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