An Ad Man'' Views

We don’t seek out the views of people from fields totally different from the ones we know or like. I don’t mean opposing views, I am referring to views on topics we never give a second thought to. The odd time we do venture out, we often feel lost or find it uninteresting, which only makes us even more reluctant the next time around. But every now and then, one runs into a gem.

 

One such gem was this podcast with Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, the ad agency. The man threw up so many provocative questions and interesting points of view that are food for thought. And his best point comes at the end of the interview (and this blog).

 

Yes, he’s an advertising man. Most of us look down upon advertising because, to paraphrase Sutherland, if you make something more attractive without changing anything about it, it feels like cheating. Sutherland counters by asking why then we don’t say that Tom Sawyer cheated when he made the chore of painting the fence feel not just attractive, but something worth paying for!

 

On a related note, he says we are wired to come up with stories about everything. And the story we tell ourselves changes our perception of the experience itself. And since an ad is a story around a product (the deodorant makes you sexy, that jeans makes you cool), is an ad fulfilling a basic human need? I told you he makes interesting points.

 

Of course, he continues, ads wouldn’t work if humans were rational. And then he explains why we’re not rational by bringing in (what else?) Darwinian evolution. If we were rational, we’d be totally predictable. And someone totally predictable will either lose or be taken for a ride. All of which is why, he says, we’ve evolved to be “weird and random”!

 

The opposite of weird and random is a computer. Or the Silicon Valley mindset. He wonders if driverless cars would work in countries that have greater tolerance for ambiguity, counties without clear rules for everything, places where discretion and judgment are needed. Thus, he feels driverless cars would probably work in Germany but not so much in more-open-to-ambiguity countries like the UK or Holland. He muses if the difference in tolerance for ambiguity is also why the UK has fewer car accidents than Germany. Is it because Germans follow rules and are thus unprepared for anything out of the ordinary? Whereas the Brits are not as rule bound and thus alert to having to deal with variations?

 

And yet, Brit or German, everyone craves for certainty and predictability. So much so that we knowingly settle for “artificial certainty”, he says. In the workplace, we pretend that one can define rules and procedures for everything. Of course, that also absolves anyone of blame when things go wrong. Which is why bureaucrats love it. On the other hand, having a rule book for everything kills creativity at the workplace. Is that why, he wonders, the world of finance pays very little salaries but insanely high performance-linked bonuses? After all, if you stood to make good money only by doing something new, something different, surely that would incentivize you to be creative? Hmmm… setting aside the damage Wall Street wreaks, I’d never thought of it that way.

                        

Another area we’re irrational is when it comes to the price of things. If the price is too low, we instinctively feel it to be of poor quality. Why else would it be that cheap? But if the price is low and it is only partially complete (e.g. it requires assembly by the buyer), it “destigmatizes” the low cost. We now view it as costing less not because its quality is poor, but because it’s not complete.

 

He says companies work in a world of “repeated games”, a term from game theory parlance. That is, they will keep coming up back to the same customers for more purchases. So coming up with ads that make outrageous promises and claims can work once, but not repeatedly. Further, for a company with many products, the damage of a false or over-the-top ad can spill over onto how its other products are perceived. There’s your check on advertising claims.

 

At the end, he made this fascinating point. See, he says, every organization says it won’t penalize failure and wants to encourage you to try something new. And of course, nobody lower down the org believes that. So, he says, as a top boss, he often dishes out improbable (but not impossible) options and hypothesis. Why? Because he’ll probably be wrong, but it tells his employees that if the boss can go out on a limb, be wrong and not get fired, they could try it too. But if he’s right, well, the organization will make money. And here’s the kicker: in this podcast too, he said he’d thrown in a few thoughts that he’s not sure about, ideas he hasn’t evaluated fully, and hopes to learn from the comments to the podcast whether there are flaws in those points!

 

Like I said, I don’t seek out advertising or marketing perspectives, but you never know what you might learn.