Brand Alchemy

The Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

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Rory Sutherland is vice chairman of Ogilvy UK and is an expert on consumer behaviour, trends and the influence of the internet. He analyses what branding means, what creativity is, and the value of persuasion over compulsion. His underlying belief that ‘rational thinking is not the best path to creativity’ in a world enraptured by logic, draws on his first-hand knowledge of the advertising industry and insights from behavioural psychology. He argues that the world is far too complex to be viewed through a single lens, and that to solve everyday problems, we must move past superficial analysis and open ourselves up to even the most seemingly non-sensical ideas – which often turn out to be very powerful. Only then can we be true alchemists.

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Ethos, Pathos and Logos

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In spite of our irrational roots, the western world is increasingly built on one half of the picture - strictly logical rationality including economic models and data-driven technologies to businesses run entirely on spreadsheets. While leading our lives in this way may supply us with the comforting illusion that we understand everything and are much more in control, it also limits our ability to both see and think outside the box. We know that we are not rational creatures driven mostly by logical universal aims and motivators. So why is that economic policy makers and business owners continue to give too much weighting to one side of the equation.

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Instead of understanding how humans really behave, governments and CEOs spend time constructing theories about the way they think people behave, and they quite often miss the mark. Understanding the human psyche helps us to conjure up better ideas and look at the world from different lenses, which helps with problem solving, and understanding the puzzle that is human behaviour.

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The Alchemical Psyche

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Alongside some of the more esoteric roots of scientific dreams and discoveries, raw reason and rationale have produced most of the infrastructure that we depend on today. However when it comes to the impact of business aspects such as branding, what is it that gives some products so much more weight, in spite of similar qualities or functions?

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One element is clever design - appealing not just to the functional aspects like ease of use, but also the sensory aspects such as aesthetic. Such qualitative elements are less tangible, meaning that they are often left out of economic models or case studies performed by businesses which therefore either fail or end up contradicting each-other.

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Sutherland refers to the counter-intuitive work culture in the united states, where longer hours and fewer vacations is assumed to equate to better performance. However productivity is not related to the number of hours employees work, because humans are not like machines. He compares this to the more balanced European work culture that understands employee wellbeing, and argues that this contributes to being able to do one’s job optimally.

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Sweat The Small Stuff

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Companies seeking to become global players often assume that popularity and success require big solutions to big problems and ground-breaking technologies. However success can hinge upon the smallest details and getting these right can make a world of difference. When weighing up opportunities and trade-offs, it’s often found that changing things on the micro-level can give way to profound effects, akin to the butterfly effect.

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For example Rory observed that when a publisher added four words to a telemarketing script, it doubled the rate of sales conversions. Paying attention to the details comes especially handy when trying to better understand customers. This is exactly what Jared Spool, the creator of the ‘$300 million button’ did. He observed that many customers were frustrated about having to create an account in order to make an online purchase. Angry users felt that being forced to disclose their details implied that they were sure to be inundated with unwelcome future marketing emails.

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By simply switching the ‘register’ button with a ‘continue’ button and creating the option to ‘proceed as a guest’ without creating an account, the number of customers proceeding with their purchase increased by 45%, generating an extra $15 million in the first month alone. This shows just how much changes in the small details can affect the way humans think and act.

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The Doors Of Perception

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Humans perceive and experience the world in very different ways. Psychologists call this phenomenon psychophysics - the study of how perception varies from species to species, and most importantly, how what we see and feel differs from objective reality. An example of this is when Cadbury’s chocolate experienced a large volume of complaints detailing how disappointed customers felt that the taste of their Dairy Milk bars didn’t taste the same as they used to.

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This confused Cadbury’s as they hadn’t altered the formula in years. However what they had done, was alter the shape of the bar, giving some customers the illusion that the taste had also changed. This demonstrates how there is nothing objective about the nature of human perception, and even the smallest, most trivial things can affect the way in which we view the world.

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Another great example of this is the Betty Crocker cake mix produced by General Mills. When they first launched their DIY dry bags in the 1950s, the product didn’t sell well, despite being what they felt was an incredibly easy, convenient and affordable solution to a hugely popular past time. To understand where they were going wrong, they hired a team of psychologists, who concluded that most potential customers were not converting precisely for this reason - they felt that the process was simply too easy. For housewives who enjoyed concocting something from scratch and impressing guests with their culinary skills, it now felt less rewarding and more like cheating.

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Counter-intuitively, to make their product now seem slightly less simple, General Mills decided to add in one extra step - the mix was changed up to include adding an egg. This one simple step was what most consumers psychologically associated with the raw process of baking from scratch, and as a result sales skyrocketed. Although the simplicity of this solution may suggest otherwise, there’s no such thing as an average consumer and people are highly nuanced. This is why business’ should be wary of designing products and services for what they perceive as their average consumer.

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Redefining Normal

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The physical anthropologist Lieutenant Gilbert S. Daniels was asked by the US military to create a cockpit for high-speed aircrafts. At the time, the prevailing wisdom was that cockpits should be designed for ‘the average man’. However Daniels had experience measuring human hands and knew that no one hand is the mathematical average. The same goes for bodies. Designing a cockpit for the average body meant designing for a size that may not actually exist.

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He needed a flexible and adjustable solution. There is no one size fits all approach that can be applied to human beings, and the metrics and averages that businesses use to conjure up an image of a single, representative customer are often misguided, leading to products that lack inspiration and relevance. Rory argues that instead of focusing on ten average users, companies would be better off putting their energy into a single idea meant for unusual people, the outliers of the consumer market - an identifiable niche. This is where the most unusual, truly inspired ideas come from, and these often end up appealing to a much wider audience once they reach the tipping point.

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An entertaining example of this is the simple sandwhich. The story goes that the odd tastes of an eccentric individual, an obsessive gambler known as the Earl of Sandwich invented the snack in 1762 so that he could enjoy his meals without having to leave his card table. The convenience of not requiring the typical utensils is now a mainstream commodity enjoyed by millions every day.

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Powerful Messages Combine The Irrational With Meaning

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Rory argues that the best advertising uses the non-sensical elements to appeal to it’s audience. For example rather than the brand message itself, it’s often the imagery of animals or babies that most attracts human attention on a subconsciously irrational level. How we’re wired means that most of what drives us is actually not conscious and clear reasoning.

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An example of this from Rory’s experience in the advertising world was a promotion for a year’s worth of energy valued at thousands of pounds, which drew in just 67,000 entries, compared to a similar promotion for a £15 night light which received 360,000 entries. One theory is that perhaps people felt they might be more likely to win the latter. But we often approve reasonable sounding ideas far too easily, while nonsensical or counter-intuitive ones get discarded. Aligning our thinking too closely with what we think is logical means we don’t experiment or consider enough of the better potentials.

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Powerful messages need to contain strength, character and meaning. An example of this is Nike choosing to use American football player Colin Kaepernick as the face of their 2018 campaign. At the time, this was seen as a controversial choice. For many in the country he was seen as an unpopular figure as he chose not to stand for the US National Anthem before an NFL game, even though he had done this in protest against racial injustice. The evidence of this was that using Kaepernick in their campaign did affect short term results for Nike, and they actually saw a decline in sales. However more crucially, it cemented what Nike stood for in people’s minds - something a safer choice would not have done, and which was more important in the long-run. Meaning can be created when we take risks and dare to be bold, and doesn’t always involve catering to the validation of the status quo.

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Using Different Perceptual Lenses

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Problem-solving requires psychological insights and a multi-pronged approach. If we were to look at life and human behaviour the same way we look at a criminal investigation, we’d see that neither follow a linear path. Instead of having a clear chain of events where one thing leads to another, our lives contain plot twists, false starts and dead ends, because reality isn’t logical.

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This is why we need to look at problems through many different lenses, in the same way that detectives have to come up with a number of different possibilities for what, why and how something took place. The worst thing that can happen is that everyone involved becomes too focused on the same potentially false assumption, steering the case down the wrong path. It’s important to go through a continuous process of challenging our fundamental assumptions and beliefs, weighing up evidence, and re-orienting, under the guidance of a moral blueprint. Attaching ourselves to one theory limits our thinking and shuts off divergent possibilities.

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Solutions that cater to the anxiety of uncertainty is one such example of this. When Uber conducted research into what really bothered their customers, it wasn’t the actual length of time that a customer had to wait, it was the uncertainty around how long that wait might be. Uber’s solution of an in-app map didn’t actually do anything to reduce wait times, but it did make the experience more enjoyable and certain, offering customers peace of mind and the ability to better plan.

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After years in the industry, Rory’s actionable advice is to always ask stupid questions seriously. To go back to first principles and assume that what we think we know might be entirely wrong. To reach intelligent answers, we often need to make seemingly silly suggestions - such as adding an egg.

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