Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
Rory Sutherlandamazon.com
Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
We don’t value things; we value their meaning. What they are is determined by the laws of physics, but what they mean is determined by the laws of psychology.
Rory Sutherland • Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
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After all, no big business idea makes sense at first. I mean, just imagine proposing the following ideas to a group of sceptical investors: ‘What people want is a really cool vacuum cleaner.’ (Dyson) ‘. . . and the best part of all this is that people will write the entire thing for free!’ (Wikipedia) ‘. . . and so I confidently predict that the gr
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psycho-logic as a neutral and non-judgemental term. I
Rory Sutherland • Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
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Some scientists believe that driverless cars will not work unless they learn to be irrational. If such cars stop reliably whenever a pedestrian appears in front of them, pedestrian crossings will be unnecessary and jaywalkers will be able to march into the road, forcing the driverless car to stop suddenly, at great discomfort to its occupants. To p
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Test counterintuitive things only because no one else will.
Rory Sutherland • Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
Modern consumerism is the best-funded social science experiment in the world, the Galapagos Islands of human weirdness. More important still, an ad agency is one of the few remaining safe spaces for weird or eccentric people in the worlds of business and government. In ad agencies, mercifully, maverick opinion is still broadly encouraged or at leas
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Perhaps advertising agencies are largely valuable simply because they create a culture in which it is acceptable to ask daft questions and make foolish suggestions.
Rory Sutherland • Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
Unfortunately, many of your friends and colleagues, and most of all your finance director or your bank manager, won’t like any of these new non-sensical ideas, even the valuable ones. That’s not because they are expensive – most of them are very cheap indeed. No, he* will hate them because they don’t sit comfortably with his narrow, reductive world
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Imagine you are a company whose product is not selling well. Which of the following proposals would be easier to make in a board meeting called to resolve the problem? a) ‘We should reduce the price’ or b) ‘We should feature more ducks in our advertising’. The first, of course – and yet the second could, in fact, be much more profitable.