If anyone’s still in doubt about marketing’s value, Rory Sutherland has news for you — and as usual, it’s delivered with wit, bite and a behavioural economist’s eye for bullshit.
The Ogilvy UK vice chairman, TED Talk veteran and author of Alchemy joined the Uncensored CMO podcast recently to make a provocative claim: marketing, not macroeconomics, might just be the answer to reversing stagnant global growth.
“Economics is obsessed with things that make sense in theory,” he says. “But real human behaviour is gloriously inconsistent — and that’s where marketing shines.”
Sutherland doesn’t think the answer lies in efficiency. In fact, he argues we’ve become a bit too obsessed with engineering out inefficiency altogether. “We’ve tried fixing supply chains. We’ve tried building infrastructure. Maybe the thing we really need is better persuasion.”
That means not chasing certainty. “If you want certainty, become an accountant,” he says. “Marketing deals in probabilities, perceptions and nudges. It’s not about being right — it’s about being interesting.”
One of his biggest gripes is with benchmarking — and the way it’s used to drag brands toward sameness. “Benchmarking is actually McKinsey, and people make a fortune selling this bullshit,” he says. “But it’s just a way of making you more similar to your immediate competitors.” He even singles out Baker McKenzie as a global success story you’ve likely never seen advertise. “They’re benchmarking themselves into invisibility.”
Instead, he urges brands to spot — and exploit — their competitors’ blind spots. “What are the things they did weirdly badly? We’re going to double down on those things,” he says. “If your competitors are boring, be weird. If they’re slow, be nimble. If they obsess over risk, try charm.”
It’s classic behavioural thinking: people don’t act logically, they act contextually. “A behavioural economist once told me: people don’t choose between options, they choose between descriptions of options,” says Sutherland. “That’s pure marketing.”
Another banger: “Fame is a luck multiplier. If you’re well known, you get opportunities others don’t. That applies to brands as much as people.” Fittingly, Sutherland’s own TikToks have gone a bit viral recently — despite what he calls “being not particularly good at TikTok.” But that’s the point. “It doesn’t have to be slick — it just has to resonate.”
His closing provocation? “Put marketers in charge of transport, health and government websites — then we’d actually make progress.”
For Sutherland, marketing isn’t window dressing — it’s the core engine of growth. As he puts it, “The best ideas don’t come from logic. They come from noticing something others ignored and saying, hang on, what if we tried that?”
The Uncensored CMO is produced by System1. Join System1’s senior vice president of global partnerships Andrew Tindall live on stage at the Cairns Crocodiles.
