Knowing and Making

John Kay's new book Obliquity: Why our goals are best achieved indirectly  (whose launch at the IPA was hosted last night by Rory Sutherland) follows in the tradition of a number of recent books about decision-making and rationality. Indeed, he mentions Predictably Irrational  and Blink in the first ten pages. It goes beyond them in a couple of interesting ways, but leaves some questions - perhaps deliberately - unanswered. One of my favourite books on business is also by John Kay:  The Hare and the Tortoise: An Informal Guide to Business Strategy . I'd recommend it to anyone involved in guiding the strategy of their firm. You need only read a few pages to appreciate the wisdom and insight of the author, and so I have been looking forward to reading this new book. Kay's definition of obliquity can be summarised as: Aim for diverse goals other than your direct objective. The companies that make the most money are not those whose primary goal is to make money. Accep...

From Rory Sutherland , current president of the Institute of Practioners in Advertising: "We need to broaden the definition of what we do to reflect the new reality of the market place because if we don't create a new model based on human understanding, then we are in danger of using 1950's packaged goods persuasive techniques to solve today's communications problems! With behavioural economics we can align ourselves to a recognizable science..." I'm a great supporter of Rory's campaign to bring science into the marketing world - the field today is too driven by gut feeling, and treats creativity as an end instead of a means. Science lets us clearly understand the business problem, create a solution and demonstrate that it will work. I disagree with him on one point in particular, but we'll come back to that. In the meantime, I've been reading Sam Delaney's book  Get Smashed , a history of the British advertising industry from the 1940s onwa...

Rory Sutherland of the IPA is leading a push for behavioural economics in the advertising business. This video is an excellent summary of how ad agencies should turn " human understanding into business value for clients ". Here is his TED video about intangible goods , which has plenty in common with the best bits of Tyler Cowen - he even mentions Tyler and Marginal Revolution in the talk. And here is the event on Wednesday that I missed - thanks (but no thanks!) to Mark Earls for mentioning it after the fact. I guess I should have checked his blog before Wednesday too... I agree entirely with the message that behavioural economics is a critically important discipline for marketers to master. It has the potential to finally bring science and rigour to the practice of marketing, which has for many years been a craft - a well-practised craft, but still one with no basis in testable, predictive theory.