The Element of Surprise

MOI Meets: Turning Heads with Rory Sutherland

We got to catch up with Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, Spectator columnist, Ted Talk speaker and? bestselling author Rory Sutherland. We hear about his perspective on the psychology behind? advertising (he co-founded the Behavioral Science Practice at Ogilvy), which ads he rates – and his favourite ways to just switch off and relax.?

MOI: What's your secret to getting attention and turning heads with your campaigns??

Rory: I think everything attention-worthy has an element of the unexpected; an element of? surprise. And it can be almost anything.?

There's a book I recommend called The Experience Machine by Andrew Clark – which is a? theory of human perception which explains that most of what we perceive is kind of a prediction.? And so we first predict the world and then we use our senses to update – we use our eyes, our? noses, our ears to error-correct.?

It's very similar to the data architecture of something like an MPEG or a JPEG. JPEGS are a? much more efficient use of data to produce a picture because you have an expectation value for? every pixel and you only need data to the extent that the expectation differs from the reality. And? that's why JPEGS or MPEGS use a tiny fraction of the data capacity. If you're a digital? photographer, you might shoot in raw mode, where every pixel is individually described based? on information - and those files are very good if you want to do photo editing in detail, but?

they're unbelievably huge files. And so what Andrew Clark's theory says is that essentially you? gain attention of a particular kind through the element of surprise. The theory is sort of? supported by a guy called Karl Friston, a neuroscientist and physicist who has a theory called? the free energy principle.?

I'll give you a very small but very pertinent example in the field of marketing and customer? service, for example. Generally we notice the things people do for us that we weren't expecting? them to do. Generosity has to have an element of surprise to it. There’s a hotel chain called the? DoubleTree Hotel chain. And when you check in, they keep an oven underneath the check-in? desk, and they give you a bag of their signature DoubleTree cookies to take up to your room.? Now the point about that isn't that anybody particularly wants cookies, it’s the fact that nobody? was expecting it because no other hotel gives you warm cookies. And it’s a kind of gesture? which carries an unusual amount of attentional freight through being, in a sense unasked for and unexpected - no other hotel would have that on their list of what you might call core service? offers - but that's precisely what makes it potent.?

What’s certainly true and mentioned in another part of this book by Andrew Clark is that the way? we perceive things is very heavily contextually mediated. What we notice or pay attention to will? depend on what emotional state or mood we're in. For example, the sound of footsteps behind? you in daylight in a busy street doesn't really alarm you very much whereas if you're in a dark? alley at night, it's all you can actually think about. So the whole question of what to attend to and? how to attend to it is a really, really interesting question in psychology and neuroscience, and it? is interesting that the best advertising in a sense has some element of perhaps mischief to it.??

MOI: There's an article with your top ten favourite ads and they all had that element of surprise - there’s that one in a café in France which says “remember to turn your cell phone back on when? you leave” so it’s kind of reverse what you're expecting.??

Rory: Oh yes, that one is absolutely brilliant. There’s this café local to me and it says on the? door “laptops or tablets are banned” or something like that. And I put that up on Twitter because? I said although I understand exactly what they are trying to do - they don’t want some guy to? come in when they’re really really busy and monopolising a table on the strength of one cup of? coffee for five hours, I get that. But the problem is it pissed me off even when I didn't have a? laptop or a tablet on me because I sometimes do that, I sit in a cafes and use a laptop and I feel? a member of the “tribe of people who use tablets in cafés”. And I took it personally and I haven't? been back to that cafe since, even though most of the time I go into the area I don't take a? laptop with me. Now that's an emotional response – but there are hundreds of ways in which? you can word that notice - even if you just said “no laptops or tablets on Fridays and Saturdays”,? people will go “OK I get it, you're busy, fine - you don't mind me coming in when the place is? empty,” but that all-out blanket ban doesn’t work. Various other people on my Twitter feed came? up with even more creative solutions like framing it as a benefit: “We prefer our people to smell? the coffee and indulge in reality rather than staring at a screen”. You could frame it as a kind of? plus. But worded how they worded it, it's impossible for me to disentangle my rational? knowledge of what they're trying to do from my emotional response to the wording of the? message.

MOI: What recent campaign has got your attention???

Rory: There's a beautiful campaign for ALDI and in Australia. And it's someone who comes to? the till, buys all the things from ALDI but there's one thing that they can't find, and they say: “I'm? terribly sorry. I couldn't find the cheesecake mix" or whatever. “I'm going to have to go? somewhere else for it,” and it’s done in a kind of romantic setting. There's rain and it's done in a? very weird way. It's a brilliant way of taking it into the new context, which is, “Don't worry, we all? know you shop elsewhere.” which also says, “Look, if you judge ALDI as the place you go for all? your whole weekly shop, you'll find it actually slightly sub-optimal because it doesn't have the? range of a Tesco or a Sainsbury's, or whatever the Australian equivalent is.” But what it's? actually saying is: “Go to ALDI for all the things you can buy at ALDI - and then go elsewhere.”? And it's creating sort of permission for a behaviour, in other words.??

MOI: Another type of ad that I really like that you like is when they say “our product is not for? everyone” sort of thing, similar to the ALDI ad you mentioned.?

Rory: That's right. Yes, it's worth noting that finance people, the first thing they kill about a brand? is the thing they think that isn't actually core to its central function. But there’s a wonderful thing? which is worth investigating called Kano theory. Kano was a guy at the University of Tokyo who? did a lot of work with the Japanese consumer electronics industry back in the 70s and 80s. And? he divided product attributes or service attributes into three components. First there’s the sort of??

table stakes where you have to be non-shit. Then you have performance attributes, which is? what the thing is notionally there for. That would be something like battery life in a phone or? sound quality in a cassette deck. And then he has these third things which are surprisingly? peripheral to the main function of the product, which he calls delight attributes. An example of? this is something like a cassette deck in the 1980s in my childhood, it would have been the eject? mechanism that kind of whirred and hissed and had a counterbalance that was really elegant? rather than just going “clack”. And those are often the first things that the finance guy tries to kill? is that. But actually it’s what draws people to pick it, it's what they see as a kind of proxy for? product quality overall. What we're really saying is it has a disproportionate importance to your? appreciation of something. One very clever guy said “I always think we should make the? distinction between value,” which is what is the thing and how much does it cost, “and? appreciation,” which is a much more emotional thing, how much you actually warm to? something, or how much it instils sort of trust, affection and other emotional qualities. And? appreciation is a much bigger thing than value actually.??

We have to be really careful about it, particularly in the realm of customer service, because the? things we really care about in human interaction aren't the things that we tend to measure – you? can't bake those sorts of things into an operations manual. For example Selfridges is the only? store in London where if you pay by credit card, they might say “thank you very much, Mr? Sutherland”. It's weird acknowledging how much that means to you. I’m not suggesting Tesco? should do it. That might be weird. It’s interesting that Starbucks made quite a lot of effort to? address people by name. Sometimes they got ridiculed for it because they made it a bit too? universal, I think. But nonetheless, I think they were on to something in that those things matter? to people.?

MOI: And the final question I want to ask you is a different one to the others. How do you like to? relax and clear your mind?

Rory: I watch a lot of YouTube. I watch a lot of trash on television, I quite like that. I read quite a? bit if I've got the time but I don't read as much as I'd nearly like to or as much as I used to. And? that's partly because you spend so much time doing e-mail that when you come to the end of? the day you're kind of done with reading. I had a friend who was a barrister who had exactly the? same problem. He became massively into classical music because he said the tragedy of being? a barrister was that his job for a week might be to read a 20,000 page legal document and when? you finish doing that you just can't pick up a novel. And that's a little bit of a crisis of today actually. I noticed that in the pre-computer age I used to read a book on my commute to work? pretty much every day or I’d read a newspaper and now actually I'm almost just as likely to stare? into space. I like to zone out. I like cryptic crosswords, detective fiction, true life crime. I like puzzles and mysteries as well. I often recommend cryptic crosswords as a kind of creative? direction because the whole trick is to see beyond the surface meaning of the clue.?

You can find Rory Sutherland on social media at https://x.com/rorysutherland.

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