In “Alchemy: the Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life,” author Rory Sutherland explores the fascinating world of behavioral economics and marketing psychology. Sutherland challenges conventional thinking stating that most modern problems can be solved with a psychological approach instead of pure logic.
Rory Sutherland helped create Ogilvy, a marketing company. He is now a Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK and has given many thought-provoking TED Talks.
Rory starts the book off with a simple question why is Red Bull such a popular drink? Red Bull does not taste good, but it has grown to rival Coca-Cola as the world’s second most popular non-alcoholic beverage, after water.
There must be some reason why Red Bull is so popular because logically it should not be popular at all. Sutherland claims that many reasons for marketing psychology are illogical, or as he says, “psycho-logical.”
While we are living in a world that is so logical Rory theorizes that it would be better to use illogical solutions. For example, the train that connects the UK to France takes a long time. Engineers were brought in to fix the problem. They were able to make the train 15 faster. However, Rory asks the question: what if the trains had wifi? Or gave beverages to the commuters? People would want the train to take longer.
So, why is Red Bull so popular? Rory says that it is due to the small shape of the can and the amount of caffeine. People believe that so much caffeine in such a little bottle is going to be effective because if they sell it in bigger cans people could have health problems.
This is a great book for anyone who studies marketing. It encourages us to think differently, take a step back, and look at the problem in another way. Who knows, maybe we can turn something useless into gold.