Life Lessons of an Ad Man

Brilliant TED talk from Rory Sutherland, one that may make ad men walk a little taller after watching.

From the TED Blog,

"He's here to speak about value, about value that you can't always see. In the world if advertising, Sutherland explains, they realize that many problems in life can be changed by tinkering with perception rather than reality. For example, when given the problem of making a train ride more pleasant, engineers come up with a solution to make it shorter, one that costs millions. He says, take not even half that budget and hire supermodels to walk the cars with Chateau Petrus. People will ask that you make the journey longer."

Only problem is that I'm not real sure he's really talking about advertising at all, but more so experiences that change perceptions. The train metaphor is great, but it discounts what the vast majority of real-life ad agencies would see as step 2, which would most often be a splashy ad buy touting how great it is to ride without traffic or how much work you could accomplish without worrying about the driving bit.

Either way, there aren't many left that can still capture the romanticism of the advertising world quite like that, and I'd hardly call Rory your run of the mill advertiser, so maybe I should just shut up and applaud.

photo via James "Busdriver" Scott