Rory Sutherland and Tom Goodwin return for part two of our wide-ranging conversation on the future of marketing, creativity, and business.

From driverless cars and Silicon Valley thinking, to the dangers of digitising every human interaction, Rory and Tom explore what businesses lose when efficiency becomes the only goal. They also discuss why governments need creative departments, whether we truly understand how advertising works, and how marketers can finally gain the influence they deserve inside organisations.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Start
00:56 - What will be the advertising agency of the future?
10:39 - How to change the way we think about ad agencies
15:42 - Why the government need a creative department
19:44 - Creativity isn’t dead because AI only uses data from the past
22:32 - How marketers can achieve the influence they deserve
24:08 - Do we really know how advertising works?
29:29 - Is Tesla applying marketing thinking?
31:58 - The future of driverless cars and the danger of Silicon Valley
44:03 - Human interaction vs digitising everything
47:43 - Tom and Rory’s advice for CMOs

Two of our most popular guests return for a conversation on what’s gone wrong in modern marketing and how to fix it. Rory Sutherland and Tom Goodwin tackle everything from digital overload and bad choice architecture to the disappearance of taglines, long-term thinking, and genuine creativity.

Expect behavioural science, contrarian thinking, and plenty of ideas that will make you rethink how marketing really works.

Timestamps

00:00:00 - Start
00:01:31 - Digital overload - are consumers given too much choice?
00:05:51 - The power of “Easter Egg Thinking”
00:07:54 - Have hotels destroyed choice architecture?
00:10:56 - More choice reduction failures
00:14:46 - Do consumers need more choice?
00:17:45 - How ad agencies can discover real insights
00:19:21 - An idea to revolutionise Cannes
00:20:49 - Why Rory and Tom think differently
00:24:05 - What are the biggest marketing myths today
00:30:41 - Fat tailed distribution - the Dulux Dog
00:32:18 - Why we need to bring back the tagline
00:35:17 - Are marketers too young?
00:37:15 - The long term work only pays off after you’re fired
00:42:34 - How to we make companies look more long term?
00:48:03 - Why people love Ryanair but hate BA
00:49:09 - The role of surprise in advertising
00:50:43 - Is marketing actually rather easy?
01:00:49 - Is the advertising agency model broken?

Thank you to our sponsor, System1: https://system1group.com/

Jim Olson has spent his career helping businesses navigate moments of intense pressure from corporate crises to deeply personal challenges, running comms at United Airlines and Starbucks. In this episode, the author of Tailwind shares the lessons he’s learned from leadership, resilience, and facing adversity head-on.

Drawing inspiration from Captain Sully’s Hudson River landing, Jim explains why the best crisis leaders follow the same process: aviate, navigate, communicate. We discuss where crisis management often goes wrong, what leaders can learn from failures like United Airlines, and why “black box thinking” matters in both business and marketing.

Jim also opens up about his own cancer diagnosis and the mindset that helped him through it.

Get Jim's new book, Tailwind here:
https://www.amazon.com/Tailwind-Compass-Turning-Setback-Comeback/dp/B0GXCM3VYT/

00:00 - Start
01:11 - Lessons from Captain Sully’s Hudson River landing
06:11 - The black box thinking approach to marketing
07:30 - Other crises Jim has had to deal with in his career
09:18 - When crisis management goes wrong - United Airlines
13:11 - Managing merging two cultures
15:27 - The situation when Jim’s CEO had a heart attack
18:00 - Jim’s cancer diagnosis
23:30 - The power of positive mentality
28:30 - Don’t ask yourself what if, ask yourself why not
31:34 - The power of a fourth space
34:05 - Crisis doesn’t build character, it reveals it
37:02 - Leadership lessons from Howard Schultz
38:58 - Jim’s advice for those people facing a crisis