Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man

Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.

In reality, almost everything is more evolutionary than we care to admit.

it’s easy to achieve massive improvements in perception at a fraction of the cost of equivalent improvements in reality.

The drive to be rational has led people to seek political and economic laws that are akin to the laws of physics

Value resides not in the thing itself, but in the minds of those who value it. You can therefore create (or destroy) value it in two ways – either by changing the thing or by changing minds about what it is.