How engaging do you have to be, really, to break inertia? To disrupt beliefs? And what does that take in your communication and in your culture?

In this episode of Let’s Make This More Interesting, Adam Morgan is joined by Lucinda Barlow, who leads International Marketing at Uber across more than 60 countries. Drawing on a remarkable body of evidence spanning 19 communications campaigns around the world, Lucinda shares the two approaches that created real impact and drove growth, and the ones that didn’t.

They discuss the cultural forces driving dull work: mechanistic thinking, an obsession with productivity, the quiet presence of fear as the “8th passenger” in the room: how, together, they create a system that rewards mediocrity.

And Lucinda shares how and why she champions a challenger mindset in her team, even in a large company like Uber, and what it means for the way they both push for and protect more interesting ideas from those forces of Dull.

__

Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish: the strategic consultancy that helps ambitious Challengers to grow.

Follow Adam on Linkedin.

Thanks to our editor Ruth and our producer Rachael. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this second part of the conversation with Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy and behavioural science evangelist, we discuss why Rory feels we are thinking in entirely the wrong way about the payback for marketing, and the different way we need to go about finding those big, engaging ideas that will disproportionately impact the success of our business.

We talk about the false gods of quantification, how to help our team get lucky, Japanese toilets, and – obviously – the right and wrong way to think about a £300,000 rubber duck.

__

Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish: the strategic consultancy that helps ambitious Challengers to grow.

Follow Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/

Thanks to our editor Ruth and our producer Rachael. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is the value of surprise to us in becoming more interesting? And how does one of today's most stimulating thinkers stay so consistently surprising himself?

In Part 1 of a two part conversation, Adam sits down with Rory Sutherland - Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, behavioural science evangelist, and endlessly fascinating reframer of what we thought we knew - to talk about why surprise matters.

As he points out, sometimes the right thing to be is completely unsurprising: there will always be, after all "a market for "the drearily predictable."

But if you're trying to change behaviour - to challenge, disrupt, or eat the big fish - then surprise becomes essential.

Because the brain isn't built to notice what it expects. It's built to notice what breaks the pattern.

In this first half of the conversation, Rory explores:

• What is ‘Just the right amount of weird’?
• Why it is that we give disproportionate attention to what find surprising
• How all human perception is context-dependent, and why recontexting is so powerful
• Why the healthiest creative human activity is to try on as many frames as we can
• What it means to bring a Game Theorist’s mindset to everything we do - even the way we take holidays.

And why, in fact, surprise might be the most cost-efficient way to earn attention there is.

__

Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish: the strategic consultancy that helps ambitious Challengers to grow.

Follow Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/

Thanks to our editor Ruth and our producer Rachael. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.