Rory Sutherland is a master of the anecdote. His books and interviews about behavioural science and marketing are full of stories and little asides to explain how data doesn’t explain everything and we need to remember that humans are not creatures of pure logic. This BBC Radio series, now available from audiobook platforms, is the perfect vehicle for this style. Short (around 13 minutes each) episodes make this an easy listen for bitesize explorations of different concepts from how the ice bucket challenge used social proof to raise millions for charity, to what would happen if parliament consisted of members of the public chosen at random.

A great introduction to some of these behavioural insight concepts. I’d also really recommend following up listening to this series with read Rory’s book Alchemy which uses a similar style to explore some of these concepts in more depth.

Full disclose: I am both a huge fan of Rory Sutherland and a horrible little marketer.

Rory’s book Alchemy is one of my absolute favourite books about marketing and I knew this was going to have a lot of similar themes.

It’s a really good introduction into marketing and behavioural economics, which are both topics I’m incredibly interested in, so for me I found I did know a lot of the anecdotes from previous talks or books of Rory’s, or other experts in the field such as Dan Ariely, who features here.

Both a compliment and a criticism of this is that it did jump around a lot and cover a lot of topics, and it was the focus on the non-marketing-related topics which I found most interesting and more full of new information for me. However I did find it didn’t all tie together under one theme well.

Finally, this really isn’t a book. It’s a radio series spliced together and I think it’s a bit misleading to call it a book. I know it’s an unedited proof but at some points erroneous news stories were still in and even the news itself!

A great intro to marketing but not in the best format. Although I do adore Rory Sutherland’s voice and he could read me a shopping list and I’d enjoy it.

4 stars