Rory Sutherland’s automation warning gains fresh relevance

Rory Sutherland, the Welsh advertising executive and president emeritus of Ogilvy Consulting, has attracted 26,325 reads of his Wikipedia biography in 24 hours — 3.2 times the previous day’s total.

For UK business owners considering automation, one of his best-known ideas addresses a practical question: whether a cheaper way of completing a task also preserves the less obvious value provided by the person doing it. The readership figures do not establish what prompted the increase in interest.

What happened

Sutherland developed the idea he calls the “doorman fallacy” in his 2019 book, Alchemy. It describes a mistake in assessing jobs: treating their most visible task as their entire contribution to a business.

His example concerns a hotel considering whether to replace a doorman with an automatic door. On a narrow assessment, both perform the same function by allowing guests to enter and leave, making automation appear an economical substitute.

But the employee also recognises guests, contributes to security and communicates something about the hotel’s standing. Those functions disappear from the calculation if management measures the role solely by the opening and closing of a door.

In Sutherland’s illustration, retaining a doorman can help establish the hotel as a premium business and support higher prices. Removing the position could therefore reduce revenue by more than the saving in employment costs. This is a conceptual example, not a reported outcome from a named hotel.

The background

Sutherland joined Ogilvy & Mather in 1988 as a graduate trainee planner, having been drawn towards advertising by British television campaigns of the 1980s. He briefly worked in account management before moving into copywriting.

He became creative director in 2001. His work at the agency included the American Express and Dove soap accounts, giving him experience across financial services and consumer products.

Between 2008 and 2012, he served as president of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. In 2012, he established a behavioural science practice within the Ogilvy Group, bringing psychology and economics into the development of marketing techniques.

His route into the industry began outside a specialist business education. Born in Llanbadoc, near Usk in Monmouthshire, on 12 November 1965, he attended Monmouth School before beginning classics at Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1984.

What people are saying

In Alchemy, Sutherland argues that successful marketing ideas can depend on factors that do not appear rational. That position places customer perception, rather than a narrowly functional assessment of a product or service, at the centre of his argument.

The behavioural science practice he founded seeks to develop marketing approaches informed by psychology and economics, rather than relying on conventional advertising to shape what customers want. Its stated purpose extends his thinking beyond individual campaigns into the reasons people make decisions.

His publishing career began with The Wiki Man in 2011. He subsequently wrote regularly under the same title for The Spectator, where he has a fortnightly column.

In 2021, he co-authored Transport for Humans: Are we nearly there yet? with transport behavioural scientist Pete Dyson. The book added transport to the subjects covered in his published work.

What happens next

The available account sets out no forthcoming launch, investment, appointment or publication deadline. The rise in readership should therefore not be treated as evidence of a new commercial announcement.

Sutherland has also developed an audience on TikTok. A fan initially uploaded extracts from his talks, interviews and podcast appearances; Sutherland and Ogilvy later took over management of the account.