Rory Sutherland. The added value of advertising

Second Year Students. Culture and Leisure. 

First Lecture. Advertising 

Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself. Rory Sutherland makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value -- and his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life.

You will need: 

• Introduction to Rory Sutherland's task. Power Point presentation (for the teacher)
• Script of the talk with vocabulary (for the students) 

You can download the Introductory Power Point, and  script and vocabulary  HERE

• Video of the talk: provided below to watch on-line or downloadable from the original Ted Talk site HERE.

Questions 

Read the following statements by Rory Sutherland.

Do you agree with them? Can you provide examples that support or contradict his ideas? 

1. Once you have reached a reasonable level of wealth,  most of the problems we have are problems of perception.

2. Education does not work by teaching your things; it actually works by giving you the impression that you have a good level of education, which gives you a sense of confidence, which makes you successful in later life

3.  Persuasion is usually better than compulsion

4.  There is general misconception that  real value involves making things, labour, engineering, limited raw materials and what we have on top is just propaganda but the creation of intangible value is a unique opportunity to modify people’s behaviour for the better.

4. People tend to enjoy red wine more when they know it is expensive. We should drink our wine blindfolded in the future .

5. Intangible value teaches us to appreciate more what already exists.