Rory Sutherland is one of the few people in advertising who hasn’t completely lost the plot. He’s funny, sharp and – crucially – understands that human beings aren’t spreadsheets with feelings. In his latest Triggernometry interview he makes some good points. He takes a swipe at the moral grandstanding infecting the industry. He exposes how marketers are too often more interested in activism than actually selling anything. And he rightly ridicules the Bud Light catastrophe, a textbook case of what happens when brands forget who their customers are.
So far, so good. I agree with him – up to a point. But then he says the fatal line: that marketers are just trying to “do the right thing”.
Sorry, Rory. That’s not just wrong, it’s dangerously wrong.
These people aren’t misguided do-gooders. They’re not well-meaning but naïve. They’re not making mistakes. They’re doing exactly what they set out to do.
They are moral authoritarians. Worse still, they think they’re the heroes of the story.
What’s happened in marketing isn’t accidental – it’s structural. And we know this because of the research.
Take The Empathy Delusion by Andrew Tenzer and Ian Murray. They showed that marketers are wired differently from the general public. High openness, low conscientiousness and high agreeableness. And crucially, they conflate their feelings with public opinion. They don’t see themselves as selling to customers – they see themselves as educating the ignorant. As Tenzer puts it: “Marketers mistake their feelings for the public’s values.” Spot on.
Research indicates that individuals exhibiting high openness to experience and low conscientiousness are more likely to hold Left-wing political orientations.
Then there’s Jonathan Haidt. In The Righteous Mind he explains how Left-liberals operate with a narrow moral palette, obsessed with care and fairness, while ignoring loyalty, authority and sanctity. These are the people designing your ads. Is it any wonder they keep producing campaigns that insult the very people they’re meant to attract?
This isn’t accidental. It’s strategic. It’s marketing rebranded as moral signalling.
Women consistently score higher than men on agreeableness, neuroticism and openness across the Big Five personality traits.
And so let’s go further. Jordan Peterson’s research with Christine Brophy shows that the psychological profile most predictive of Left-wing authoritarianism is low verbal ability, high agreeableness and feminine personality traits. Which, if you’ve worked in marketing for more than five minutes, will sound eerily familiar. You don’t get a lot of ideological diversity in a room full of HR and DEI managers – the same is true in marketing.
So no, Rory. These people aren’t confused. They’re missionaries. And the worst kind – the ones who don’t even know they’re preaching.
They believe it’s their job to correct the customer. To lead the culture. To spend your advertising budget telling the world how good they are.
And it’s killing brands.
Marketing used to be about persuasion. About seduction. Now it’s all scolding and sermonising. No wonder the public are switching off. No wonder they’re buying from competitors who actually respect them.
The strategic implications are clear: if your marketing department is staffed by people who think the average customer is a backward bigot, you’ve got a problem. You’re not speaking to your audience – you’re sneering at them.
This isn’t about pandering. It’s about respect. It’s about remembering that the job is to sell, not to lecture.
Until that reality is faced, marketing won’t just be ineffective – it will be actively repellent.
Time to stop making excuses. Time to clean house.
Lee Taylor is the Managing Director of marketing agency Uncommon Sense. You can contact him on email here. Find Uncommon Ad Space on X. The Uncommon Ad Space website can be found here.
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