I’ve been listening to Alchemy by Rory Sutherland, and one idea in particular stood out: the opposite of a good idea isn’t necessarily a bad idea.
That line stopped me in my tracks. It hit a nerve because it speaks directly to something I’ve always questioned, which is relying too heavily on spreadsheets to make decisions, especially in marketing.
Too often, businesses lean on what they can measure easily. If it shows up in a spreadsheet, it must be working. If it doesn’t, it gets cut. But creativity doesn’t sit neatly in a cell. You can’t always measure its value in a straight line. For example, brand awareness won’t show up on a revenue table, but it drives an awful lot of sales.
Back to Rory’s point. He shares a great example of an insurance company that ran yearly A/B tests on customer letters. Each year, they added an extra paragraph, and each year, response rates improved. So they assumed longer letters worked better. Logical, right?
Then Rory’s agency stepped in. They asked, “What if you made it shorter?”
On paper, that’s the opposite of what had been working. And according to the spreadsheet mindset, that should have been a bad idea. But they tested it anyway.
And it worked—at least for some people.
Certain audiences preferred the short version. It felt clearer, quicker, and easier to act on. Others responded better to the long letter. It gave them the reassurance they needed. More words meant more confidence.
The takeaway? Opposites can both be right—it just depends who you’re speaking to. And you don’t find that out by relying solely on past data. You find it by testing things that might seem counterintuitive.
So next time you’re tempted to dismiss an idea because it runs against something that “works,” stop and test it first. The opposite of a good idea might just be another good idea—for someone else.
Highly recommend giving Alchemy a read or a listen, especially as Rory reads the audiobook and he has a way of storytelling (and swearing) which is quite delightful.