The Bottleneck Podcast

Caroline Orange-Northey, ex-Managing Director of Pinterest UK & Ireland, joins Rory and Elfried to talk about why marketing has been optimising for the wrong things, and why the best thing you can find online is a reason to go offline.She covers clicks versus decisions, why slow, considered platforms get undervalued, and what a maths degree brings to media.Caroline traces her route into the industry. She studied maths, wrote a thesis on Fermat’s Last Theorem, and fell into Talksport radio. She then spent seven years at News International before moving to the FT, Amazon and Pinterest. Her dad was a private investigator, which she says explains her nosiness.What we coverDesigning the exit: Caroline argues that brands want people to do something in the real world, yet the industry optimises for what’s easiest to capture online. Her point: “attention is fragmented, intention is usually whole.”Slow scrolling and considered purchases: Rory notes that scroll speed on Pinterest is about three times slower than elsewhere. Caroline explains why that matters for returns, not just sales. Ten tops bought on impulse and nine sent back isn’t the same as two bought and kept.FOBO: The fear of better options, and why around 70% of carts are abandoned. Caroline and Rory discuss how confidence in a decision drives action, and why a distinctive USP helped people feel sure.Pinterest Predicts: The annual trends report, with about 88% accuracy over six years. Caroline says trends on Pinterest last twice as long as elsewhere, and Rory explains why through the Lindy effect.Gen Z and the analogue turn: Pen pals, direct mail, vinyl and nostalgia for things they never lived through. Elfried and Caroline discuss why a generation raised on AI and feeds is reaching for the physical.AI raises the average but dilutes the premium: Why distinctiveness is back at a premium, why the CMO may be returning to the boardroom, and why Caroline wants AI to be an “and” conversation rather than an “instead of” one.Taste, choice and the toaster problem: Pinterest’s taste graph, and the line between personalisation and creepiness. Rory brings in Paul Eastwick’s Bonded by Evolution on first impressions in dating, and an experiment for Boots that made a catalogue “less irrelevant” for men.Life moments: Richard Shotton’s work on how major life events change brand choices, from broadband providers to bank accounts.Time well spent versus time spent: Why Pinterest doesn’t see itself as social media, plus the case for play, joy and manifesting your future self.Why you should never buy anything in an airport: Rory and Caroline disagree, with side trips into oven chips, EV range anxiety and Qantas’s non-stop Perth flight.

Les Binet, one of the best-known names in marketing effectiveness, joins Rory Sutherland and Elfried Samba for a wide-ranging conversation. He covers 38 years in advertising, why measurement can mislead you, and what a theoretical physicist brings to marketing.Les traces his unlikely route into the industry. He left a PhD in solid state physics for AI research in Edinburgh, then worked in a publishing start-up that Robert Maxwell squeezed out of existence. He ended up in BMP, the agency that pioneered account planning, after a three-day job transcribing TV ratings.What we coverPhysics versus logic: Les argues that physics is about the mathematics of change, with feedback loops and dynamics, rather than static logic. He says this is why he sees marketing as "pipework" and circuits.BMP's planning culture: At BMP you needed A-level maths to be a planner and an IPA effectiveness award to reach the board. Les covers how that rigour faded and what it cost the industry.Emotion beats rational persuasion: Marketing in the Era of Accountability (2007) surprised even its authors. Pure emotional campaigns outperformed rational ones on nearly every business metric, with short-term direct response the main exception.Short term and long term: The Long and the Short of It shows that short-term success doesn't predict long-term success. The key word, as Les says, is "and".How Rory influenced Les: A question at an IPA seminar led Les to prospect theory, Kahneman and System 1/System 2. That in turn led to BrainLab at the agency and, indirectly, to the company System1 taking its name.Additive versus multiplicative effects: The Cravendale test grid found TV alone gave about 5%, direct mail about 10%, and both together 32%. Why layer-cake charts mislead, and how ergodicity changes how you think about risk.Tight versus loose fitness functions: Rory and Les on why narrow ROI metrics create a "sparse monoculture". The carpet store flywheel, Wolfram on evolution, and "what you measure is what you do".Fat tails: Is marketing's value concentrated in a few outlier ideas, or in solid work that's merely "good enough"? Les and Rory disagree.Share of search: Using Google Trends as a free proxy for mental availability, plus a look at Rory's own share of search.Interests beyond your field: Brian Eno and generative music, why cheddar is the honesty test, and why music, beer and cheese rank above advertising for Les.Follow RoryInstagram: @rorysutherland_clipsTikTok: @RorysutherlandclipsX: @rorysutherlandLinkedIn: in/rorysutherland/Follow ElfriedInstagram: @elfriedsambaLinkedIn: in/elfriedsamba/https://www.butterflyeffect.xyz/Follow Les BinetX: @BinetLesLinkedIn: in/les-binet

Rita McGrath has spent her career on a question most companies would rather not answer: can a large organisation genuinely innovate from the inside, or does it only ever buy in what threatens it?In this episode she joins Rory to explain why big companies are so bad at handling uncertainty. Rita's argument is that firms run new ventures by the same rules they use for the business they already understand, and it kills them. No advantage lasts, so the replacement has to be in development long before you need it.This is a conversation about the gap between what companies say they want from innovation and what they actually reward, and about where the fixes are to be found.Follow RoryInstagram: @rorysutherland_clipsTikTok: @RorysutherlandclipsX: @rorysutherlandLinkedIn: in/rorysutherland/Follow ElfriedInstagram: @elfriedsambaLinkedIn: in/elfriedsamba/https://www.butterflyeffect.xyz/A @Sassy+ original podcast series

Sir Richard Harpin started with £50,000 and turned it into HomeServe, a business he sold for £4.1 billion. In this episode, he joins Rory and Elfried to break down the nine steps behind that journey, from copying the right ideas to knowing when to say no.

From staking your claim in a market nobody else believes in to the "not-to-do list" that kept HomeServe focused, this is a masterclass in bootstrapping, mentorship and building something built to scale.

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https://www.butterflyeffect.xyz/

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BusinessleaderUk

https://www.richardharpin.com/

https://www.businessleader.co.uk/

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Joe Martin founded Tickle, a platform that lets people save an ad into their phone wallet instead of buying right now. Live at MAD//Fest, he joins Rory and Elfried to ask a blunt question: why do so many companies chase the same metrics as their competitors, and end up looking exactly like them?

They trace how optimising for what's easy to measure can work against what actually makes a business succeed, from a CPG brand that got an outstanding result and refused to repeat it, to Soviet factories that paid workers by the weight of the chandeliers they built, until the ceilings gave way.

"Good numbers" and "a good business" have quietly become two different things. This episode is about telling them apart.

Timestamps

00:22 – Bottleneck's second-ever live show

01:40 – What Tickle actually does

02:21 – Why most ads arrive at exactly the wrong moment

05:12 – A brand gets a great result and says no thanks

08:03 – The AR treasure hunt that led to Tickle

15:17 – Why clients are bonused on the wrong metrics

17:28 – "We're in the trust business, not the ads business"

20:29 – Why finance can't measure a relationship

21:12 – The AO teddy bear nobody can put on a spreadsheet

26:34 – Heathrow's pods and the tyranny of the wrong metric

29:40 – The Soviet chandelier problem

32:00 – Closing out MAD//Fest

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https://jointickle.com/

A Sassy+ original podcast series

Faris Aranki has spent 20 years studying why some strategies succeed and others quietly fail, working with some of the smartest, best-funded teams in the world.In this episode, he joins Rory and Elfried to explain trust, relationships, judgement and restraint. None of these show up on a spreadsheet, but are critical in the best performing teams.The conversation moves through Faris's own framework for measuring progress, and into the wider question of why organisations are so good at counting the wrong things. It's a look at what actually drives success, and why it so often goes unmeasured.Timestamps00:00 – Why smart teams still fail02:23 – The IQ, EQ, FQ framework explained04:28 – Steve Jobs and the 17 projects17:31 – War-gaming a pandemic: "can I cheat?"28:00 – The billionaire who almost bought Arsenal31:14 – What luxury really means32:13 – The watch collaboration that caused a riot37:14 – Influencers, trust and the "one-night-stand" collab41:33 – The columns missing from every spreadsheet1:01:20 – Who will be the Steve Jobs of AI?1:21:11 – The dishonesty built into procurementFollow RoryInstagram: @rorysutherland_clipsTikTok: @RorysutherlandclipsX: @rorysutherlandLinkedIn: in/rorysutherland/Follow ElfriedInstagram: @elfriedsambaLinkedIn: in/elfriedsamba/https://www.butterflyeffect.xyz/Follow Faris ArankiInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/farisaranki/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farisaranki/Website: https://www.shiageto.com/A Sassy+ original podcast series

Josh Hart co-founded YuLife nine years ago with a simple but radical idea: digital experiences should feel as good as the best computer games, not as painful as a tax return.

In this special live episode, recorded in front of an audience at YuLife HQ, he joins Rory and Elfried to ask the question every HR leader is quietly dreading: what does AI actually mean for your people?```

They cover the productivity gains nobody is talking about, how senior employees are quietly becoming the biggest beneficiaries, and what the AI moment could mean for the long-term sick. This is an honest, funny and wide-ranging conversation about the gap between the AI narrative and the AI reality.

James Watt quit law after two weeks, spent seven years as a captain on a North Atlantic fishing boat, then built BrewDog from two humans and a dog into a business making a million cans of beer a day.

In this episode he joins Rory and Elfried to talk about the power of naivety, why differentiation always beats optimisation, and what it actually takes to build a challenger brand from nothing.He also opens up on what really happened at BrewDog — the private equity deal that almost worked brilliantly, and finishing a painful second in the bid to buy his own business back. And he reveals his plan for a new beer business called Second Best.Plus: why community will always beat audience, the danger of bottom-of-funnel obsession, and what his new platform SocialTip is doing to bring word-of-mouth marketing into the digital age.

Follow RoryInstagram: @rorysutherland_clipsTikTok: @RorysutherlandclipsX: @rorysutherlandLinkedIn: in/rorysutherland/Follow ElfriedInstagram: @elfriedsambaLinkedIn: in/elfriedsamba/https://www.butterflyeffect.xyz/Follow JamesInstagram: @captainjameswatt / @socialtiphq / @secondbestbeerLinkedIn: in/jameswatt-investor-entrepreneur-punk/X: @JamesBWattA Sassy+ original podcast series

Tesla veterans Mark Tapscott and Daniel Davey are the co-founders of Longbow Motors — a British electric sports car company with a radical idea: that cars should be getting lighter, simpler and more exciting, not heavier, duller and more expensive.

They join Rory and Elfried to explain what it actually takes to build a car company from scratch in 2026. From first principles and physics to the new motor manufacturing business model, this is a conversation about great product design, the death of corporate thinking, and why the UK might be sitting on the most exciting opportunity in automotive since the internal combustion engine.

Jamie Bartlett has spent 15 years investigating the strange corners of the internet before they crash into the mainstream. In this episode, he joins Rory and Elfried to explore how AI, video, podcasts, crypto, conspiracy culture and online subcultures are changing how we think, trust and behave.

From chatbot delusions and “techno admin” to why outsiders often spot the future first, this is a funny, unsettling and deeply useful conversation about what happens when new technology meets human nature.

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https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/233361/jamie-bartlett

A Sassy+ original podcast series