Rory Sutherland’s quote has become very popular online, especially within marketing circles. Rory is a long-time marketing expert. More recently, he has added to his repertoire the role of a viral sensation, with podcast clips that work perfectly for TikTok or Reels formats.

The opposite of a good idea is another good idea.

He frequently uses this quote—both in his public appearances and in his book. He often mentions physicists who allegedly coined it, with the point being that the creative sphere, in this case marketing, cannot be bound by the strict ideas of physics, and sometimes not even by logic.

The essence, emphasized by this soft-spoken Welshman, is that there is rarely only one solution to any given problem—often there are several. Likewise, the path to a solution is not always one of logic and rational thinking, because when people buy, they almost always do so driven by emotion.

Completely eliminating logic is, of course, not the point, but if we always stay within the familiar rational framework of the world, we will always end up with existing answers—ones that someone else has already come up with. Innovation, however, requires a bit of seemingly irrational thinking in order to achieve an effect that may be better and certainly—innovative.