rory-sutherland-marketing-psychology-mastery

name	Rory Sutherland: Marketing Psychology Mastery
description	Rory Sutherland's behavioral alchemy for marketing, copy, strategy, products, media, content, entrepreneurship, and operating decisions: psychological bottlenecks, perception engineering, chosen trade-offs, uncertainty design, reverse benchmarking, advertising archaeology, and portfolio-level asymmetric experiments.
version	5.0
format	completion-engine
workflows	25

Rory Sutherland: Marketing Psychology Mastery

Behavioral science meets marketing, products, media, strategy, and operating design. Rory Sutherland applies behavioral economics and psychology to problems where the technically “correct” answer does not explain human behavior. His frameworks reveal why people buy, wait, hesitate, ignore, remember, comply, and take risks—and how small psychological changes can create disproportionate value. v4.0 added 8 cross-expert stacking workflows. v4.1 added Sin of Omission Audit, Price Frame Architect, and Behavioral Detective Protocol. v5.0 (2026-07-30) is a source-honest expansion grounded in the full MFM video transcript/captions, the existing Rory corpus, and an official Alchemy publisher sample. It adds five universal behavioral-alchemy workflows, three plain-language aliases, and six upgraded canonical routes. The full Alchemy book was not available and was not reviewed.

Available Workflows

Core Behavioral Marketing (v2.0)

#	Workflow	Produces	Use When
psychological	Psychological Brand Strategy Blueprint	Strategic Brand Reframe & Market Positioning Roadmap	You need to redefine a brand's core value proposition to escape commodity competition and find non-obvious growth levers.
behavioral	Behavioral Value & Offer Architecture	Irresistible Value Proposition & Offer Structure	You are launching a new product or restructuring an existing offer to maximize perceived value and minimize transaction friction.
psychological	Psychological Conversion Funnel Design	Full-Funnel Behavioral Conversion Map	You need to optimize a digital sales funnel to convert cold traffic by aligning the user journey with human decision-making heuristics.
alchemy	Alchemy Content & Relationship Engine	Multi-Channel Content & Nurture Campaign Plan	You want to build long-term brand equity and authority through storytelling, viral content, and sophisticated email nurturing.
high	High-Stakes Persuasion & Copy Protocol	Sales Conversion & Objection Handling Playbook	You are finalizing sales copy or preparing for high-ticket sales interactions where trust and objection handling are critical.

Advanced Perception Engineering (v3.0 — archived keynote-style corpus source; event label unverified)

#	Workflow	Produces	Use When
reverse	Reverse Benchmarking Audit	Competitive Blind Spot Map + Signature Obsession Blueprint	You need to find differentiation that competitors can't copy — by hunting what they neglect, not what they do well.
perception	Perception Metric Reframe	Paceometer Analysis + Alternative Metric Expressions + Decision-Shifting Presentation	You have a price, speed, or performance metric that "sounds wrong" and want to re-express it to change decisions without changing reality.
asymmetric	Asymmetric Bet Evaluator	Portfolio Risk-Pooling Assessment + Protected Experiment Portfolio + Decision-Rights Map	A favorable bet keeps dying because the local sponsor absorbs career or budget risk while someone else owns the portfolio upside.
conspiratorial	Conspiratorial Reframe Engine	Behavioral Change Communications + Compliance-Without-Confrontation Copy	You need to change someone's behavior (customer, team, audience) without being bossy, threatening, or corporate.

Behavioral Field Craft (v4.1 — claude.ai export enrichment, 2026-07-01)

#	Workflow	Produces	Use When
omission	Sin of Omission Audit	Radiating-Openness Scorecard + Zero-Cost Fix List + 180° Flip Report	Your business may be silently repelling customers through passive signals (lights, phone, naming, empty rooms) nobody is anxious about — because opportunity costs aren't salient.
price-frame	Price Frame Architect	Frame Diagnosis + Pole Assignment (Bargain/Treat) + Context-Shift Plan + Buyer-Native Unit	Something isn't selling and everyone wants to cut the price — before touching the number, change the frame, kill the dead middle, and test upward first.
detective	Behavioral Detective Protocol	Confounding Variable Report + Anecdote Ledger + Reversed-Conclusion Brief	A metric has an explanation that "makes sense" and everyone stopped looking — go and look for the confounding variable the dashboard can't see.

Universal Behavioral Alchemy (v5.0 — MFM masterclass, 2026-07-30)

#	Workflow	Produces	Use When
router	Behavioral Alchemy Router	Routing Receipt + Psychological Reframe + Composition Ledger + Dispatch Packet	The request spans marketing, product, strategy, media, content, entrepreneurship, or operations and you need the one Rory mechanism that best matches the behavioral obstruction.
trade-off	Chosen Trade-Off Architect	Chosen Bargain + Expectation Contract + Compensating Strength + Safeguards + Test Card	A focused offer should deliberately omit a category convention and turn the visible sacrifice into a strength customers knowingly choose.
progress	Uncertainty & Progress Designer	Uncertainty Map + Estimate Architecture + Progress Sequence + Agency Design + Measurement Plan	Waiting, onboarding, delivery, approval, or fulfillment feels worse than its objective duration because people cannot see progress or predict what happens next.
reversal	Irritation Reversal Lab	Room 101 Inventory + Reversal Concepts + Opportunity Filter + Smallest Test Charter	A recurring category annoyance may reveal an unquestioned convention that can be inverted into a product, service, content, media, or operating advantage.
archaeology	Advertising Archaeology Lab	Source-Era Mechanism Map + Modern Adaptation + Test Cells + Novelty-Without-Amnesia Brief	A historically used advertising or media mechanism may have vanished through professional fashion rather than demonstrated consumer failure.

Plain-Language Command Aliases

Aliases improve problem-first discovery; they do not duplicate methodology.

Alias	Canonical engine	Use When
/psychological-bottleneck-finder	the-psychological-reframe-engine prompt + behavioral-detective-protocol	A strong offer or experience stalls at one small step and you need to rank the real behavioral obstruction before changing copy or product.
/adoption-unit	price-frame-architect + perception-metric-reframe	A technical specification, AI capability, price, or performance claim does not translate into a decision the buyer can understand.
/hidden-secondary-market-finder	the-differentiation-strategy-generator prompt	A focused product creates a valuable side effect for users outside its named primary market.

Routing and Composition Rules

1. Route by behavioral obstruction, not by domain label.
2. Choose one primary Rory lens and one canonical workflow.
3. Use Rory for diagnosis and behavioral architecture; add at most one delivery expert for the final medium by default.
4. The domain specialist retains the factual, legal, safety, medical, financial, or engineering veto.
5. Full-stack multi-expert deployment is explicit opt-in, not the default.
6. Examples guide hypotheses; only observed evidence and tests support claims.
7. UNCONFIRMED ledger material may be used only as analogy or a test lead, never as proof. If a workflow asks for proof, substitute a verified source or label the gap.

Cross-Expert Stacking (v4.0)

#	Workflow	Stacks With	Produces	Use When
perception-dopamine	Perception × Dopamine Engine	Stefan Georgi	Perception-Engineered Sales Asset with Neurochemical Architecture	Building sales assets that sell a perception (not a product) through dopamine-optimized delivery.
insight-perception	Insight × Perception Sprint	Luke Iha	Perception-Grounded Insight Vectors + Campaign Architecture	Generating insight vectors that exploit perceptual gaps, not just informational ones.
positioning-siege	Positioning × Perception Siege	April Dunford	Perception-Armored Market Position + Procurement-Proof Differentiation	Creating market positions that procurement can't compare and competitors can't copy.
addictive-perception	Addictive Perception Content	Kallaway	Perception-Engineered Video Scripts + Retention Architecture	Building video content where the retention hook IS a perception shift delivered through addiction loops.
consumer-perception	Consumer Perception Alchemy	Dai Media	3D Consumer Posture Profile + Perception-Engineered Brand Strategy	Understanding one radical individual's perceptual reality and engineering a brand to live inside it.
perception-dominance	Perception Dominance Campaign	All 5 Experts	Full Multi-Expert Campaign with Perception Engineering Substrate	Maximum-firepower campaign orchestration through the complete marketing stack.
blind-spot-social	Blind Spot Social Engine	Kallaway + Iha	Perception-Shift Social Content Series + Batch Testing	Daily social content that changes how audiences SEE, not just what they KNOW.
behavioral-audit	Behavioral Copy Audit	Georgi + Iha	Copy Diagnosis + Perception Gap Analysis + Rewrite Prescriptions	Auditing existing copy through three simultaneous lenses: perception, dopamine, and insight.

Cross-Expert Stacking Chains

Chain	Sequence	Use Case
Perception → Sales	Sutherland perception-dopamine → Georgi copy	Reframe reality → deliver through dopamine architecture
Perception → Position	Sutherland positioning-siege → Dunford GTM	Perception-armor a market position → go to market
Perception → Content	Sutherland addictive-perception → Kallaway batch test	Perception shifts → viral retention loops
Perception → Insights	Sutherland insight-perception → Iha elaboration → Georgi copy	Perception gaps → insight vectors → sales assets
Perception → Brand	Sutherland consumer-perception → Dai Media identity	Perception engineering → radical individual brand
Full Stack	Sutherland perception-dominance (orchestrates all 5)	Maximum-firepower campaign
Audit → Fix	Sutherland behavioral-audit → targeted expert workflow	Diagnose copy failures → prescribe expert-specific rewrites

Quick Reference

• Genius Context: genius.md — load before any workflow
• 2026 Source Ledger: references/source-ledger-2026-mfm.md — timestamped MFM evidence, publisher-sample calibration, and attribution boundaries
• Legacy Prompts: references/_legacy-prompts/ — archived atomic prompts
• References: references/genius-patterns.md — source extraction patterns

Execution Prompts (structure-pure v2)

37 deterministic practitioner prompts — each carries an Output Contract, Output Skeleton, and Quality Gate. When a deliverable matches one, Read it and honor its contract instead of improvising the output shape.

• ADVERTISING ARCHAEOLOGY LAB — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/advertising-archaeology-lab.md
• CHOSEN TRADE-OFF ARCHITECTURE — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/chosen-tradeoff-architect.md
• Rory Sutherland Expert Operating System — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/expert-operating-system.md
• IRRITATION REVERSAL LAB — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/irritation-reversal-lab.md
• BRANDQUAKE INTERVENTION BLUEPRINT — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/the-brandquake-intervention-designer.md
• CHOICE ARCHITECTURE BLUEPRINT — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/the-choice-architecture-engineer.md
• Rory Sutherland - The Cold Outreach Alchemy System — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/the-cold-outreach-alchemy-system.md
• Rory Sutherland - The Cold-to-Superfan Transformation Engine — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/the-cold-to-superfan-transformation-engine.md
• Rory Sutherland - The Cold Traffic Conversion Alchemist — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/the-cold-traffic-conversion-alchemist.md
• Rory Sutherland - The Cold Traffic Psychology Decoder — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/the-cold-traffic-psychology-decoder.md
• COSTLY SIGNAL POSITIONING STRATEGY — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/the-costly-signal-architect.md
• Rory Sutherland - The Deep Audience Psychology Decoder — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/the-deep-audience-psychology-decoder.md
• DIFFERENTIATION STRATEGY BLUEPRINT — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/the-differentiation-strategy-generator.md
• DOORMAN FALLACY AUDIT — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/the-doorman-fallacy-auditor.md
• Rory Sutherland - The Email Psychology Sequencer — skills/rory-sutherland-marketing/references/prompts-v2/the-email-psychology-sequencer.md