Love Rory Sutherland? Speakers Who Bring the Same Thinking

Rory Sutherland has spent the past few years becoming one of the most requested names in behavioural science and marketing. As Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, he built a career on spotting the small, overlooked shifts in context that change how people decide, and his TED talk on the subject has racked up millions of views. His book Alchemy sits on the shelf of most marketers who take psychology seriously.

That makes him one of the most in-demand speakers in the space, so if you're weighing up Rory Sutherland speaker alternatives because your date doesn't work, here are five names covering the same ground with just as much substance, plus four more if you're simply building out a shortlist. Rory is available to book through PepTalk too, so it's always worth asking us for an availability check first.

Dan Bennett

Book Dan for

Putting the Ogilvy Change method onto a live customer problem.

Dan Bennett joined Ogilvy Change, the practice Rory co-founded, in its early years and has led its behavioural science work ever since. He's applied the same "unseen opportunities" thinking to projects for Spotify, Unilever, and British Airways, and has spent over a decade curating Nudgestock, the world's largest behavioural science festival, alongside Rory.

Of everyone on this list, Dan is the closest match to Rory's actual output. Same practice, same intellectual foundations, same instinct for finding the small design or communication change that shifts behaviour at scale. For organisers who want the Ogilvy Change thinking specifically, he's the most direct route to it.

Learn more and book Dan Bennett →

Elfried Samba

Book Elfried for

Turning a customer base into a community that compounds.

Elfried Samba co-hosts The Bottleneck Podcast with Rory Sutherland, which makes him the only speaker on this list who works through these ideas with Rory in public every week. As Global Head of Social at Gymshark he helped scale the brand's following from around 1.5 million to over 20 million, work that fed into Gymshark's billion-dollar valuation, and he now runs Butterfly Effect with clients including Netflix, Formula E, Bumble and Meta.

Elfried applies behavioural thinking to community rather than advertising. His sessions cover how brands earn trust, why belonging outperforms buying, and how customer relationships become a commercial asset that holds up under pressure. He's ranked among the most influential LinkedIn creators globally by Favikon. For events that want Rory's curiosity about human behaviour pointed at social, community and brand growth, he's a strong fit.

Learn more and book Elfried Samba →

Paco Underhill

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Retail and store design decisions grounded in four decades of fieldwork.

Paco Underhill has spent over four decades watching how people actually behave in shops rather than how surveys say they behave. He founded Envirosell, the consultancy behind Why We Buy, a book translated into dozens of languages and taught on MBA courses worldwide. His firm has worked with a large share of the Fortune 100 across dozens of countries, testing everything from supermarket layouts to bank branches.

Paco works from observation. He's filmed shoppers, tracked footfall, and turned decades of fieldwork into a talk style he calls "edutainment", using humour to land points about consumer behaviour that most retailers miss. For an audience that wants the science of buying grounded in real-world evidence, he's a strong fit.

Learn more and book Paco Underhill →

Phill Agnew

Book Phill for

A high-energy keynote that sends people away with tactics to test.

Phill Agnew hosts Nudge, the UK's number one marketing podcast, and has interviewed Rory himself alongside names like Tali Sharot and Daniel Pink. He tests the behavioural science he covers through real-world experiments. He's sent handwritten notes to listeners to measure bias, shrunk a loaf of bread to demonstrate shrinkflation, and sat through hundreds of ads back to back to show how they manipulate attention.

That hands-on approach makes him a natural next step for anyone drawn to Rory's knack for turning psychology into something audiences can immediately apply, and a strong option for events that want big ideas delivered with energy.

Learn more and book Phill Agnew →

Kate Hardcastle MBE

Book Kate for

Customer experience and brand trust, delivered with broadcast polish.

Known as "The Customer Whisperer," Kate Hardcastle has built her reputation advising brands like Disney, Marks & Spencer, and EVRI on consumer engagement. She was awarded an MBE for services to business and entrepreneurship, and she's a regular voice on BBC, ITV, and Channel 4, bringing broadcast polish alongside the substance.

Kate's focus sits closer to the customer relationship than Rory's advertising and creative lens, covering trust, loyalty, and increasingly sustainability through her Buy Smarter, Buy Greener campaign. For events where the brief is customer experience and brand trust rather than pure creative strategy, she is an excellent choice.

Learn more and book Kate Hardcastle →

A little more left-field thinking

The five above solve a specific problem. If that's not the issue and you're simply building out a shortlist of names in the same territory, these four are worth knowing.

Richard Shotton

Richard Shotton is the closest peer Rory has in the UK market. His book The Choice Factory does for advertising what Alchemy does for marketing more broadly, and his consultancy Astroten runs the same kind of applied behavioural science work for clients including Google, BrewDog, and Barclays. If a brief calls for "someone like Rory", Richard is usually the first name that comes up.

Learn more and book Richard Shotton →

David R. Bell

David R. Bell spent 20 years as a chaired professor at Wharton, where he originated the school's courses on digital marketing and e-commerce. He now runs Idea Farm Ventures and was an early investor in Bonobos, Warby Parker, Harry's and Jet.com, work that has earned him a reputation as one of the go-to advisors behind the DTC movement. He's the pick when the brief is commerce and how brands reach customers rather than the psychology behind the decision.

Learn more and book David R. Bell →

Daniel Pink

Daniel Pink works the same territory from a different angle, motivation and decision-making rather than advertising and consumer psychology. Author of Drive and To Sell Is Human, he's a five-time New York Times bestseller and a similarly in-demand keynote speaker. He's the pick when the brief leans more towards organisational behaviour than brand and marketing.

Interested in booking Daniel? Get in touch with the PepTalk team.

Mary Portas OBE

Mary Portas sits closer to Kate Hardcastle's territory than Rory's, retail and brand culture rather than behavioural economics, but her name recognition in the UK rivals his. As the "Queen of Shops" and author of Rebuild, she brings a consumer behaviour lens with a stronger consumer trust and sustainability angle than pure creative strategy.

Interested in booking Mary? Get in touch with the PepTalk team.

Booking Your Rory Sutherland Speaker Alternative

Dan, Elfried, Paco, Phill, and Kate all bring the same underlying interest that makes Rory compelling: why people really behave the way they do, and what that means for how brands should operate. Get in touch and we'll check availability and fees across any name on this list or any speaker on behavioural science for your date. Weighing up other big names too? See our picks of Simon Sinek alternatives and UK science speakers to book if you love Hannah Fry.

Email us at hello@getapeptalk.com or send us a message via the chat. You can also call us on +44 20 3835 2929 (UK) or +1 737 888 5112 (US).