Can't Book Rory Sutherland? Four 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 profile makes him extrememly hard to pin down If your date doesn't work, here are speakers covering the same ground with just as much substance. Here are four worth considering.

Dan Bennett

Dan Bennett joined Ogilvy Change in 2012, the practice Rory co-founded, 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 13 years 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 OgilvyChange thinking specifically, he's the most direct route to it.

⮕ Learn more and book Dan Bennett as a speaker.

Paco Underhill

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 now in 27 languages and taught on MBA courses worldwide. His firm has worked with a third of the Fortune 100 across 53 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 as a speaker.

Phill Agnew

Phill Agnew hosts Nudge, the UK's number one marketing podcast, and has interviewed Rory himself alongside names like Tali Sharot and Dan 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 300 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. He's also considerably more accessible on price and availability, which makes him a good option for events that want the ideas without the six-figure keynote fee.

⮕ Learn more and book Phill Agnew as a speaker.

Kate Hardcastle MBE

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 covers territory Rory only touches on.

⮕ Learn more and book Kate Hardcastle as a speaker.

If it's not about budget or availability

The four above solve a specific problem: your date's taken or the fee's out of range. If that's not the issue and you're simply building out a shortlist of names in the same territory, these three are worth knowing regardless of Rory's calendar.

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" without any budget constraint attached, Richard is usually the first name that comes up.

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 commands a similar keynote fee to Rory. He's the pick when the brief leans more towards organisational behaviour than brand and marketing.

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.

Booking the right fit

Dan, 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 for your date.

💡 Would you like to book a behavioural science speaker for your event? Let us know, and we'll find the perfect PepTalk expert for your organisation. 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). Remember, it's always a good time to get a PepTalk!