you’ve probably shipped a post, campaign, or launch that should have worked.

the message was clear, the value was obvious, the logic checked out and yet it barely moved. that’s usually not a copy problem, it’s a people problem.

most of us like to think we’re rational.

that we compare options, weigh the facts, and make sensible decisions.

but if that were true, nobody would pay more for the same product just because it looks nicer, sounds better, or feels harder to get.

yet, that happens every day.

we don’t make decisions like machines; we make them like people and that gap explains a lot of confusing behaviour and a lot of effective marketing.

rory sutherland has a useful way of describing this. not as theory, but as patterns you start noticing once you know where to look.

a lot of marketing still starts from the same place (i'm still guilty of this too, sometimes):

you map the funnel, refine the message, and assume better logic will do the heavy lifting.

more features should mean more value, lower prices should mean more demand, clearer explanations should lead to better decisions.

so teams optimise flows, add more information, and keep refining the message, only to wonder why nothing really changes.

the issue isn’t that people don’t understand. it’s that understanding isn’t what drives most decisions.

you can explain something perfectly and still lose to something that simply feels right.

once you start paying attention, this shows up everywhere:

people gravitate towards things that feel scarce, polished, or familiar, even when there’s no clear practical reason to do so. they’ll choose something that looks right over something that makes sense on paper, and then backfill the reasoning afterwards.

none of that is logical in a strict sense, but it's consistent and consistency is what makes it usable.

and if you keep trying to persuade people with logic while everyone else is shaping instinct, you end up wondering why your “better” option keeps losing.

instead of trying to correct how people decide, design around it (this is where most marketing advice quietly goes wrong).

here’s how those four ideas actually show up in real decisions and what to do with them.

a lot of decisions are driven by signalling, even when people would never describe it that way.

choices act as a shorthand for identity, taste, competence, or belonging. it’s not about showing off, it’s about reassurance: to others, and often to yourself.

you see this when founders insist on using certain tools not because they’re strictly better, but because they signal seriousness. the same applies to coffee, clothes, or even the language people use online. the functional difference is often small, but the symbolic difference feels much bigger.

an example is someone choosing a minimalist productivity app with fewer features over a more powerful one: on paper, the feature-rich option wins. but, in reality, the simpler tool signals control, focus, and taste, and that feeling carries more weight than the spec list.

the product matters, but what it represents often matters more.

what to do: ask what using your product communicates about the person using it, then make that signal clearer instead of burying it under explanations and features. especially in social, where identity is the product.

most people don’t reason their way into decisions and then feel confident about them: the feeling comes first, and the explanation follows later.

tone, design, friction, and first impressions do most of the work before someone has even slowed down enough to think consciously. by the time they’re explaining their choice, the direction has already been set.

a good example is pricing pages:

two plans can be objectively similar, but the one framed as “most popular” or placed in the middle quietly pulls people toward it. ask them why they chose it and they’ll give you a rational answer, even though the nudge happened long before that explanation formed.

logic doesn’t completely disappear but it just arrives late.

what to do: stop focusing only on clarity and start paying attention to feeling. test order, defaults, and framing, because small shifts here often change outcomes more than adding more information. usually after the click, not before it.

most choices aren’t optimisation problems, they’re energy management problems. people don’t want the perfect answer, they want an answer that feels acceptable without requiring more effort.

this is why too many options stall decisions, why defaults work so well, and why recommendations carry disproportionate weight. people will simply stop searching as soon as something feels fine.

a common example is choosing a restaurant:

very few people research every option nearby. they scroll until one looks decent enough, close enough, and familiar enough, then commit.

the same behaviour shows up in onboarding flows, pricing tiers, and content choices.

what to do:

make the stopping point obvious: reduce unnecessary choices, guide people toward a clear option, and make the easiest path the one you actually want them to take.

people struggle to judge things in isolation. we don’t experience value as an absolute figure, we experience it as a change from what came before or what we expected.

that’s why the same price can feel cheap or expensive depending on the reference point. it’s why improvements feel more meaningful when they’re framed against a baseline, and why surprises hurt more than delays that were explained upfront. the number itself matters less than the comparison it’s placed next to.

a simple example is software pricing:

a tool priced at €20 a month can feel expensive on its own, but feels reasonable when framed as “less than a coffee a week” or shown after a higher anchor price. nothing about the product changed, only the context did, yet the perceived value shifts immediately.

what to do: frame value in terms of change, not just end results. show before and after, set expectations early, and make progress visible so people can feel the difference instead of having to calculate it.

next time you’re about to ship something, it’s worth pausing and asking a few uncomfortable questions:

if you can answer those, you’re usually closer to performance than another round of tweaks ever will be.

the further takeaway:

the mistake isn’t that people are irrational but expecting them not to be.

when you assume decisions are neat, logical, and consistent, real behaviour feels confusing and frustrating. when you accept that people are emotional, distracted, influenced by context, and often unsure, their choices start to make a lot more sense.

this isn’t about manipulation or clever tricks though. it’s about designing things that fit how decisions are actually made, not how we wish they were made.

the work that performs best usually isn’t the most logical or technically perfect. it’s the work that understands people well enough to meet them where they already are.