--- product_id: 129135209 title: "Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life" price: "AR$213569" currency: ARS in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.com.ar/products/129135209-alchemy-the-dark-art-and-curious-science-of-creating-magic store_origin: AR region: Argentina --- # Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life **Price:** AR$213569 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life - **How much does it cost?** AR$213569 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.com.ar](https://www.desertcart.com.ar/products/129135209-alchemy-the-dark-art-and-curious-science-of-creating-magic) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description HOW DOES MAGIC HAPPEN? The Ogilvy advertising legend—“one of the leading minds in the world of branding” (NPR)—explores the art and science of conjuring irresistible products and ideas . "Sutherland, the legendary Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, uses his decades of experience to dissect human spending behavior in an insanely entertaining way. Alchemy combines scientific research with hilarious stories and case studies of campaigns for AmEx, Microsoft and the like. This is a must-read." —Entrepreneur ("Best Books of the Year") Why is Red Bull so popular, though everyone— everyone! —hates the taste? Humans are, in a word, irrational, basing decisions as much on subtle external signals (that little blue can) as on objective qualities (flavor, price, quality). The surrounding world, meanwhile, is irreducibly complex and random. This means future success can’t be projected on any accounting spreadsheet. To strike gold, you must master the dark art and curious science of conjuring irresistible ideas: alchemy . Based on thirty years of field work inside the largest experiment in human behavior ever conceived—the forever-unfolding pageant of consumer capitalism— Alchemy, the revolutionary book by Ogilvy advertising legend Rory Sutherland, whose TED talks have been viewed nearly seven million times, decodes human behavior, blending leading-edge scientific research, absurdly entertaining storytelling, deep psychological insight, and practical case studies from his storied career working on campaigns for AmEx, Microsoft, and others. Heralded as “one of the leading minds in the world of branding” by NPR and "the don of modern advertising" by The Times , Sutherland is a unique thought leader, as comfortable exchanging ideas with Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler (both interviewed in these pages) as he is crafting the next product launch. His unconventional and relentlessly curious approach has led him to discover that the most compelling secrets to human decision-making can be found in surprising places: What can honey bees teach us about creating a sustainable business? How could budget airlines show us how to market a healthcare system? Why is it better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong? What might soccer penalty kicks teach us about the dangers of risk-aversion? Better “branding,” Sutherland reveals, can also be employed not just to sell products, but to promote a variety of social aims, like getting people to pay taxes, improving public health outcomes, or encouraging more women to pursue careers in tech. Equally startling and profound, Sutherland’s journey through the strange world of decision making is filled with astonishing lessons for all aspects of life and business. Review: great read - Highly recommend. So good eye opener, will reread it in a while. For every marketer or product marketer and businessmen absolute must!!! Review: Loved this book, fun and highly useful way to think about problems. - I very much enjoyed this book. A fun read about making illogical (seemingly) that turned out to be great decisions. It’s Uncommon Sense when common sense fails to lead to good decisions. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #217,772 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #4 in Industrial & Product Design #6 in Market Research Business (Books) #7 in Marketing & Consumer Behavior | | Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,080 Reviews | ## Images ![Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71w0KKnrfXL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ great read *by G***N on July 24, 2026* Highly recommend. So good eye opener, will reread it in a while. For every marketer or product marketer and businessmen absolute must!!! ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Loved this book, fun and highly useful way to think about problems. *by A***R on June 14, 2026* I very much enjoyed this book. A fun read about making illogical (seemingly) that turned out to be great decisions. It’s Uncommon Sense when common sense fails to lead to good decisions. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Alchemy - This is LEGIT STUFF! Essential Business Reading *by M***N on March 6, 2020* Essentially, this is a business book that takes the nascent scientific field of evolutionary psychology and applies it to the understanding of apparent consumer irrationality. Ironically, it illuminates the irrationality of the wholly rational approach taken by individuals and organizations to understand consumer decision-making. Unfortunately, this presents a major challenge in semantics and rhetoric. The title of the book threw me off, but after reading it, you can essentially apply the same thinking outlined in the book to any feelings you might have about its title. The author stressed that why does it matter why you might get people to do the right things, and what their motives are, when in fact it's more important how you get them to do the right thing regardless of how altruistic their internal motives really are. So the type of "alchemy" the author (who is clearly very intelligent) is referring to is not the alchemy of 500 years ago, where pseudo-scientists tried to turn anything into gold, but rather the alchemy of doing things in business that might not seem logical on the surface but get consumers (your customers!) to behave the way a business wants them to. My only concern is that the author dives too deep headfirst into his adherence to [his] alchemy. And obviously, this presents a major issue because if any business starts to embrace alchemy while at the same time throwing away the rational principles of logic, then everything will be whacked out and wicked. The author [acutely] uses evolutionary psychology to make many points and observations. And I will use it to make mine: We have become more logical in business and in life because it is advantageous to do so. Logic will guide us to understand that if the majority of people avoid X (e.g., jumping off the George Washington bridge to go for a swim) because of Y (almost certain death), then it is probably a good idea to avoid X as well because it's most likely to be your outcome. This is, of course, unconscious, but unbelievably helpful. Now it might be obvious why people extrapolate this concept to bigger, more subtle things such as consumer behavior. For example, if a company's analysis for a product had shown that 80% of people purchased the red dress over the blue dress at a store, the logical conclusion would be that customers like red dresses more. It makes sense to have such a conclusion, and any species of human that would tell you that the blue dress is much more popular will probably go extinct! What the author is trying to teach, though, is that the red dress is not more popular because of the color, but perhaps because of the fact it is more noticeable because red shines much more brightly than blue. Accounting for human psychology is not a simple equation. The main value of the book is this: at a time when people are becoming more logical—and for the better (that's why they are becoming more logical to begin with)—they might become overly logical and miss large opportunities they cannot manifest. And because of the bureaucracy of big organizations, outside-of-the-box thinking is for the most part looked down upon and can even get you fired. This presents an invaluable opportunity for smaller and less bureaucratic businesses. To put it all together: embracing the idea of alchemy (i.e., unconventional business methods and ideas) can not only prove to be important but necessary. Hopefully, though, the reader doesn't come out of reading this book and thinking that both rational logic and alchemy are mutually exclusive. Rather, I would stress that they should both play a pivotal part on the same side of the coin. It can be detrimental to present, or seem to present as the author does, these two things as being opposites. In reality, they should probably be conflated as some of the ideas of alchemy—understanding an action through the lens of evolutionary psychology—can, in fact, be argued as the logical path to take. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.com.ar/products/129135209-alchemy-the-dark-art-and-curious-science-of-creating-magic](https://www.desertcart.com.ar/products/129135209-alchemy-the-dark-art-and-curious-science-of-creating-magic) --- *Product available on Desertcart Argentina* *Store origin: AR* *Last updated: 2026-11-09*