“Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.”
This is chicken soup for the advertising and creative bunch.
A collection of stories that revolve around a list of concepts relevant to advertising, creativity, and business. Dave Trott — one of the most respected ad men in the UK — takes decades of experience in the creative trenches and distills it into short, punchy chapters, each built around a single idea wrapped in a memorable story.
Reminds you of Seth Godin’s short daily blog posts. Each chapter is a self-contained lesson, quick enough to read on a coffee break but sharp enough to stick with you long after.
What Is Predatory Thinking?
The title sounds aggressive, but Trott’s definition is surprisingly simple. Predatory thinking means looking at a problem you CAN’T solve and reframing it into a problem you CAN solve. Instead of banging your head against the wall, you step back, go upstream, and change the question entirely.
It’s the kind of thinking that wins wars, builds empires, and — in Trott’s world — sells products. The idea is that most people are reactive thinkers. They see a problem and charge straight at it. Predatory thinkers go around it. They find the angle no one else is looking at.
This concept alone is worth the price of the book. How many times have you been stuck on a business problem, grinding away at the obvious solution, when the REAL answer was to redefine the problem from scratch? I’ve been there more times than I care to admit.
Stories Over Substance
Even after reading the book description, I assumed this book would be heavily business-related with some facts, tips, and just something else.
But it was just stories to present an example of a concept. Sometimes the connection with the story seemed a bit loose, or perhaps confusing, but overall, a good presentation and well written.
I learned more about historical World War II stories than I did about relevant creativity concepts. More or less, you can summarize most of the stories into a list of 100 “how to be more creative, do well in business” tips, but I guess that wouldn’t absorb as well.
And that’s actually the point. Trott knows something fundamental about how the human brain works — we remember stories far better than bullet points. A list of “10 tips for creative thinking” gets forgotten by Tuesday. A story about a WWII fighter pilot who survived by thinking differently? That sticks with you. It embeds the lesson in your memory without you even realizing it.
The Lessons That Stuck With Me
A few ideas from the book have genuinely lodged themselves in my brain.
First, the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. Trott hammers this one home. You can be incredibly efficient at doing the WRONG thing. Most businesses obsess over process optimization when they should be asking whether they’re solving the right problem in the first place. This is a concept I think about constantly when running online campaigns — are we optimizing the right metric, or are we just getting really good at something that doesn’t matter?
Second, the idea that creativity isn’t about being artistic — it’s about being PRACTICAL. Trott doesn’t see creativity as some mystical gift reserved for people who wear turtlenecks and sip lattes. He sees it as problem-solving. Raw, street-level problem-solving. The most creative person in the room isn’t the one with the wildest idea — it’s the one who finds a solution nobody else considered.
Third, the concept of doing the opposite of what everyone expects. When everyone zigs, you zag. It sounds cliché, but Trott backs it up with real examples where going against conventional wisdom was the ONLY path to winning. In advertising, in military strategy, in business — the pattern repeats.
The Advertising Angle
If you work in marketing or advertising, this book hits differently. Trott spent his career at agencies like BMP, GGT, and CST, creating campaigns that actually moved the needle. He’s not a theorist — he’s a practitioner. And practitioners write differently than professors.
His take on the industry is refreshingly blunt. Most advertising is wallpaper — it exists, but nobody notices it. The job isn’t to be creative for creativity’s sake. The job is to get noticed, be remembered, and change behavior. Everything else is decoration.
As someone who has spent years in internet marketing, I can tell you this perspective is EVERYTHING. The online world is drowning in content, ads, and noise. If your message doesn’t cut through, it doesn’t exist. Trott understood this before social media was even a thing.
What It’s Missing
Here’s where I have to be honest. The book is a collection of short anecdotes, and while each one is entertaining, it lacks a unifying framework. There’s no progression, no building of ideas on top of each other. You could read the chapters in any order and it wouldn’t make a difference.
For some people, that’s a feature — you can pick it up, read a chapter, put it down, and come back whenever. For me, I prefer books that build an argument and take me somewhere. This one felt more like browsing a blog than reading a book.
I also think some of the stories are a stretch. Not every anecdote connects cleanly to the business lesson Trott is trying to make. A few times I finished a chapter thinking, “Okay, great story — but what am I supposed to DO with that?”
Final Thoughts
Either way, this was a quick read. I don’t believe I absorbed much because I blazed through it. But a good quick read regardless.
If you’re in advertising, marketing, or any creative field, Predatory Thinking is worth your time. It won’t give you a step-by-step system or a magic formula. What it WILL give you is a shift in perspective — a reminder that the best solutions come from reframing the problem, not grinding harder at the obvious answer.
Dave Trott writes like he thinks — clean, direct, no fluff. And in a world full of bloated business books padded to 300 pages with the same idea repeated seventeen times, a book that respects your time is worth appreciating.
3.5/5 — Good for creative professionals and anyone interested in lateral thinking. Best consumed in short bursts rather than cover to cover.
Thanks for reading.
— Leonidas
