Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman's Blog About Surprise

Criss Cross

In doing some research for a project here at Airborne, for some random reason, I happened upon a town named Christchurch in New Zealand.

"Intriguing name for a city," was my first thought.

My second?  "I wonder if they have a Jewish community?"

Well, Surprise of the day is that it appears that they do, and have had one for quite a while.  Here's a picture of Christchurch's Temple Beth-El from 1906:

Not that this is wildly out of the ordinary, but the dichotomy of the Christchurch Jewish Synagogue is kinda cool.

In fact, I think it opens up a world of international merchandising opportunities.  Imagine these t-shirts:

"I had my Bar-Mitzvah in Christchurch"

"Ouch! I had my briss in Christchurch"

Today Christchurch; tomorrow, the Vatican!

P&G D-lites

FOPs (you know, the ones to whom I don't have to explain the acronym means Friends of Pow!) know by now the fixation that Surprise Central has with P&G's always Surprising CEO A.G. Lafley.

Here's another reason why.  This from The Game Changer, an upcoming book (available April 8) that Lafley co-wrote with management guru and serial author Ram Charan, where Lafley explains his approach to consumers:

"Three billion times a day P&G brands touch the lives of people around the world.  Our goal is to DELIGHT consumers at two 'moments of truth':

"First, when they buy a product and second, when they use it."

Clutter Cutter

So, last week I end with a great Surprise quote, this week I begin with one.

But this one's a little more esoteric and heady, so put on those thinking caps.  It comes from Gavin Potter a.k.a Just A Guy In A Garage), a brilliant British consultant who is now working towards his PhD in Machine Learning (I learned about him the old-fashioned way, reading about his quest to win the Netflix Prize in Wired).  His words of wisdom:

"The 20th century was about sorting out supply.
"The 21st is going to be about sorting out demand."

What's the Surprise relevance?  Well, as per the Wired piece, "The Internet makes everything available, but mere availability is meaningless if the products remain unknown to potential buyers."

And, uh, what's one of the best ways to get pro ducts known?  Pow! You got it, kids.

The paper towel brand Bounty is known as the Quicker-Picker-Upper.

That said, based on Potter's quote, I guess we could consider Surprise the Quicker-Clutter-Cutter.

My next call--A.G Lafley at Procter & Gamble...

Fresh New Answer

Had a great time speaking about Surprise Marketing at McGill U's Graduate Business conf last week.  Although I closed a long day loaded with content, panels and keynotes, the audience stayed attentive and focused, and kept me there past the 5:00 p.m. shutdown (on a Friday yet!) with sharp questions about the relatively un-academic topic.

One query really hit home:

How do you keep people Surprised when your brand has a long-standing and strong identity?  Wouldn't radical change negatively affect the equity built-up over the years?

Whoa!  My answer was that the Surprise didn't have to be radical, just unexpected, and being unexpected doesn't always mean starting from scratch. 

Not bad, but not as good as it would've been had I read Ted Matthews's book "Brand: It Ain't The Logo."  In it, he (and co-authors Greg De Koker and Andris Pone) really nail the balancing act a Surprise marketer must perform with this explanation:

"New happy creatives may or may not realize that coming up with something fresh is actually a lot harder than dreaming up something new. 

"Being fresh requires that you always work in a single, unchanging context: what the brand actually stands for. 

"New, on the other hand, means the freedom to start over on a clear canvas every time.

Uh, that's what I MEANT to say...

Perchance to Dream

As a frequent road warrior, I find myself enamored with stories about improvements and innovation in the hotel trade.  Last week, Time had a great piece about how hotels are becoming centers for "sleep therapy."   

But what I really dug was the quote by Mari Balestrazzi, VP Design for the Morgan's Hotel Group, in the most recent Fast Company.  Seems she's more interested in keeping you awake.

"One of the company's original ideas was 'hotel as theater.' It's this whole notion of risk taking and creating environments that are unexpected."

Now if they could only mix the two...

The Surprise Tool

Mucho buzz surrounding the impending--and much delayed--release of Will Wright's next computer game, Spore.

Like his previous magna-hit franchise The Sims, Spore allows players to create worlds and infrastructures of their own.  But according to a piece in Fortune, with Spore, Wright and Exec Producer Lucy Bradshaw have designed a modeling tool that gives players the power to take the things they create within the game outside its confines and into other digital realms, a la YouTube, Facebook, 3D printers, et al.

The beauty of this--and relevance to the nature of this blog--comes in a quote from Wright himself, who explains the relationship between mass input and the ensuing Surprise output:

"When you unleash a new level
of creative tools at a mass level,
it usually explodes into
something unpredicatable."

Here's to a year of unpredictable Spore outputs...and the blog posts they inspire here.

Currency Exchange

As per yesterday's mega-post about Accessvia and Voodoo Doughnuts, these words of wisdom from Made To Stick's Dan Heath, taken from his keynote speech last week:

"Lunatic ideas generate
word-of-mouth currency."

...and at the greatest exchange rate around.

Remember this as you choose your Valentine's Day Gift today.
 

Diss Loyal

These words of Pow! from Anne Bologna, Prez of the butt-kickin agency Toy, direct from the stage of the Retail Advertising Conference in Chicago:

"Forget 'Loyalty Programs';
Touch hearts instead."

In the end, most loyalty programs become ignored...or a prison. 

And you don't touch hearts by doing the same-ol' same-ol'...

What's in the Box

Cloverfield.

Hollywood's first big Surprise hit of the year.  (Last year's, Juno, has just been nominated for a shopping cart-full of Oscars).

No big stars.  No easily-marketable assets.  It's just Producer J.J. Abrams and his box. 

This quote, in Entertainment Weekly, from Cloverfield Director and long-time Abrams friend Matt Reeves:

"The very idea of a box,
and wondering what's inside a box,
is just as engaging--if not more so--
to J.J. than the actual contents
of a box."

Obviously, it's equally engaging to filmgoers...and to faithful FOPs (Friends of Pow!).

Pow! To The Max

Bob Thacker is a smart guy.   And other Surprise Central hero.

As SVP Marketing and Advertising for OfficeMax, he's been responsible for, as Brandweek put it, adding "some levity and fun into the stodgy office supply category."  Recent tactics include Punk'd-styled pranks on kids and the creation of the world's largest rubber band ball.

His strategy for the company captures the Pow! spirit and distills it to two simple words:

"Unexpected events."

Couldn't have said it better myself...

Standing Up For Standing Out

As a follow up to the recent posts about standing out (like this one here, and this one), I came across this quote while perusing Fortune Magazine over the weekend.  In an essay entitled Creativity To The Rescue, former Young & Rubicam CEO Peter Georgescu spun these words of vindication:

"Commoditization--what I see as the cancer of 21st century commerce--has fueled ferocious price competition. 

"With price as the only real differentiator, producers are left with a challenge:

They must find a way
to stand out in a crowd."

This ain't about being flashy, or merely grabbing attention; it's the core of today's commerce.  Stand out or be stomped on.

Starck Raving

Okay, so sue me; I "borrowed" the title of this post from the article in Fast Company about iconoclastic designer Philippe Starck. Within the piece--which is an incredible mindboggle of a read--was this definition of how one "knows" they are in a Starck-designed building:

"When you open the door
and walk through the lobby,
you will go 'Oh, it's weird.' 
Everything is too big, too small. 
But it will give you some energy. 
For me, I am just a producer of Surprise."

Just?  Puh-lease. 

Producing Surprise is why Starck is one of the world's most in-demand designers of everything from furniture and buildings to homewares and private yachts.  Check out this Professor of Pow! at his website...or at the hippest hotel near you.

Sometimes, Size DOES Count

This one from Shelly Lazarus, CEO of ad powerhouse Ogilvy & Mather, in the most recent Fortune Magazine, about how the ad and media business will survive the chaos it's facing:

"One thing that hasn't changed and never will...the importance of a big idea. 

"You can put in on the Internet or (on a billboard) in Times Square, but you have to have an idea to begin with."

One of the credos that cascades throughout this here blog (like here, here and here), is that in creating Surprise, little things can have a wildly disproportionate, gigantic effect.

But don't be fooled by size, or lack thereof.  Even the most minute of "little things" you put into play needs to be backed up by a big idea. (How many times have we been sadly saddled with the inverse, like a multi-million-dollar Super Bowl TV ad with vapidly little thought put behind it.)

Your tactics you choose may be small, but the larger your idea, the more powerful your impact.  Before you make your next marketing move, ask yourself that old line that cops say to kids in those 1940s black-and-white films:

"Hey...what's the big idea?"

Think or sink.
   

A Holiday Surprise

Well, if today is supposed to be a holiday, I guess I should let somebody else do the work...

And I can't think of a better person than Stephan Patsis.  This is from his brilliantly-twisted Pearls Before Swine comic strip of last week.  Those old enough to remember Abbott & Costello's classic "Who's On First" routine will get an additional kick out of it. (Click on the comic itself to see it in full if, for some reason, it gets cut off on your screen.)

(And as all great FOPs will tell you, there indeed IS a place called Surprise, Arizona...a dastardly locale that is Pow!'s main competition in the brutal battle for the Google ranking of the term.)

Knowing What Wii Wanted (Great Surprise Quotes Redux)

Back in November, I kinda predicted that Nintendo's Wii would take the world by storm. 

While this is far from a Nostradamus-like feat of prognostication (truly obvious to anyone who ever picked up the gyro-controller), it is heart-warming and gratifying to see that a seemingly down-and-out, also-ran can stick to its guns of Surprise and Pow! an entire industry.

The accolades have been fast and furious, and the most recent ish of Fortune Magazine gushes over Nintendo's success.  Within the piece, written by Jeffrey M. O'Brien, are several Surprise quotes that vindicate the type of strategies spewed within this blog for months.

Quoth O'Brien:

"More difficult to comprehend is how a company founded 118 years ago as a maker of playing cards came to be pummeling Microsoft and Sony. The answer has something to do with reinvention.

Nintendo has shown a knack for leapfrogging its industry. Sure, some initiatives failed but the company rarely fails to surprise.

This time, in changing perceptions of gaming, Nintendo has surprised even itself."

This from president and CEO Satoru Iwata:

"We are not competing against Sony or Microsoft.
We are battling the indifference of people who have no interest in videogames."

And the final word goes to Nintendo's legendary videogame designer Shigeru Miyamoto, the soul of the company for decades:

"What I want to do, is to make it
so people can actually feel
something unprecedented."

Mission accomplished.

Until the next time...

The Formula

This from Linda Tischler's article on Northwestern U's Essentials of Industrial Design class in Fast Company.  In it, Linda profiles design guru Mark Dziersk, who teaches his students about the innovation process behind great products.

His parting words to his class as they pick up an assignment can be considered the mantra for Pow!, the formula for great Surprise.  So simple, but so true, and worth repeating ad nausem:

"Remember:
Creativity plus risk
gets you the grade"

And not just in class.  In business.  In life.  Everywhere.

 

What Goes Around

Leave it to the fast-forward-thinking Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo (the pioneers of the mobile content industry) to succinctly and elegantly summarize the continuum theory of Surprise.  This from one of their trade ads:

"So Radical Today,
So Obvious Tomorrow"

Yin, meet Yang.

No Win Situation

Despite the hype and heat of all those bombastic car shows, the American auto industry is in the dumps. 

There are dozens of explanations, but at the root of them all is this one:  BORING CARS!

(Before you motorheads descend on me like vultures with news and pix of futuristic, gas-saving concept vehicles, lemme remind you that those sexy "Concept Cars" are akin to the photos people use on dating sites--nice, but far from reality.)

This is an industry that could use some more champions of Pow!, like Ralph Gilles, the guy who designed Chrysler's 300 but don't bet on it anytime soon.  Instead, heed the words of former Chrysler marketing head Jim Schroer, who groans:

"Most of the
auto companies
are playing to tie."

What Is New

Saw this on CBS Sunday Morning while pounding the elliptical machine at the gym (the headphones were cranked to Arcade Fire, but luckily, the closed-captioning was working). 

Taken from the show's annual "Money Edition," the adage sums up the Pow! philosophy in a mere five words:

Be New...
    or
Be Through.

Sounds a bit like the classic "Innovate or Die" dictum, but to us at Surprise Central, innovate connotes incremental improvement, while New means starting all over again...and again...and again.

The Why Behind The What

Way, way back in the Surprise Central time machine, October 27, '06 to be exact, I explained the essence of this blog's logo, calling it:

"...the semblance of a face, wide-eyed and open-mouthed...the epitome of what we look like when we're Surprised."

Well, the brothers Heath--Chip and Dan--take this explanation a step further in their excellent tome Made To Stick.  (Actually, it's their expansion of The Surprise Brow, a term coined by Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen in THEIR book "Unmasking The Face"...but hey, there's a limit to how much I can read.)

The Pow! logo is what we look like when Surprised; here's why we look like that:

"When our brows go up, it widens our eyes and gives us a broader field of vision--the Surprise brow is our body's way of forcing us to see more."

Surprise doesn't stop with the eyes, though.

"In addition, Surprise causes our jaws to drop and our mouths to gape.  We're struck momentarily speechless."

You know what?  This stuff doesn't merely vindicate the ramblings of this street marketer; it's actually quite interesting.  So one last intellectual look at Surprise before I let you go. Go ahead, Heath bros., add some more importance to my beloved subject matter:

"If emotions have biological purposes, then what is the biological purpose of Surprise?  Surprise jolts us to attention.  (It is) triggered when our schemas fail, and it prepares us to understand why the failure occurred.  When (they) fail, Surprise grabs our attention so that we can repair them for the future."

Pow!--Not just fun and games, but clinically proven to be important.  And recommended by four out of five doctors.

Surprise Candidates

From someone who knows well the profound importance of Pow!, (her eponymous ad agency lives loud with its BANG! philosophy) Linda Kaplan Thaler gazes into her crystal ball in the most recent Fortune Magazine and sees Surprise in 2008's political campaign ads:

"They'll all have to ante up the 'E' factor.  We have become an entertainment-centric society, where the path of least resistance is the one that amuses or startles us most."

Just don't leave any of them unattended around Boston, okay?

Waning Wonderfulness

Another one in a series of great Surprise quotes, this from the bright and equally amusing  Daniel Gilbert in his book "Stumbling On Happiness":

"Among life's cruelest truths is this one:
Wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition. 

"Psychologists call this habituation, economists call this declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage."

Happy anniversary, Mr. Gilbert!

Awe Shucking

This from David Mamet, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of ear-ringers like Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow, but taken from his most recent book, the ultra-provocative "The Wicked Son":

"Each human being has a certain amount of awe that must be discharged."

Words of wisdom from a man whose work over the past three-and-a-half decades discharged more than its fair share of awe. And shock, for that matter.  David continues to do so with his uniquely illustrated blog, found here.  Open your mind and enjoy.

May your 2007 be filled with many positive reasons to discharge awe!

Battle Cries of Surprise

I spent Sunday trolling the web, checking out vintage newsreels and public service announcements on YouTube and Waybackmachine for another project, and two near-obsolete expressions fed me a Pow! Right Between The Eyes moment…and perhaps fed the Surprise movement two immutable battle cries.

The expressions?

“What WILL They Think of Next?"

and

“Well, I Never!”

For the benefit of my readers of the Bubble Generation (a term coined by Tom Hayes at his sparkling TomBom blog), "What Will" was usually uttered by those up-tempo, silky-voiced narrators showing off wacky technology like flying car prototypes in 1940s news shows; "Well I" was standard statement of older women with grey hair pulled tightly into a bun (think of the painting American Gothic), usually delivered with popped eyes and O-shaped mouth in black-and-white movies.

The more I heard them, the more I repeated them over and over, the more I realized that these expressions are WAY too relevant to remain buried in nostalgia.

“What WILL They Think of Next?” epitomizes the wonder and innocence of discovering something new, and glows with optimism for the future. And rid of its prudish roots, “Well, I Never!” is the culmination of great Surprise; an explosive reaction to a new idea, a new experience, a new product.

One day (when my speech is ready to roll and the book is at the printer’s), I’m gonna start merchandising this blog, and you can bet that these slogans will emblazon my first two t-shirts. CafePress, here I come.

Until then, I wish you the opportunity to shout ‘em out. Often.  And loud!

Great Surprise Quotes 3

I gave up playing chess about the same time I picked up snowboarding, but I've always admired those who could sweat buckets just by thinking.  One such athlete is Garry Kasparov, the long-time #1-ranked player in the world and nemesis of IBM's Deep Blue.  Here's his take on life at a grand-master level:

"Ultimately, what separates a winner from a loser is the willingness to do the unthinkable.  Intelligence without audaciousness is not enough."

Check, mate.

Wii The People (a.k.a. Great Surprise Quotes 2)

The gaming world is buzzing about the release of Nintendo's revolutionary (and I do mean that in the most non-hyperbolic manner) Wii entertainment system on November 19.  I tried this out at the Javits Center in New York in June and was knocked out by its easy intuitive play, natural feel and pure, outright fun.  I hope it sells a zillion.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata is taking a huge stride (note I didn't say "gamble") with this system, which goes after regular folk and eschews the industry's traditional hard-core gamer audience.  Here's how he explains the relationship between Wii and them:

"(Wii) was unimaginable for them.  And because it was unimaginable, they could not say they wanted it.  If you are simply listening to requests from the customer, you can satisfy their needs, but you can never surprise them."

Surprise is greater than satisfaction.  A mantra for the age of Pow!

(Ironically, this comes as no Surprise to me, as this type of thinking is common amongst entertainment/tech enterprises in Japan.  My company, Airborne Entertainment, is majority owned by a Tokyo company called Cybird, and we've been exposed to this more emotional, people-centered approach for 18 months now.)

Great Surprise Quotes 1

Yes, another start of a quantified collection, this one of great musings about Surprise.

To kick it off, within the book “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (capsule review: Somewhat pedantic, but an ultimately exquisite look at how to create new market spaces untouched by competition) is the story of Samuel “Roxy” Rothapel, who was a cinema owner at the turn of last century (and the source of the "Roxy" moniker for movie theaters throughout the world, starting with his own at 50th and 7th in New York).

As movies became an increasingly popular form of mass entertainment for Americans, Roxy knew how best to impress the growing hordes of customers:

“Giving people what they want is fundamentally and disastrously wrong. The people don’t know what they want. Give them something better.”

This quote is close to 100 years old, yet still unequivocally relevant.