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

Those Who Like It, Like It A Lot (Especially in the Philippines)

One of the questions I am most frequently asked is:

"How's the Pow! book going?"

My answer usually is this:

"Dan Brown or Malcolm Gladwell ain't shaking in their boots, but what I lack in sales power...I make up in impact."

What I've discovered is that Surprise is an acquired taste...like Maker's Mark bourbon, or Tom Waits (essentially, the same thing, but I digress).  I suppose if I can borrow a slogan from Alexander Keith's Pale Ale:

"Those who like it, like it a lot."

Case in point is this email I got from Matthew Aligaen-Cua, an entrepreneur and student of Applied Chemistry at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines.  I've cut it down a bit, but tried to leave in his unbridled enthusiasm (so please excuse his intermittent grammar miscues, as it doesn't seem that English is his mother tongue) :

Hi Andy, 

After months of search your book here in the Philippines I finally got hold of it ! Woohoo ! And I'm blown away by your book. I must say this is one of the rare books that stops me to reach out for a pen and paper to write down stuff and ideas that is coming into my brain !

I just turned 21 and about to graduate from college and pretty much went all in loaning $30,000 to start a new company, everyone is pretty shocked to know what I did. WTH Matthew! is something that I keep on hearing and well sometimes it gets to you and thanks to your book I feel energized again.

I usually come up with crazy ideas and often apply it like start free photocopying for students (and actually making money out of it). Your book made what I did make sense even more and your book also gave me a few tips on how to create more POWS! and actually implementing it.

Cheers,

Matthew

Below is a picture of Matthew, a kid who has pride in his country and is busting butt to succeed within some less-than-ideal parameters there.  And check out the free photocopying business he launched.  (But baseball cap with a suit?  We need a wardrobe consult, my friend!)

So no, I ain't no Gladwell or Dan Brown or Tom Peters. 

But it's stuff like this that makes writing the book more than worthwhile.

Pow! An Underdog's Most Valuable Tool

Aw come on!

As all FOPs (Friends of Pow!) know, I'm not as nasty or curmudgeonly as I came off a couple of posts ago.

Some emails I get are quite delightful. Gratifying, even. They make writing this blog, and giving up weekends to write the Pow! book, worthwhile.  Like this one from Virgil Dickerson, who owns a tenacious little music label called Suburban Home Records in Denver, Colorado:

Andy, I just wanted to thank you for writing a really interesting book and wanted to share with you 2 recent situations that were inspired by the book. Understand that we are a small, struggling label that recently celebrated 14 years of business. In those 14 years, we have done all we can to adapt to an industry that is attempting to sell something people actively get for free.

Although I didn't know it, I have been using Surprise here and there throughout those years. Here are the 2 examples inspired by your book:

Vinyl Collective/Suburban Home introduces Whatever

Just like the soft drink company example, this got me thinking that all of our customers at our Vinyl Collective store might be up for a surprise. The excitement that ensued and the discussion it created was monumental. We sold over 300 "Whatevers" (see below) in 3 days and have sold close to 500 "Whatevers" in the weeks that followed.

Suburban Home Turns 14…WANTS TO GIVE IT TO YOU

It was a free album. We set up a page where anyone anywhere could pick out any of over 50 free albums for free. They put in their email, selected the album of their choice, decided if they wanted to be on our newsletter, and we sent them a free code to download one of our albums. Although people with the know-how can download our albums for free on peer to peer sites, never has an independent label done this. The press we received was huge, the response was amazing, and the praise was out of control. We have given away over 5,000 albums in less than 2 weeks and have noticed an increase in sales amongst those people.

These two projects have been 2 of the more exciting things we have ever done and I just wanted to say thanks. Your book will no doubt inspire other surprising announcements that will hopefully keep new fans coming to our little label. Thanks.

Virgil Dickerson

Yeah, other books may sell more, but I gotta tell you, this stuff works.  Everywhere.  And for everyone who has the guts to try it.

Check out Virgil's stuff and help him out by buying something.

Then join him in exploiting the power of...well, you-know-what.

Mssng

A simple point explained efficiently, with style, grace and relevant anecdotes.

Such is the mid-way review of the entrancing "In Pursuit of Elegance," a truly thought-provoking read by Matthew E. May.  The book's seven-word subtitle--"Why The Best Ideas Have Something Missing"--not only describe its subject matter perfectly, but walks the talk by piquing one's curiosity to want to find out more.  And find out fast.  Which is what I've been doing ever since I got my little hands on this one.

A kindred spirit in many ways--we share a speaking agent, a love of contemporary art, and a profound appreciation for the aesthetically-pleasing--Matthew and I also agree on the power of Surprise...well, if you can believe this insightful passage from the "Seduced By Nothing" chapter of his aforementioned tome:

"Seductive ideas rest on our ability to spark the kind of intrigue that will keep the imagination engaged.  Not knowing exactly what's going to happen next...keeps us glued to our seats when watching a thriller and quickly turning the pages in a mystery novel. 

"If we can too easily guess the outcome, or if the conclusion is not surprising enough, we are disappointed.  As soon as we become confident in our conclusion, we may lose interest entirely."

And now...time to jump back in and finish the oh-so-elegant rest.

Wired's Mystery Mag--A Full Issue of Vindication

This month's Wired magazine dedicates its entire issue to "Mystery," and is guest-edited by a master of Surprise, the ridiculously over-talented creator/producer/director J.J. Abrams. 

As all FOPs know, Mystery is part of the Surprise family;  a first cousin, I believe, if my family tree diagram is correct.  One sets the stage, while the other delivers what usually hits one, well, right between the eyes.

That said, not only has the theme brought a swift current of buzz to a moribund medium (a magazine printed on paper!), oft-dismissed of having one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, but obviously vindicates a lot of the ramblings that have filled this space for 701 posts now. 

Here are two quotes from the issue that I happen to adore.  The first is from an article about the psychology of magic, featuring a very intellectually-verbose Teller, the usual silent partner of the Penn & Teller team:

Unless Teller sees the symptoms of astonishment--mouth agape, eyes widened, pupils dilated (a.k.a "The Surprise Face" here)--he doesn't consider the trick a success. 

"The magic show is a competition," he says. The audience is trying to figure you out.  They aren't suspending their disbelief, they're trying to expose you as a scam artist."

And this from the piece penned by Jacobs himself, talking about the ultra-secretive film trailer to the Surprise hit Cloverfield:

"When the trailer hit the screens right before Transformers, people freaked out. Not necessarily because of the content of the trailer, but because it was a surprise—they knew nothing about it beforehand.

"That was the point: The intended effect was to make a teaser trailer that actually teased. It worked like gangbusters, all because we hadn't prepublicized the film on entertainment shows and in magazines.

"It was a small experiment that proved what most everyone knows: Having all the information isn't always better."

Susan Boyle--The New Queen of Surprise

A month ago, Susan Boyle was an unemployed, middle-aged everywoman with a magnificent voice.

Today, she is a world-wide sensation. 

(If you're the last person on earth who doesn't know who I am talking about, click on the two superfluous links in the sentences above.)

Such is the power of the Internet, right?

Such is the power of word-of-mouth marketing, right? 

Such is the power of social networking, right?

Nope.

Such is the power of Surprise.

Without it, there is nothing to network. 

There is nothing to talk about. 

No words to spread, nowhere. 

Face it folks,there are tens of thousands of people equally as talented as--more talented than!--our dear Susan, all who can also be found singing on YouTube. 

But Susan Boyle's story is not one of talent.  It's one of Pow!

"Without a doubt that is the biggest surprise I have had in three years of the show," gasped Britain's Got Talent judge Piers Morgan to Susan's breakout performance on the show. "I'm reeling from shock."

The dichotomy between the expectation set by Susan's frumpy appearance and the angelic sounds that emanated from her lips is what set the world on fire.  It's a textbook case of one of the key Surprise-generating tactics--Play Against Stereotypes. 

I couldn't be happier for Susan Boyle.  Not only did she destroy all preconceived notions, but her success validates the raison d'etre for this blog. 

Duplicity--Powered By The Ever-Demanding Beast Called "Surprise"

Okay, bear with me on this one.  It's a long read, but well worth it.

The film "Duplicity" opened over the weekend, and the reviews have been relatively positive, but the REAL story here at Surprise Central is one that appeared in the most recent issue of The New Yorker, where writer D.T. Max interviews the film's writer and director Tony Gilroy.  In the piece, Gilroy--a well-respected veteran writer of film thrillers--explains not just the necessity of Surprise in film, but the challenge to maintain a flow of NEW Surprise to an increasingly educated and demanding audience.  Here are a few excerpts from Max's piece: 

"The core of 'Duplicity' is the screenwriting trope known as the reversal. Gilroy told me, “A reversal is just anything that’s a surprise. It’s a way of keeping the audience interested.”  In 'Good Will Hunting,' when Matt Damon, mopping the floor at a university, comes upon a complicated math problem on a blackboard and solves it, the audience suddenly realizes that he is not an ordinary janitor—that’s a reversal.

"Gilroy believes that the writer and the moviegoing public are engaged in a cognitive arms race. As the audience grows savvier, the screenwriter has to invent new reversals—madder music and stronger wine. 

Don't ya just love that? "A cognitive arms race."  How poetic!  Max and Gilroy go on to further explain the challenge, and the perils in not meeting it.

"Perhaps the most famous reversal in film was written by William Goldman, originally in his 1974 novel 'Marathon Man,' then honed for the movie version. Laurence Olivier, a sadistic Nazi dentist, is drilling into Dustin Hoffman’s mouth, trying to force him to disclose the location of a stash of diamonds. 'Is it safe?' he keeps asking. Suddenly, William Devane sweeps in to rescue him and spirits Hoffman away.

"In the subsequent car ride, Devane starts asking questions; he wants to know where the diamonds are. After a few minutes, Hoffman’s eyes grow wide: Devane and Olivier are in league! 'Thirty years ago, when Bill Goldman wrote it, the reversal in ‘Marathon Man’ was fresh,' Gilroy says.  "But it must have been used now four thousand times.'

"This is the problem that new movies must solve.  As Gilroy says, 'How do you write a reversal that uses the audience’s expectations in a new way? You have to write to their accumulated knowledge.'"

Generating Surprise--it ain't easy.  It's an ongoing beast that demands increasing amounts of nourishment.  But if the alternative is regurgitating the same ol' same old, well... THERE IS NO alternative.

Taking The Joyride: Surprise as a Marketing Tool

I've been pondering the power of Surprise Marketing for about a decade.

I've been gathering relevant and powerful examples of the subject for five years.

I've been blogging about it for two-and-a-half of 'em.

Over the past year, I've written a book on the subject, and put together quite the entertaining stage presentation to accompany it.

And now, it looks like I've found a kindred spirit.

His name is Joseph Ferrara, and about a week ago in his provocative, prolific and often profound real-estate blog Sellsius, he laid down a post that captured and summarized the essence of Surprise Marketing in the most efficient manner I've seen outside the confines of Surprise Central. You can read it in its entirety by clicking here.

Although I'm flattered by his citation of yours truly within it, and enjoyed some of the examples he used (particularly that of Roy Flora of Microtel Inns), the true revelation was an academic paper called "Taking Relationship Marketing for a Joyride: The Emotion of Surprise as a Competitive Marketing Tool" by Joelle Vanhamme, Adam Lindgreen and Prof. Roderick J. Brodie he pointed to; the first I've seen that corroborates (and vindicates) some of the theories and concepts I've been advocating for years. For example, these excerpts:

"Merely satisfying customers is not enough, businesses need to delight their customers...it has been suggested that positive surprise is a necessary condition for customer delight and that customer delight translates into higher customer retention levels."

"Literature in psychology suggests that customer delight is a second-order emotion resulting from a combination of two first-order emotions, namely surprise and joy (Plutchik 1980).  According to these findings, positive surprise might thus play an important role in customers' satisfaction and ultimately customer retention."

"Despite the widespread attention businesses have paid to positively surprising their customers, the possible correlation between positive surprise and customer delight has received only little attention in the (business and academic) literature."

Well, it has received only little attention...until now. 

The dawn of a new era.  We hope.

Surprise Vs. Humor Showdown--Guess Who Wins?

Even more on the importance of novelty, this time from FOP Adam Lawrence.

Surprise and humor are intrinsically related (my Just For Laughs days provided a profound heritage, I guess), and as per this info, the former trumps the latter in the world of marketing and sales.  As Adam puts it:

"The presence of humor in an ad is less important than whether the humor is surprising or not.

"In other words, humor is most effective from a staid brand; products with a rep for humor will need to up the ante or switch tack."

Being funny is not as important as whether you're expected to be funny.  That's the explanation in a nutshell; here's the cognitive psychology post in its entirety. Fascinating.

Surprise: A Brain's Workout Regime

One of the hottest business books of last year was Martin Lindstrom's "Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy," and because of it, Marty's been on a media tear, explaining his lengthy study of, and theories on, what he has coined "Neuro-marketing."

I really dug what he had to say to Holly Shaw in an interview in The Financial Post when asked about the effectiveness of anti-smoking warnings on cigarette packs:

"After some time people just see a piece of graphics and they don't read it.
They become kind of snow-blind;12 seconds later they light up.

"But governments can [change that] without a lot of pain.
If they randomize the placement of the health warnings more, and the colors and the look of them more, it can provide a surprise to consumers."

As said here ad infinitum, the power of Surprise is disproportionate.  Even a "little thing" like mixing up the placement of a health warning can have profound effects.  I spent much time before the holidays discussing this subject with stress expert Loretta LaRoche, who has studied the effects of "newness" on the brain.  As she puts it:

"The brain needs novelty in order to grow."

And it's Surprise that is a key provider of that novelty to our cranial area.

This Surprise stuff ain't frivolous, folks.  More of this being researched, with findings to come soon.

Steve Jobs Adds A New Season To The Calendar

What a great way to start a week--magna-vindication coming from perhaps the king of Surprise Marketing, Steve Jobs.

Such is not the thinking merely of those here at Surprise Central, but of Forbes Magazine's very prolific Brian Caufield.  In a piece entitled Steve Jobs' Greatest Surprises, Caulfield lays down these bons mots:

"Mark your calendars. Thanks to Steve Jobs, January has become the season of surprises for the technology industry.

"What's next? Nobody knows. That's what makes Apple so dangerous. The only certainty: Apple will surprise us with something during the first full week of January at MacWorld in San Francisco. Anything is possible. That's in large part because Apple has been so unpredictable over the past decade.

"Even the widely anticipated iPhone was a surprise. While reporters had teased out the new product's name, few guessed that Apple would introduce a touch-screen phone that didn't sport any buttons."

Caufield goes on to present a fascinating slide show of Jobs' Greatest Pow! Moments (well, he doesn't call it exactly that...but all FOPs know what I mean). Check it out here.

So, the lesson once again:

• Any one Surprise doesn't last. 
• TRUE Surprise requires a continuum;
• a shocking of the system again and again and again. 
• It needs a constant discovery of a new extreme.

And NOBODY seems to do it better than Steve Jobs.

But someone does it almost as good. 

And that someone will be bestowed with the title of Surprise Marketer of the Year for 2008.

The winner revealed right here on Friday.

Diamonds Keep Up The Sparkle

It's like watching one of my kids graduate from college...

Post Cereals' ingenious "Diamond Shreddies" campaign, first touted here way back in April, was recently bestowed with the title of "Best of The Best" in the Canadian Marketing Awards.

Ogilvy was the Agency of record, but the real hero is Hunter Somerville, a 26-year-old intern at the agency, who was fooling around with some back-of-the-box copy when he was hit with the "tilting" brainstorm.

Better than the accolades though, the real Pow! was this chain of events for the sparkling Shreddies: 

• It attracted hundreds of stories in both the traditional and digital media
• It sold out a run of "Limited Edition" boxes in two months
• It increased year-over-year sales of the product by over 18%

Once again, strong vindication for the power of Surprise.  I think we'll celebrate at Surprise Central with a bowl or two of the stuff...

Surprise: Not Habit-Forming, But...

Ouch.

That's the cry of marketers everywhere if they take Dr. Neale Martin's doctrine as gospel.  The addiction counselor turned marketing PhD (what ideal qualifications!) makes this sledgehammer statement in his thought-provoking and quite fascinating new book Habit:

        95% of what consumers do
        is pre-programmed behavior
        impervious to marketing.

Uh, better update the ol' CV.

Still, this comes as a chance for vindication for FOPs and everyone here at Surprise Central.  As Dr. Martin explains:

"We refer to the part of the brain where conscious, cognitive processing occurs as the executive mind.  We call the region of the brain responsible for unconscious processing the habitual mind. 

"To take a customer away from a competitor, you must break the customer's existing habits by first getting him to consciously think about the product."

Here comes the good part...

"For all its remarkable abilities, the executive mind has the limitation of being able to consciously able to focus on only one thing at a time.  If the mind perceives a situation as novel, the executive mind focuses on the problem.  Novel situations activate and focus the executive mind."

And what, pray tell, can be more novel, more focusing, more habit-breaking than...

...well, you-know-what.

The Power of Pow!--Two More Examples

A little bit of vindy is always a treat, especially when the sources are as mega as Amazon and Seth Godin, who both unleashed a little Surprise in their recent marketing tactics.

Godin, like most authors are wont to do, urged fans and followers to lay down some advance orders his his new book Tribes.  His difference is that not only did the fan boys and girls (of which I am unabashedly one) receive the book from Amazon.com, 800 CEO Read or wherever, on Day One, but they also were sent a Surprise second copy IN ADVANCE of the first, which Le Godin urged recipients to pass along to friends, co-workers, etc.  Great, textbook, unexpected, value-added Pow!

And then there's Amazon, which proved that Surprise tactics are for everyone, no matter how behemothian you may be.  I recently ordered a CD for my son from them, which was followed up with the usual service messages...and then this:

Hello from Amazon.com,
Thanks to the recent purchase(s) you made in the Music store at Amazon.com, you are eligible to receive a 12-issue subscription to Rolling Stone, a $6.48 value.

To receive your 12-issue subscription, please click on the link below, which will direct you to a secure form at Amazon.com where you can sign in to your account, and sign up for your subscription.

What's the catch? None. We're happy to provide our customers with the benefits of partnering with a top magazine publisher. This is a bonus offer, and there is no automatic renewal.

Yeah, yeah...you can say that Amazon is huge and can strong-arm people into giving stuff away like this, or that Godin is the dean of new marketing and will be supported by his publisher in such an expensive undertaking.  But the fact is this:

Neither one HAS TO do this

And even better still:

They both understand THE VALUE in doing this.

So...what's your excuse again?

Virgin Kleenex--Tissues as an Emotional Crutch

Okay, there's a serious message coming, but I'll start this post off rather sophomorically by projecting myself back to the hallways of Sir Winston Churchill High, where Kleenex and other tissues were known by the male population of the school as "snot-rags." 

That was the amount of respect we gave these squares of delicate paper.  They were there to do a job, usually a most unpleasant one, and then unceremoniously tossed away.  My crude-ish high school label aside, I suspect your feelings about the product weren't much different than ours. 

Cut to last week's post about Knorr selling soup as colors, to the Pow!-generating tactic of Wearing Virgin Contact Lenses (the ability to look at something familiar as if you've never seen it before)...and maybe you'll find yourself smiling at Kleenex's new ad campaign, which sees it positioned as an emotional crutch.

I'm trying to track down the genesis of the idea, but one of its defining moments had to come, perhaps as the ultimate coincidence, in the late Randy Pausch's best-selling memoir "The Last Lecture," where he describes the moment of learning of his terminal diagnosis this way:

"I had just learned that I would soon die, and in my inability to stop being rationally focused, I found myself thinking: 'Shouldn't a room like this, at a time like this, have a box of Kleenex? Wow, that's just a glaring operational flaw'."

This ain't about wiping away bodily fluids any more; the "Let It Out" campaign tugs at the heartstrings and shows Kleenex to be an accessory to the more "touchy-feely" moments of our lives, both good and bad.  This from the Kleenex site:

"Have you ever laughed until you cried?
Had a tear-filled hello or goodbye?
It's times like these when we just have to let it out™ — because it helps us feel better.
The Kleenex® brand invites you to let it out™ on this site."

That's just the beginning.  A couple of clicks and you're on a page where you can "Experience The Release" of catalysts like Laugh, Cry, Love, Sing, Joy, Stuff, Scream and Blow (which is more about exploding than it is about expelling mucous from your nose).  What's more, the company also lets you customize your own box to fit the occasions where you may act out one of the aforementioned catalysts.

Off-beat?  Of course, but something's gotta be done for an iconic brand that not only has to overcome the genericization of its brand name, but a 5.9% sales decrease over the past year.

All this said, I am truly touched that a brand so massive is heeding the advice of Surprise Central.

I think I'm gonna cry...

Here's Something To Think About...

Spent the weekend catching up on my reading (things going crazy good at Airborne keeping me over-busy), and gleaned yet another pearl of wisdom from Chip Heath and Dan Heath.  As faithful FOPs know, the brothers' now- classic book Made To Stick was one of the elements that helped concretize my theories about the powers of Surprise, which is why I don't miss anything they do...well, professionally, at least.

Their column in this month's Fast Company is ostensibly about improving PowerPoint presentations, but more profoundly touches upon the difference between being telling something or making others want to discover it, a key Pow! factor. To wit:

"Curiosity must come before content. 
Great presentations are mysteries, not encyclopedia entries. 
The best presenters don't structure their presentations by thinking:
'What's the next point I should make?' 
Instead, they decide
'What's the next question I want them to wrestle with?'"

Compare this to just about every corporate PowerPoint presentation you had to suffer through, where the standard operating procedure seems to be: "Here's way too much writing that you will read in 30 seconds and that I will spend the next seven minutes repeating."

Yes, there are killer PowerPoint improvement books like Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen, but you can still blow it following his minimalism advice if you give away more than you tease. 

The Heaths' advice goes way further than what you see on a presentation screen.  It's a secret to solidifying business relationships--hell, ALL types of relationships.  Use frequently.

Dennis (No Longer) The Menace

About a year ago, Dennis Catalfumo had his balls bust big time when his guerrilla campaign for Adult Swim backfired in Boston and caused some major grief and backlash.

Today, Dennis and his colleagues from Interference, Inc. are doing the Surprise marketing thing for prestigious people the likes of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, getting this type of complimentary coverage for it...

...and further vindicating the power of Pow! in the process.  Nicely done, Dennis!

Time Warp

Faithful FOPs know that I have long subscribed to the Surprise Marketing Theory that "Everything New is Old Again," which--in a nutshell--explains why Surprise is invaluable in a world where product life cycles are getting increasingly shorter. 

As you ponder that breathlessly-delivered sentence, consider the vindicating words of the New York Times' columnist David Brooks, who bemoaned similar sentiments in an article that was bitingly subtitled "Today's intellectual leaders are identified by their email providers, not their ideas."  Here are some excerpts:

"In this era, MySpace is the new leisure suit and an AOL email address is a scarlet letter of techno shame."

"To cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of."

"When you first come across some obscure cultural artifact, you will want to erupt with ecstatic enthusiasm...Then, a few weeks later, after the object is slightly better known, you will dismiss all the hype with a gesture of putrid disgust...Remember, cultural epochs come and go, but one-upmanship is forever."

Ouch. But true.

Gotcha Gets 'Em, Gets Results

Yeah yeah, I know I should've gotten to this one sooner, but between Airborne, the Pow! Book and Just For Laughs, I've been berry berry busy (beware the blogger with three valid crutches; he will wield them at will!).

So, some sweet vindication comes to roost in Pow!ville as the big winner at Cannes Ad Competition this year was that Burger King hidden-camera campaign called "Whopper Freakout" where customers, well, freak out when told that the big burger had been discontinued.

According to an article called "Punk'd Ads Prove Popular" by T.L. Stanley in Brandweek, this is all part of a trend where "at least a half-dozen major advertisers have dusted off the old 'gotcha' idea and made it the centerpiece of their TV and Web campaigns." 

In addition to Burger King, the piece lists Volkswagen's "Talking Beetle," Coke Zero's "Taste Infringement," Carl's Jr. and Hardee's "Fake Restaurant" as other brands shocking their customers for sales' sake.  Another fave, more recent, is the "Real Blood Is For Suckers" ad for Tru-Blood energy drink, which leads the curious over to trubeverage.com which ends up being...ahh, why don't I just let you find out for yourselves if you don't already know?

The point here is that just listing a product's virtues, particularly one that's been around a while (the Burger King campaign marked the restaurant's 50th anniversary), seems to be losing its punch.  These Punk'd-styled ads shock clients/victims, and are then used to shock a wider swath of potential clients, proving again the power of Surprise not only to grab attention, but to sell products and ideas.

There is indeed sustenance in this nuttiness!

Pay Attention--Attention Pays!

As a follow up to yesterday's post, let's dig a bit deeper to fully understand why the proliferation of recognition for the power of Surprise, straight from the mouths of three brilliant Web 2.0 gurus, Max Levchin (co-founder of PayPal and current CEO of social network widget factory SLIDE), Chris Anderson (author of the book and creator of the concept The Long Tail) and Seth Godin (well, you know who).

Levchin believes that the future of advertising relies less on how many people see/hear an ad, but how "engaged" consumers are with them.  As he says:

"The metrics for success
are going to shift away from
who can provide the most reach
toward who is paid the most attention."

Meanwhile, Anderson's next great debatable theory (as discussed here a few weeks ago) is the rise of giving things away, to be solidified in his next book "Free."  As Brandweek puts it in a short piece on the author/thinker:

"Free's argument is that
in the digital age,
it's more important to get attention than immediate payoff."

The last word goes to Godin, who in commenting on Anderson's theory said that:

"Attention is a valuable asset
that used to be a commodity."

Who is paid the most attention will rely heavily on how one generates the most attention...the all-important catalyst best left in the capable hands of Surprise marketers.  Generating attention is our raison d'etre.

Yeah, I know there ain't too many of us around.

Yet.

Apple A Surprise Target

In delivering the crucial continuum of Surprise, few companies do it as well as Apple.  Thanks to Steve Jobs and his continually challenged cohorts, the value of the strategy that's been touted here at Surprise Central for years is starting to be appreciated by the mainstream business press.

To wit, this from the cover story on Apple in the most recent Wired magazine:

"Part of the joy of being an Apple customer...the Surprises that Santa Steve brings at Macworld Expo every January."

One example does not a trend make, though.  Which is why I was equally delighted to read the following about Target in Fortune, which outlined the company's deep commitment to the flow of Surprise:

"To encourage, or rather ensure, a steady stream of bold new ideas, managers with a proven record of hits must duke it out for portions of their budgets every year. 

"So although the events team won a big chunk of the 2007 pie with its idea for a holographic fashion show, it had to come up with something equally compelling if it wanted funding this year. 

"This helped generate such out-there ideas as a temporary store floating in the Hudson river or and a vertical fashion show where acrobats 'walked' down the side of a building. 

"That element of Surprise, it turns out, has been part of Target's DNA for some time."

Any company can pull of some sort of one-off "stunt."  But real corporate longevity (Target, as Target, has been around 46 years), customer loyalty and buzz with a long trail of zzz's, comes when the company maintains the consistent delight of Surprise.

A Real Surprise Sale

Ahh...the power of Surprise once more rears it head in the off-price retail  space.

Over a year ago, I laid down this post about Costco being a "retail treasure hunt."  Well, Canadian discounter Liquidation World is going one step further by playing the Pow! card to the max in its new multi-media "brand-building" campaign.   As per Marketing Magazine:

"The campaign revolves around market research Liquidation World conducted a couple of years ago...(which) revealed that the chain’s customers go to browse and explore, which is why the store focused on promoting the experience of finding an unexpected deal rather than price."

The company's TV commercials end with the tag line:

“Come Find Something Unexpected"

...while its in-store posters are shout out:

“Even We’re Surprised by What People Find in Our Store”

and

“Find Exactly What You’re Not Looking For”

As I've said many times before here, shopping isn't necessarily about searching for something, but discovering something...hence the value of pushing Surprise.  Ironically, it's the discounters who seem to understand and exploit this far better than their high-falutin', regular-priced brethren.

Best of the Worst

The biggest rise Stephen King has given me since that hand in Carrie came in last week's Entertainment Weekly, where the maestro of horror captured a whole slew of Pow! moments in his back-page column.

The subject of the piece, recalling your worst-ever entertainment moment, was a compilation of stories he received after putting out the query on his own website a few weeks prior.  The results were not just hysterical and easily-relatable, but a perfect example of what I mean when I espouse The Highlight Reel of Life. 

Like the zombies and viruses that King has written about on numerous occasions, great Surprise stories live forever and spread fast & wide.

Do yourself a favor; kick off your week by reading the column here, then check out the trove of stories on his site. 

Surprise TV...Sort Of

Ahhh, 2008. A new year, filled with hope, promise and resolutions that should be broken by about the time you finish this sentence.

One honkin’ big diff that has warmed the hearts of all of us at Surprise Central is the change of direction—and name—of what once was Court TV, which since Jan. 1 is known as TruTv. 

Focusing its programming and spirit on “Actuality. Not Reality” (their new slogan, not mine), TruTV trumpeted its rebirth in some relatively unconventional mediaplaces, most notably the Wall Street Journal. 

In that bastion of capitalist news and thought, the network took out an upside down full-page ad. While not as effective as the similar tactic used last year by UPS (and highly hoorayed here), what was impressive was TruTV’s commitment to the essence of Pow! with its stated programming pledge:

"What Makes
Real-Life Stories
Exciting
Is That They’re
Unpredictable"

Welcome to the club, TruTV! Now go ahead…Surprise us. Again and again and again!

Or else.

If It Ain't Already Been Done, It Soon Will Be

In a post last week I tongue-in-cheekly suggested that the only space left for the weed-like coffee giant Starbucks to expand would be in "mini-kiosks throughout shopping mall parking lots."

Well, there's a lesson to be learned in our wonderful world of marketing:

Today's tongue-in-cheek
is tomorrow's carved-in-stone

Seems that as I was typin' up the post itself, the century-and-a-half-old Eight O'Clock Coffee company was, according to Brandweek, "setting up shop in malls' parking lots to create coffee klatches among customers eagerly awaiting the openings."

The promotion was one of a handful free coffee giveaways to mark this year's Black Friday, and while others provided samples in malls and even at tollbooths (hello Maxwell House!), only Eight O'Clock corralled shoppers as per my what-once-was-facetious-but-is-now-gospel vision (and did it with the name Black Coffee Friday).

Gotta be careful where I stick my tongue...

Color My World...But Precisely

About a month ago in a similarly-named post about GoSmile White, I yammered about "Corporate-sponsored colors" (like Tiffany Blue, UPS Brown and Target Red) and suggested their rise is due to the fact that we are running out of inanimate objects (a la "peach" and "avacado") to name colors after.

Profound, no?

Well, methinks me worried too much, too soon.  Over in Paris (where else?) Jean-Gabriel Causse's uber-hip Bluebretzel has expanded the parameters of the rainbow by producing high-end cotton/cashmere t-shirts in unique hues such as "Mona Lisa's Eyes Brown," "Caviar Kaspia Beluga Caviar Black" or "Earth Blue as Seen by Apollo 17." 

This ain't no mere gimmick; the company painstakingly researches and matches the pigment of these iconic shades in a highly-complex, significantly scientific manner (check it out at left).

The end result is a t-shirt that sells for 60-75 Euros (depending on long or short sleeves), and is generating all sorts of buzz in the fashion world.

More importantly, a la Nudie Jeans, Causse (whose background is one of advertising, not fashion, go figure...) is breathing new life into a commodity product.  Not since Dov Charney's "Made in L.A./Sweatshop-Free" American Apparel has there been such a compelling "story" to tell about the lowly t-shirt.  When was the last time you bragged about yours?

Even more kudos to Causse--the Bluebretzel website not only explains the details of his color search, but is home to perhaps the friendliest, most intuitive and store-replicating shopping experience on the web.  Worth every minute of your time to check it out.

Better save up, though...

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...

Steve Listens

Got this email from Mitch Joel while in San Francisco, only minutes after Microsoft's Steve Ballmer delivered his keynote address at CTIA:

Did you whisper this sweet-nothing in his ear?

http://www.news.com/beyond-binary/8301-13860_3-9802647-56.html?part=dht

 You have been saying that line for only about a half-decade or so ;)

--Mitch

As someone who used to work for us at Airborne, Mitch has heard me spout adages and aphorisms ad nauseum, but I still had my doubts.  So I checked out the interview I did with Adweek earlier this year and found the following:

You've referred to the mobile phone as being the "remote control for people's lives." Can you elaborate on that? 

Most companies replicate the desktop or a television [with the phone], but ... we see it as a tool to interact with the rest of your world. It's not just a screen, it's more like a mouse. We call it the "inside out" approach. ... Just watching a television show on it is like getting a computer just to write letters.

So Mitch, thanks for pointing this out.  I'll give you 50% of the royalty cheque when Steve sends it.

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.

Pow! Goes Legit

I read it every two weeks, cite it quite often, but here's an article from the uber-respected Marketing Magazine I won't be quoting from any time soon...due to redundancy issues:

(To read the entire rant in a more eye-friendly manner, click here.)

Big shout out for Danny Kucharsky for corralling all my wildly-spouted words (jeez, that Suzanne Somers story still comes up after all these years).  And Dan Ward, your book gets yet another plug!  Jeez!

On a serious note, when the concept of Pow! Marketing is treated with such prominence in such a prestigious and widely-accepted journal, you know we're onto something here at Surprise Central.   

Today, Marketing Magazine.  Tomorrow, a major publishing house!

What The Fork Is He Talking About?

Said it before (as recently as Tuesday). 

Will say it again.  And again...

But like when others say it best.

Here's Ryan Karpeles' take on little things that mean a lot.

Out of context.  And right on target.

(Thanks Mark Goren for the stab!)

My Word...And Welcome To It

Way back when, when I was in college, I read one of the seminal marketing books of our time, Al Ries and Jack Trout's classic called Positioning.

Along with my prof Don Tobin and author Roger von Oech, this book was a key influencing factor in my decision to dump Liberal Arts and dive into Marketing.  And one of the things from Ries and Trout's treatise that has stuck with me was their explanation of "owning" a word in consumer minds.  For example, in the car biz, Volvo owns the word "safety"; you think of the brand, you think security...and vice versa.

So here's where I'm going with this.

Over the past two weeks, EIGHT smart marketing types (most recently Rick Spence) emailed me the Paul Potts video; that "from nowhere" opera singer that first took Britain, and now the world, by storm.   In their emails, they explained that, while immensely talented, the incredible Surprise of hearing that mellifluous voice emerge from such an obviously uncomfortable and unlikely source was what made it truly special.

And thus, made it perfect for me.

So that's when it hit me.

It took me nine months, but looky-looky...in the words of Ries and Trout, it appears that I have come to OWN "Surprise."

Fret not, I will continue to share it with y'all, but it is indeed satisfying to know that the concept is resonating.

Which, I must admit, is a most gratifying Surprise for yours truly.

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...

My Swan Song

I was enamored with Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book Fooled By Randomness, so needless to say, I was one of those Amazon.com pre-order geeks when I heard about his new one, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

And while I'm still plowing through the magnum opus, preliminary skims have resulted in yelps of joyful vindication throughout Surprise Central.

Yup, a lot of what Taleb says provides credence to the ramblings of this blog, but holy jumpin' jeez, the way he says it truly humbles this blog's author.  So without further ado, here are a couple of pertinent excerpts.

On Surprise in general:

"It is easy to see that life is the cumulative effect of a handful of significant shocks. This extends to all businesses. Think about the “secret recipe” to making a killing in the restaurant business. If it were known and obvious, then someone next door would have already come up with the idea and it would have become generic.

"The next killing in the restaurant industry needs to be an idea that is not easily conceived of by the current population of restaurateurs. It has to be at some distance from expectations. The more unexpected the success of such a venture, the smaller the number of competitors, and the more successful the entrepreneur who implements the idea."

On the importance of generating it:

"Living on our planet, today, requires a lot more imagination than we are made to have. We lack imagination and repress it in others. Our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown, and the very improbable (improbable according our current knowledge)—and all the while we spend our time engaged in small talk, focusing on the known, and the repeated.

"This implies the need to use the extreme event as a starting point and not treat it as an exception to be pushed under the rug."

Couldn't have said it better myself...although I wish I could come close.  Can't wait to get through the rest of this.

 

Idol's Secret Formula

This from an article about (oy...) American Idol in Time Magazine:

PEOPLE LIKE TO BE SURPRISED
BY WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW

Idol has figured out the challenge of mass entertainment: how to please an audience that craves novelty but rarely rewards the jarringly new.

The New Old is the aesthetic of mass-market America...The ideal Idol performance--a hip hop Sweet Home Alabama, a beatboxed Time Of The Season--mashes up old and new, letting viewers feel cool in their squareness.

In other words, as has been said here many times before, and foist upon by FOPs ad nauseum:

"The audience isn't as hip
as you think they are...
or want them to be."

and

"Everything new is old again."

Con Of Outtext

More vindy on my "Out of Context" concept first unveiled in The Westmount Drunk.

In an enlightening, and somewhat scary, article in Business 2.0, Paul Sloan talks about Yahoo's brilliant--and VERY scary--head of research and data Usama Fayyad.   Well worth your time to read,  but in a nutshell, Fayyad talks about Yahoo's "behavioral targeting," where the company sells ad space NOT based on a site's content relevance (as would be expected in traditional media), but on a consumer's online behavior instead. 

In other words, spend time surfing car sites, and Yahoo will deliver you car ads next time you're on Yahoo Sports, Finance, Showbiz, Comics...site context be damned.  Your previous surfing habits will define you, and like your cologne, follow you everywhere.  Extrapolate this for a second and perhaps you see what I see in the near future--"adult" banners on CNN.com, Hallmark.com, Amazon.com...every.com, frankly.

Actually, something similar (although thankfully a little more benign) has already popped up in the offline media world, as State Farm Insurance has started placing TV ads on Nickelodeon. 

It can all be easily explained by demographics (the State Farm target market spends time in front of the tube with their toddlers, so...), but it is a little unnerving seeing a car insurance spot during Spongebob Squarepants (although he does sort of have that insurance salesman look about him, dontcha think?).  By the way, this doesn't stop with TV; like a good neighbor, State Farm has also bought ads in the Nick Jr. Family Magazine and is sponsoring the Go Diego Go Live show.   

And if that ain't out of context enough for you, the American Association of Retired Persons (better known by their less age-painting AARP acronym) have adopted the classic Buzzcocks punk anthem "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" for their new TV campaign.

Pretty soon, everything's gonna be SO honking out of context that being IN CONTEXT will be the only way to stand out; or put another way, In Context is the New Out Of Context. 

And the wheel in the sky keeps on turning... 

 

I Knew We Were Onto Something...

I logged-in in this morning and the Surprise Central Inbox was overflowing with WILDY CAPITALIZED email, all saying just about the same thing:

"Did you see what
Seth Godin said
about SURPRISE?"

Well, I did now.  Here's an excerpt:

"There's nothing wrong with not surprising people. In fact, most of the time, you don't want to surprise people. I don't want to be surprised when I use an electric drill, and I don't want to be surprised when they're doing surgery on me.

But if you want the word to spread, if you expect me to take action I've never taken before, it seems to me that you need to do something that hasn't been done before. It might not feel safe, but if you do the safe thing, I guarantee you won't surprise anyone.

And if you don't surprise anyone, the word isn't going to spread."

That's some major, major-league vindication.

Read the whole thing for yourself, and feel the Pow!er...

Vindication Veekend

Well, no more big hair pictures, so I guess the next best thing on this chill-out Saturday is to let smart people back up the ramblings of the folks here at Surprise Central, specifically the Valentine’s Day rant of Submission Marketing.

So, to my point, why do people only tell the truth behind marketers’ backs? 

Because they don’t trust ‘em.

A recent study from the Yankelovich Group revealed that a walloping 76% of consumers don’t believe that companies tell the truth in ads. 

That’s more than three in four.  In essence, an ad is wasted money before it even hits the page or the airwaves.

Ouch.

And as per the Garbage In/Garbage Out theory of those surveys we are forced to fill out, Strategy Mag reports (see? No hard feelings, Claire...)that at the recent Research Industry Summit in Chicago, the following stats were bandied about:

Just 0.25% of the population supplies
32% of responses to online surveys

50% of all survey responses come from
less than 5% of the population

No wonder one senior researcher lamented: "We're perpetuating a fraud."

Uh, have a nice weekend. 

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.

Higher Education

Surprise marketing ain't just for the guerrillas, the street-fighters, or--as Tom Peters calls 'em--the "weirdos and freaks" no more.  We're part of America's most hallowed hall of academia, bay-bah!

Biggest Surprise of all is not just that Pow!has been usurped by Harvard Business School Executive Education, but how they've gone about promoting it.

There must be something "special" in Boston water these days, because Harvard's ads for their four exec marketing management courses are spiced with terms like "Break Free.  Start thinking and acting differently" (sounds like Steve Jobs or maybe even Timothy Leary may have got to 'em as well), and resplendent with a variation on the U's classic coat of arms (check the adage above).

If the boys at Hah-vahd Yahd (well not just boys anymore, given that the school just named its first female President) are embracing their wild side, imagine the ramifications for the Fortune 500 in a few years.  Yee-hah!

iBalls

Way way back, in this blog's first post, I said the following:

"I have always shouted that consumers don't know what they want.  Well, I lied.

They know what they want. 

They WANT to be led.
They WANT us to lead them.
They WANT to follow.
And they WANT to be surprised."

I've never been a big believer in focus groups.  I have found that people in 'em are more concerned with giving the right answer than actually coming up with something revolutionary, something that will break through the constraints of what they already know. (On the other hand, I believe whole-heartedly in observing the consumer in his/her natural habitat and learning from that, but that's a whole other ball of whacks.)

And it seems that I have a kindred spirit in Steve Jobs.  In last week's Time Magazine look at the iPhone, Lev Grossman says:

"Jobs' zeal for product development--and enforcing his personal vision--remains as relentless as ever.

I can't think of a comparable company that does no--zero--market research with its customers before launching a product."

One more time:  ZERO MARKET RESEARCH WITH ITS CUSTOMERS.

This goes against conventional marketing wisdom, of course, but designing consumer products can be likened to the weather--everyone complains, but few do anything about it.  Consumers can tell you what's wrong with their phones, what they hate about 'em, but ask for improvement ideas and you'll get minor adjustments, incremental band-aids. 

At the recent CES show in Las Vegas, every cellphone manufacturer--EVERY SINGLE ONE--announced some sort of new handset.  I guarantee each one went through a laborious process of consumer study, research, focus groups, hand-wringing and anal probes. 

Yet only one truly captured our attention, broke through the clutter, and set tongues a-wagging.

Bringing consumer products to reality ain't no YouTube.

It takes a real marketer to bust through and have the balls to lead consumers to the promised land.

To some, the best customer market research is done at the cash register.

The Truthiness About Discoverability

Last year, in its 16th annual vote, the American Dialect Society voted truthiness as its "Word of the Year," an impressive feat for a term coined by comic Stephen Colbert.

In the marketing world though, the less truthiness the better (just what we need; another corporate credibility scandal!).  Which is why I am happy to report that in its annual vote, Brandweek chose as its "Best Marketing Buzzword" one that is near and dear to those gathered at Surprise Central:

"Discoverability"

The magazine goes on to explain via this example:

"For a year or so, Reef has marketed sandals that have a bottle opener on the heel.  But the company never advertised it or noted it in the packaging, preferring to let users discover the attribute by themselves and tell others."

So lemme see if I got the process straight:

Start with Surprise, which leads to Pow!, which leads to people talking and doing your marketing for you.

Sounds like something readers of this blog discoverabled themselves a few months ago...

Good call, Brandweekers!

Over Usered

And while we're on the subject, Brandweek's "Worst Marketing Buzzword" of 2006 was the overused-to-death

"User-Generated Content"

...which (thankfully!)  gives credence to, and vindicates, my shout-outs in Marketing Magazine this week.

Is Big The New Small?

So, what happens when Intimacy Goes Big, which I intimated in the blog post of the same name?

Well, as a corollary I guess, Big Goes Intimate.

Or so I would believe after reading a piece in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal (dig the re-design big-time, by the way) about the new stadium being built for the Dallas Cowboys, an architectural behemoth of over 2.3 million square feet that will be able to seat about 100,000 when it opens in 2009.

One of the key selling points of the place is the 180-foot long video screens suspended over both sides of the playing surface, which will serve to--get this!--replicate the at-home experience.  As the article explains:

"Mr. Jones (Cowboys owner Jerry) believes that in the years ahead the Cowboys' biggest competition for fans will come from the increasingly sophisticated home-entertainment industry. 

"To counter home media, the 180-foot boards inside the stadium will...provide fans with the equivalent of watching the game on a 52-inch plasma screen from 12 feet away. 'You'll be able to see the sweat on their foreheads,' says Mr. Jones."

Ironic, ain't it?  Now if they could only change those clanky plastic stadium seats into couches...

See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Wear Me

Seth Godin hit the nail on the head and hard with his post on The T-Shirt Rule.  I've been braying about this for years (even here in Pow!).  Along with stickers, this is today's tangible acid test of cool among Teenagers 2.0. 

And jeez, you should see my t-shirt collection!  Boxes full.  My current fave features the Robert Crumb drawing of Boy Howdy, mascot of Creem Magazine (my rock 'n' roll bible growing up in the '70s and '80s; currently reborn on the web).

And your fave?

Virals Go Viral

What timing! 

Yesterday morning, I mention that it's Surprise that makes viral videos viral.

Yesterday afternoon, I get this Holiday Card from Twist Image, that encapsulates the year in--you guessed it!--viral videos.

Follow it through, see how many you sent and/or received throughout 2006...

...then let my point sink in even deeper.

(By the way, the Twist Image card itself became somewhat of a viral phenomenon, finding its way around the web faster than a speeding Line Rider.)

No Surprise, No Net As We Know It

If the subject matter of this blog was insignificant...if I didn’t believe in its extreme relevance and importance...I would’ve tossed in the towel a couple dozen posts ago.

But every now and then, something comes along to inject a new dose of adrenalin into my veins and make me realize that perhaps this whole Surprise thing is bigger than even I suspect.

In other words, Vindication File, open wide and say “Ahhhhhhhh!”

A few days ago, Mark Goren turned me onto authors Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba (hey, I try to know ‘em all, but what are bloggers for?), for the possibility of bringing them to town for a book bash/conference. Spent much of the week leafing through their new book “Citizen Marketers: When People Are The Message,” and had my cranium crunched by their captivating theories and anecdotes.

The nuclear Pow! though, came when they explained how and why memes spread (and they had a captive, converted audience in me after the past two weeks of “Five Things” and “Z-Lists”).

The secret, it seems, is Surprise. The mechanics of most everything we share virally throughout the social media depends on it. They explain in a succint, five-point plan:

1. Bloggers spread a story that has a surprising development
2. The story is filled with numerous and concrete details
3. The story documents a tangible form of injustice
4. The story reaches a plateau of recognition among a number of well-known blogs
5. The story reaches a worldwide plateau

Obviously, Ben and Jackie explain this in greater detail and pepper their explanations with examples (come on folks, there’s only so much of their book I should give out for free). But as well-documented and well-formed as their plan is, you don’t get to #5 without passing through #1.

Put another way, you don’t go worldwide without Surprise.

Yes, the authors talk about “stories” (like the “Dirty Secret” iPod battery scandal video or the sleeping Comcast technician), but think for a second about just about every email or video you received from—or sent to—a friend.

They’re about blenders that turn marbles to dust.

Or mints that convert Diet Coke bottles into geysers.

Or unknown artists who perform four-minute histories of dance or choreographed routines on treadmills.

Or some sort of rumour about the insidious behavior of our favorite multinational.

Or seemingly impossible photos that reveal conspiratory secrets.

What they’re NOT about is the mundane, the usual, the expected. A photo of my dog Shaydee (see below), no matter how cute, will spread about as fast and as easily as frozen peanut butter. A video of my son Hayes playing goalie for his Midget “A” hockey team will perhaps delight his grandparents.  Unless, of course, he makes an impossible save lying down after a mid-air dive and somersault. Then it becomes a Pow!, and a candidate for sharing.

How important is Surprise? Well, it goes way beyond Citizen Marketing. In fact, without Surprise, I’d venture to say there’d be no YouTube. Without Surprise, MySpace would be the ramblings of that boring kid you do your damndest to avoid. And without Surprise, North Korean kook Kim Jong II would be Time Magazine’s Person of the Year instead of us.

Surprise is what makes viral, well…viral! Without it, the Internet as we know it would be spinning its wheels, stuck in neutral.

My dog Shaydee: Adorable yes, but not exactly viral (unless she licks you).

You Will Read This Post

Ahhh, if it were only that easy, I'd be so rich right now that Bill Gates would be my secretary, and Sergey Brin (left one) and Larry Page (right one, watch the laces!) would be shining my shoes. 

And if it worked that flawlessly, you'd already know I am posting about Predictive Software, the next stage in the online search business.   You'd have also already bought the book.  And the t-shirt.  And attended my speech on the subject.

In a fascinating piece in Fortune, Jeffrey M. O'Brien profiles a handful of companies--like Slide, WhatToRent, and my old fave Pandora--that are making great strides in the coming up with the next "next big thing," namely the programs and applications that will "get to know you better than you know yourself" and make piles o' cash by recommending you products and services you really want.   

And in doing so, he shoves another gold certificate into my rapidly thickening Vindication File.  Says  Jeffrey:

"The web...is leaving the era of search and entering one of discovery.  What's the difference? 

Search is what you do when you're looking for something. 

Discovery is when something wonderful that you didn't even know existed...finds you."

Fortune's dictum echoes what I said in my very first post here.  Wanna succeed in business?  Then give people what they don't expect!

How important is this?  Well, take a cold shower or two to soften the hyperbole, but O'Brien goes onto say that the optimum personalized discovery mechanism "could change not just marketing, but all of commerce."

This isn't just a Pow!, it's a 21-gun salute.

I knew it all along.  The future belongs to Surprise.

And by now, if the algorithm worked, you should already know it, too.

Just Desserts--More Vindication!

Great Seth Godin post about a little Surprise with your after-meal coffee. 

Without going into great detail, it's in response to a piece about McCain's "Sweet Classics" mini-desserts,and how they can add an extra buck or two to your restaurant bill.  Now, as a fitness nutter, I'm all for smaller portions, particularly the sinful sweets. But if I owned a restaurant, I'm sure that by eating the few cents these sugar-bites cost and include them with the after-meal beverage, I'd make it up in Surprise spades with upbeat buzz and return customers. 

Or if I was really hungry--money-wise--I'd ratchet up my overall prices a tad and shout out "Free Desserts!" 

File Vindication The

Yup, the Vindication File is getting thicker. 

This from Entertainment Weekly, where film critic Owen Gleiberman was asked why showing scenes out of sequence in movies like Pulp Fiction or Memento is such an effective technique:

"This...has evolved, in no small part, because audiences today are so attuned to the detours and ruses of conventional story-telling.  When a story is told out of order, it's far easier to conjure up that surprise, that what's going to happen next? rush."

That was just the set-up.  Gleiberman then slams home the kicker:

"The real news is that what started as a novelty has now edged into the mainstream..."

Yesterday's rush is today's mainstream.  I couldn't have said it better myself. 

Is it any wonder that filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has suffered diminishing box-office returns on each of his films since the breakthrough hit The Sixth Sense?   The final scene twist in that film was so mobius-like, it sent a buzz through the movie-going public louder than billion bees in honey season.  His next project, Unbreakable, followed the same pattern; okay, we were somewhat fooled again, but not as profoundly as last time.  By the time Signs came around, we were impatiently waiting for it, and his most recent two ,The Village and Lady In The Water, were met by tidal waves of  "So Effin' What."

I think Shyamalan is a gifted writer/director, but if he REALLY wants to Surprise us, his next film should have no Surprise ending at all.  Imagine the shock when what we're all expecting never actually comes.

Maybe he should show some scenes out of sequence...

Slight of Head

Another candidate for the "Vindication File" I spoke of earlier.  This one from Fast Company, which has been a monthly read of mine for years (I still have boxes full of the mag from the heady early Internet days, when each issue was the size of the Manhattan phone book).  In it, Keith H. Hammonds pens a piece on Marshall Monroe, a Disney-trained, uber-creative consultant, and says:

"Do you believe in magic?  It's tempting not to.  For as often as big-company CEOs espouse bromides about innovation, there's still a global shortage of pixie dust.

Too much of what passes for creativity turns out to be small-scale rip-offs and design tweaks.  When we went from two to three razor blades, that was a 'wow!' moment,  By five blades, the thrill had passed."

It's tough to generate new magic (trust me; as a kid magician, I learned the ropes and gave it up when I became bored with the constant variation on the same three-or-four themes), and it's tough to generate new Surprise. 

The two are intertwined.  Slight-of-hand meet slight-of-head.  What makes magic "Magic!" is the basic foundation of Surprise--expecting one thing, then being handed something else that's unexpected. In fact, that's the basic foundation of the entire entertainment industry.   I've found a great quote from Warren Beatty on the element of Surprise in showbiz, and have put together a  ridiculously-long post on the subject, which I'm currently trying to slice-and-dice into manageable chunks.

Until then, I'm gonna try to find me a wholesaler of Pixie Dust.