The Startling Power of Surprise

As marketers, we tend to think of surprise as an executional device. But we should be thinking of it as a strategic tool, a powerful multiplier for impact and effectiveness. Because the opportunity here is huge: while as humans, we all have the craving for surprise as fundamental human trait, we’re living in an increasingly algorithmically driven world whose ‘personalisation’ gives us increasingly less surprise in our lives, by giving us content it knows we already like.

Using original research and analysis from the world’s leading practitioners, this session offers a practical model for how and when we can use surprise to our own advantage ourselves.

• What makes surprise such a powerful multiplier of effects for us as communicators?
• What are the different kinds of strategic and executional surprise that marketers can use, and when should you use each?
• What can we learn from people using surprise brilliantly outside marketing?