Let's be honest: even the most special events aren't that special anymore.
In this Run of Show Weekly video, I dig into the psychology behind "surprise," and why it's something we're missing in events. How does it create deeper relationships? How can it shape your attendees' experience? How can it make the "er" moment happen?
The element of "surprise" is so powerful, it can make your best event happen. See how:
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So, a couple years ago, my client invited me to their event at Webster Hall and when I got there, they invited me backstage. On stage, there were some incredible acts.
There was someone juggling chainsaws, a motorcyclist who was also a flamethrower, and there was a knife thrower. While a lot of people were watching the stage, I was just fixed on the faces of the audience.
Have you ever been backstage and just looked at the audience?
I was obsessed. In that moment I couldn't believe what I was watching: the awe on their face, their looks of surprise, their brains were exploding, and you could just see it in their eyes.
It was at that moment, I just knew what I was going to do with my life. Some people create music, some people create movies, some people create fashion -- I wanted to create events. I wanted to create experiences. I wanted to get people to feel that surprise that I saw on their face.
The first thing I did was I started reading up on surprise, trying to understand it. Serendipitously, I had met someone who self-defined as a Surprisologist. This is somebody who studies surprise for their profession. Her name is Tania Luna. She is an absolute genius if you haven't checked out her TED talk, you got to go do it right now. She taught me a couple things:
A surprise is like a mini fight-or-flight moment in our brains. Many people are living a life of the same old same old. Do A, we get B. A cause-and-effect autopilot experience.
When we experience a surprise, when we have a set of expectations and we get something else, our brain doesn't really know what to do with it -- as opposed to looking forward to the future plans or looking to the past memories, like what am I doing this weekend? What did I eat for lunch? What did my coworker tell me?
As opposed to that, a surprise kind of stops us in our tracks and makes us focus on The Right Now, and that is a very powerful experience. I just read in ink that a surprise can actually deliver 4x the level of serotonin.
The way that Tania describes it is pretty interesting. She taught me that a surprise is like an "er" moment. So if something is happy, but it comes with a surprise, it's going to be happier or if something is really sad, but you're surprised by it, that's sadder. If something that makes you really proud, but you get surprised by this, you're going to feel prouder.
Whatever emotion you're trying to impact, a surprise is going to make it "er." It's a very powerful tool, especially when you think about what we do as event marketers, and as event planners, as experience creators. When we think about using surprises, that is why we get out of bed.
If you're in this industry, if you've chosen this profession, I have to believe that you're not only brought into this, you've become obsessed with it. You've fallen in love with it like I have.
But the irony is: in today's day-and-age as I look at the global ecosystem of events, many of what we call special events aren't really that special anymore.
It could be for a lot of reasons. It could be because you're tied up in the minutia of the event, or you've got so many events you can't focus on this one. You don't feel like you have enough budget or enough resources to really execute on a surprising moment. It can be all of these things.
What I want to do is I want to recommit us. I want to remind us why we got into this. It's to get people to feel that expression that I saw when I was standing backstage. It’s to make people stop in their tracks and to forget the future and the past and think about where they are in that moment.
When we do that, we can do some very powerful things. We can get them to remember more. We can get them to feel more. We can get them to build deeper relationships.
So in some of the following episodes, we're going to talk about not just why surprises are so powerful, we're going to talk about how we can set, meet, and then beat expectations with every single action that we do.
We're going to talk about how we're going to use surprise before, during, and after the event. I believe that after a couple more conversations about this, you're going to buy-in like I have to the power of surprise and you're going to recommit like I have to "surprise."
People may not remember what happened at your event, but they'll remember how you made them feel. Learn how to craft an event message that is thought-provoking and engaging.
Ben Hindman is co-founder and CEO of Splash, the country's fastest-growing event marketing platform that helps businesses and brands more effectively market through their events. An event planner turned tech entrepreneur, events are in Ben’s DNA. Prior to starting Splash, Ben was the Director of Events at Thrillist, where he produced large-scale events from concerts to mystery fly-aways.
