Unfortunately, this idea of delighting people is a mystery to most, painted as a very soft and intangible concept that is hard to gauge and even harder to create. I’ve certainly heard the phrase ‘customer delight’ used a lot over the past 18 months, but I’m yet to hear anyone tell us how we do.

Well, except for the guys at 1000heads.

How 1000heads do it

When James Whatley posted this beautiful info graphic on “#WhatIsWom” over the summer, I chomped at the bit to get my hands on one for myself. Sure enough, as promised, it came:

There’s two lessons here that I’ve learnt from James and Molly Flatt and the other guys at 1000heads. The first is the fact that they delivered on the promise in the first place. I’m writing this post right now because James made good on a promise to send me my very own #WhatIsWom poster. You can’t underestimate the power of doing what you say you’ll do.

The second thing that they taught me is to disrupt expectations. I didn’t just get the poster as I was expecting, I got a beautiful hand written note to me, which now sits proudly next to my poster over looking my desk as a fond reminder to go the extra mile.

Now Do It Yourself

I wrote a while back on expectation management, in which I presented a framework that helps you go from what we call ‘customer sacrifice‘ (where the customer doesn’t get what they expect), then ‘customer satisfaction‘ (where the customer gets what they expect), through to ‘customer surprise‘ (where the customer gets more than they expect), and even through to ‘customer suspense‘ (where the customer can’t wait to see what they get next.)

To get a beautiful diagram and framework to help you do this, check out The Basics of Expectation Management. But don’t forget the core two points above: do what you say you’ll do, and then go the extra mile.

And I’d say that to do those two, you have to ultimately and passionately care about people. That’s what 1000heads do.

Your Leading Thoughts

1. What is going the extra mile for you and what you’re doing right now? If you run a business, how can you exceed expectations (and profitably). If you run a church, how you can deliver more value to the congregation than they expect? If you’re blogging away, how can your blog go the extra mile?
2. I boil this down to passionately caring for people. When you passionately care, you do your best to value and bless people. Do you see the same correlation in passion care = go the extra mile?

There’s only one problem with Apple’s model, and it’s an issue of anticipation and expectation. Namely, it is this:

Apple do such a good job of hyping and showing the new thing off, that when I get my hands on the new thing, nothing is new anymore.

You know what I mean here. I remember touching the iPhone for the first time, and as cool as it was, the demonstrations on the website had done such a good job of showing the device to me, that physically holding it had little new about it.

The Power Of New

I always say that the two most powerful things in products and the marketing of them are newness and usefulness, and the most powerful of these is new. If something is new (and marketed powerfully as new), then it can even surpass it’s own weaker usefulness. This is the story of the iPad itself. While many doubt its utility, everyone is certainly swept up in it’s newness.

The whole Social Media world is based on the power of new. If you link to your blog post, it may get retweeted. But if you announce it as a “New Blog Post”, you’ll get a lot more attention. Massive sites like TechCrunch and Mashable all function on the pulling power of new. Everyday millions of bits of information are shared on Twitter and Facebook – most of it, new. Of course this new is really nothing new in itself – it’s what journalists have known for years – hence the pressure to always break a story first, because people don’t buy old news.

Getting back to Apple, as I described above when I first held the iPhone, the problem for me was that although the device was new, when it came to holding the device, there was no longer anything new about it. This is what I expected from the iPad – for people to finally hold the thing, but have nothing new to report or review.

But this time, Apple created newness on another level by delivering surprises that no one knew about. This article from Gizmodo, “10 Essential iPad Tips and Tricks” reveals 11 new things that you can do that people didn’t know before. This is smart, because when people are now reviewing and talking about the iPad, rather than just discussing it’s usefulness (which people are debating), there is something new to discuss – the new features! And what we know about the Social Media hype machine is that it loves new.

Creating New

The reason why I’m excited about this is because back in January I wrote about Apple needing to employ this new level of new in their whole buzz experience. You can read it here. The main point I brought out was a framework to explain how Apple uses suspense to market their products, which I call the Pyramid of Expectation:

In this model (based on Pine and Gilmore’s in The Experience Economy – affiliate link), we see four levels of experience that the customer can have based on the level of their expectation.

When a consumer has an expectation, it is like a promise that the brand has made with them. The promise says that “we will deliver what you expect”, and this expectation is built on a range of things, from marketing to trusted referrals. Of course the idea is that the brand manages these expectations as best they can – but you can read more about that here.

Quite simply, according to this model,

• Sacrifice is when the expectations aren’t met
• Satisfaction is when the expectation are met
• Surprise is when the expectations are exceeded
• Suspense is the experience of anticipating an experience

Therefore, to create new, one needs to look at this model and ask themselves where their customers expectations are? In the case of the iPad, most people are in suspense mode. They are having the buzz experience of anticipating the launch – but traditionally, when they get their hands on the product they go down into satisfaction mode – their expectations were met.

What Apple did this time was rather than letting them drop into satisfaction, they instead delivered a surprise – something new that they were not expecting – and therefore exceeding expectations.

Lisa Barone wrote a great peice for Duct Tape Marketing in March this year on “How to use Surprise to Generate Word of Mouth“. In it she lists the following axioms to create surprise:

• Show Up Where They Don’t Expect
• Go Further Than You Have To
• Give Them Something Different
• Listen When They Think You’re Not
• Make The Little Things, Big Things

By just using these, you can immediately find simple and effective ways to add that element of new into what you do.

Your Experience of New

Experience happens in the senses of the beholder, and what one experiences as new and useful, another may not. Of course, correct profiling can generate target audiences, but still, with each person having different dominate senses and motivatiors within a target audience that is based on sociological information, there is a need for marketing and products to be both multi-touch and multi-sense.

I’m curious, then, because what I percieve to be new may be what you percieve to be old. So what I’d like to discuss with you is:

1. How much is new a driver for you on a daily basis?
2. How much is usefulness a driver for you on a daily basis?

Thanks for reading – and I look forward to talking with you.
Scott

Think about it. Direct reach gets you in front of eyes. But with so much coming in front of eyes everyday, why spend so much money to be just another message?

The things that gets word of mouth and word of mouse today becomes what we call viral. The message is one that lends itself to being shared amongst friends, amongst networks, and amongst communities.

Things that are viral and high spreadability are often very sticky. They stick in front of your eyes, as opposed to being one of the many messages that pass them.

The Cost of Spreadability

The great news about Spreadbility as the new sensibility is that it costs far less than reach. Direct reach on TV, radio, print, etc, will cost you a lot of money for a crowded moment in front of the eyes. But spreadability doesn’t cost that much cash – it costs time and thought.

The local restaurant doesn’t have to spend money it doesn’t have on reach if it can creatively make a special offer spreadable. And how will it spread? Though the existing network of brand advocates (Seth Godin calls them sneezers) who pass the message on.

In order to have higher spreadability we need to stop governing the message and start guiding it. As long as our hands are tightly holding the message, others can’t take it and share it to others. The sneezers can only sneeze the message if they can catch it and get it – own it – in order to pass it onto others.

Again – this is placing an emphasis on people not parts. Reach is really tied up in managing the process of the parts. Spreadability is about leading and developing people.

The Surprise of Spreadability

We’ll talk in the comings weeks about it more, but for now, you can read the whole article over here. My question to you though, hinges on the surpise of spreadability.

I often find that the things I want to spread don’t, and vice versas. I wondering if any of you have any thoughts about what makes something spreadable – and what surprises you’ve had over the things that did spread, and the things that didn’t.

Today I’m going to layout how to go beyond even exceeding expectations and begin to get into the realm of managing expectations. This is ultimately your ability to control what people expect from you – and controlling those expectations means you are able to exceed them every time.

So first, to refresh your memory and provide a frame of reference, here’s the diagram from yesterday. When it comes to managing expectations, we can do it on all these levels, as we went through. If you under promise and over deliver, you will give customer surprise. It’s a hack job, but you’ll do it. What we need, though, is something more than this, and something which has more sustainability and long term strategy – and we find it is in customer suspense where expectation management really flourishes.

Suspense is, as we know, the experience of anticipating an experience. This can be the first time someone interacts with you, or it could be the nth time. Your ability to continue to place your customer in suspense and not merely surprise, satisfaction, or even sacrifice, comes from your ability to manage their expectations. The longer your go on with a customer, the easier it is for them to drop down the pyramid unless you innovate in the way your manage expectation.

Understanding suspense by looking at films

I think one of the best ways to understand suspense and expectation is with films. When the trailer for a film comes out, we have a peak of suspense because suddenly we are anticipating the experience of the film. This suspense spike lasts for a short while, and then goes dormant – until the film starts playing TV spots and other advertisements. We go to the see the film – and our suspense is the highest right before the film starts. From then on, we are now in the experience that we were anticipating, and based on our expectations, we will leave surprised, satisfied, or sacrificed.

This above diagram somewhat sums up what we experience for most films. But there are times when quite drastically, the trailer created more expectation than the film delivered, and we have sacrifice – the classic line being “all the best bits were in the trailer!”

This lesson of “the best bits were in the trailer” is first lesson in expectation management: what is your end?

In order to know what you have to give, you must take stock of what you’ve got. What is the sum total that your customer leaves with? Equally, you need to know what you will receive. You’ll see why in a moment.

Consider the following three scenarios:

1. A B-grade movie knows that it has a cheap storyline to give, and short-term ticket sales to receive. Given that its delivery is weak, it front-loads the best scenes into the trailer on purpose, to create expectations (suspense) that it knows it can’t meet, in order to get people in the cinema so the studio can receive its money. Important: even when they give their end away at the beginning, people still come thinking there is more. No matter how much you give away up front – people will always think there is more, even if there isn’t. So the studio makes lots on ticket receipts over a short period of time. They don’t even think about getting long-term revenue here. This is sacrifice.

2. Apple know that they have a great, game changing product to give, and years of sales and increased market share to receive. Therefore they release information to create a lot of expectation and buzz, but not more than they can deliver on. There’s the suspense. Then, they back-load the expectations. This means they keep the best stuff hidden They know that if they exceed expectations and surprise, they have done well, and even if they just meet expectations and satisfy, they have a very loyal fan base to receive sales from. They are actually more concerned with creating lots of suspense at the beginning to get people talking, than delivering a surprise on that suspense. This is surprise, or satisfaction.

A new café opens in town that already has a number of cafés. They know that they have a ‘newness’ factor, a unique selling point, and high standards from newly trained staff to give, and sales, a customer base, and permission to build long term loyalty with those customers, to receive. Given that they are new in town, they must not only satisfy expectations, but exceed them (surprise), to get customers to return and prefer them over their competitor. The first months are critical for them to continually surprise in order to lock in long term loyalty. This is surprise.

All this might seem like common sense, and it is. What each scenario highlights, however, is that once you know your end, and what you will receive, you know how much of the end to show, to get what you want to receive. A general rule of thumb is:

• If receiving short-term gain, front-load the expectations, in order to get numbers and sales in a spike.
• If receiving long-term gain, back-load the expectations, so that your over delivery gets people back for the next thing you do.

If you find that you’re running events, for example, but no one is coming back – then this may well be why. Why should they come back if you only satisfied them but didn’t surprise them? Given all the competition, if you only satisfy, then you lack uniqueness.

This is only a small part of expectation management, but it’s the start. Below I’ve given you a summary, and have asked specific questions from you. I’ll answer every question you ask to help you get better at this.

Actionable Summary

1. Work out the sum total of what you have to give. This is called ‘the end‘.
2. If you want to get short term gain, give away the end up front.
3. If you want long term gain, give some of the end up front, but keep either a good portion, or the best portion, stored up.

Leading Questions

• Do you identify where you are failing, because you are not managing expectations?
• Does this model work with content marketing online? I’ve got a hunch that it does, but keen to hear your experience.
• Have you proven this model wrong? Are you having long term success by front-loading experience?

So, I made a bit of a mistake yesterday. I wrote a 3,000 word essay on suspense and brand mystery, rolling in far too many case studies, and providing way more content in one post than I’ve said in past times that one should!

I’m going to, instead, start right at the beginning with a basic overview of expectations. One of the central pillars of a compelling experience is that it exceeds expectations. People are pleased, but not really moved, when their expectations are met. If you don’t meet expectations, then you disappoint people and provide a bad experience. But people are really thrilled and motivated to tell others when they’ve had an experience that exceeded their expectations.

Hence this diagram above that was originally drawn up by Joe Pine and James Gilmore in their seminal book The Experience Economy (affiliate link). BTW, if you any of this stuff on experience interests you at all (and it should, it’s the era we live in) then I’d really recommend you get their book. Ok? Ok. Moving on. Let’s get into what it means.

Scaling the pyramid

Let’s begin in the middle: at the level of customer satisfaction. Most companies today are patting themselves on the back and are thrilled when they hit ‘satisfaction’ levels. Now I know that the terminology they are using is not as precise as the terms I’m using here, but still I find this ironic, because satisfaction is quite simply what happens when your exceptions are met. Satisfaction is the fruit of the company delivering on what they promised they would. It’s just like keeping a promise – and in this day and age, keeping a promise shouldn’t be too hard, should it?

Of course, we all know that service and promise keeping is something companies struggle with all day. Hence many customers are left feeling under satisfied. The promise that the company made was not delivered on, which creates customer sacrifice, because they are having to sacrifice on the expectation that the promise set, for the reality of what the delivery is.

A good company will clearly never allow customer sacrifice to take place. They build a relationship of trust with their customers which says that what we say we’ll do, we will do. Not only is customer satisfaction is their standard, but because they are so geared towards delivering great service, the customer often experiences customer surprise. Their expectation as a customer was exceeded, and they were pleasantly surprised.

But what does a great company do that’s different? When your customers are used to being surprised, there comes a new level of experience. It is in fact one of anticipation – the experience of anticipating an experience. This is customer suspense.

This top level is where the big boys live, most noteable of which is Apple, who as I detailed yesterday are masters of suspense (well, almost – there is one lesson they could learn from me.) They have learnt how to manage expectations skilfully – which requires working with a new concept that I’ve been towing with of ‘brand mystery‘.

How does this help me?

Two ways. One, it helps you know where you are, where others are, and how each of them build on the other. Two, knowing what they are, you can now use them to your advantage to manage expectations.

Huh? Manage expections?

Yeah, manage expectations.

And because I’m keen to not overstep the mark and write a long post again, I’ll stop here! But perhaps next week I’ll get into how you begin managing expectations. Again, some of this is in what I wrote yesterday.

So, question time. Where are you on this scale? Come on, let’s get real and be honest. For years I was causing customer sacrifice – I never delivered on the promises that I made. Learning this stuff made me grow up.

That’s me. How about you?

I spoke a while ago on the idea of what I’m calling ‘brand mystery’ – we looked at JJ Abrams’ TED Talk and Lost, and how he tells a story by suspense. He never provides the complete picture, and this is what keeps you hooked. This is contrary to what one copywriter thought when he said “every advertisiement should tell the complete story” – to which I wholeheartedly disagree. Discovering a brand, and unravelling its mysteries, is such a rich experience (and one that I’ve been enjoy since childhood) that it ties you emotionally into it for years to come.

I wrapped some of these ideas up under the word ‘Suspense‘, which I describe as the experience of anticipating an experience. Today, using Star Wars, Apple, Lost, Louis Vuitton, Like Minds, and general meandering between them and other examples, I’m going to hit you with three (long) pointers, and then open this up to discussion to expand our ideas. Let’s begin.

Episode 1. Anticipation is tied into expectation.

No greater example of dismally failed expectations exists in my life than when I saw Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones. For 3 years leading up to the film I had been building it up and up in my mind, imaging how the events of the next episode in the saga would unfold. For the months leading in I read everything about it that I could, re-watched the trailers ad nauseum, read every ‘theory’ on what would happen from other geeks fans as deduced from the trailers, and even made my own costume to wear to the premiere, complete with glueing a Jedi-inspired braid into my hair. Yeah, I know. Diehard.

Suffice to say that nothing could match my expectations. They were huge. As my suspense peaked at galactic heights just before the credits rolled, the ensuing 3 hours just slowly sucked away my love for Star Wars. From then on, I was bitter. They had lost a brand advocate.

Suspense begins with expectation. If I don’t expect anything, then I have nothing to anticipate. But if I expect something, then I anticipate it, and woe betide anyone who fails at delivering on expectations. So it is required then that my expectations are correctly managed, motivated or manipulated (depending on how you see it), in order to increase in my levels of anticipation, and therefore, my experience.

This provides lesson 101 of suspense (and indeed, much of marketing), which is, what expectations does your product/event/org/service set? When I look from afar at the product/event/org/service, what do I expect to get when I transact (purchase) it?

This expectation is very sensorial, even though we often find it hard to express our expectations. Certainly in my research, I’ve found when people’s expectation’s aren’t met, there is a mix of ‘feel’, ‘look’, ‘sound’, ‘taste’ that weren’t right. They are all built up in the mind by expectation.

So then, we enter the world of branding, and language, semantics, images, connotations, etc etc. The question to ask yourself is: what are you making people expect? I think this might be an even more important question to ask than “what are you making people feel?” Branding, marketing and advertising can make people feel things, but I’m more interested in getting their suspense built up than just playing with emotion.

I could give lots of examples here of how this works, but I don’t want to make this too long, so I’ll present one from this week. Yesterday I was drawing up an advert that we’ve been given space to put up for Like Minds in February, and rather than getting bogged down into the details of the event, given the small size of the advert, I created this:

Yeah. It’s little. It doesn’t say much. But you expect three things from it: 1. that this event is so well known it doesn’t need to say when it is, 2. that this event is so well attended that it doesn’t need to say when it is, and 3. that this is a statured event, because it doesn’t try to promote when or what it is. The result of those expectations? Hopefully, that you’ll click the link, and come, based on an impression of stature and a hint of mystery (more on that later.)

(Also, just to cover my back here, I’m not saying that those things are necessarily true about Like Minds and I’m not being all arrogant – we have a long way to go.)

So, getting back to the story – the original story, that is – how could this Star Wars disappointment have been circumvented? I’m not sure it could’ve – this is a very extreme case because I had been building up to it obsessively for years (I’ll tell you more why that matters in a moment.) But I think there is a lesson that can help others not make the same mistake that lies in what Apple does:

Episode 2. Expectation is best when the end is not known (and also why Customer Satisfaction is a load of rubbish.)

As we know, a few times a year when Apple is getting ready with a product launch, they leak a little bit of information which subsequently gets the rumour mill going. The rumour mill creates mockups, ideas and conspiracy theories all around this stuff, and stock begins to rise like an eagle as the world braces itself for the latest Apple innovation.

Yet no one knows what this latest innovation is. They’re all caught up in suspense. (Side note: yes, stockholders get caught up in suspense too.)

Haven’t you ever wondered how this happens so well? Well…

When the end isn’t known, you allow what Guy Kawasaki calls ‘letting 100 flowers blossom’. People’s minds just go to work letting 100 flowers blossom that have nothing to do with the actual thing they’re making. And this is a good thing – it’s your message spreading. This is what’s happening with Apple – people don’t know the end (the product) so they go off in 100 directions and create all new and wonderful ideas which in turn keep the buzz up and the shares rising.

The beauty of this is because no one knows what the thing is – what the end is, that is – they know they might be wrong. When they know they may be wrong in the first place, they are acknowledging that “if you disappointment me, I know that it was because I was expecting something that you didn’t promise.” So if Apple doesn’t do exactly what they had in their mind, they are emotionally prepared for it, and don’t feel disappointed because Apple broke a promise – the promise didn’t exist.

This idea of promise here is a big deal in my opinion. ‘Customer Satisfaction’ is talked about like it’s the great goal to achieve, but satisfaction is really just what happens when someone receives what they were promised. It means my expectation is met. If I get less than what you promised to give, then I’m not satisfied – I’ve had to sacrifice. You have not fulfilled my expectations. And if I get more than you promised, then you exceed my expectations and I am very satisfied – or rather I am surprised. But satisfaction, really, is no big woop. Seriously, in this day and age we should be beyond just delivering what we say we will.

You may be wondering where suspense fits in. So glad you asked. If you continue to surprise me, then what happens? I expect the next surprise – which is an experience of  anticipating an experience. That’s suspense.

This model below explains the four levels. I’ve modified it from something similar that Joe Pine did in the Experience Economy (good read, and an affiliate link)

The diagram reflects that most people are in customer sacrifice, and most companies are delivering to that level. Then we make our way up to the heady heights of suspense. Just to note, some great advice on using this is available on my blog, on the subject of ‘Under-Promising, Over-Delivering.’

So, going back to Apple – that’s the secret of their product launch success and cult fandom? Well the better question is, what do they wonderfully avoid doing when they leak these bits of info about their new products? They avoid making promises. Bingo. That way, the fan’s expectations can’t be met, over met, or under met.

They essentially avoid dipping (for the most part) below satisfaction because they never made a promise to sacrifice on in the first place!

Well, they didn’t make a promise, except for one little thing:

Brand Promise.

This is the big promise that is in everything you do. Everything. So although Apple avoids making the smaller, more specific promises, it has to deliver on the big promise. It must check the big promise box, which for Apple, is innovation.

I told you earlier I’d say why Star Wars could never make this work. So, why didn’t Star Wars work? Because I knew the end. I knew that they had to fit certain storyline elements in – things that I had imagined how they’d happen for years – meaning they had to compete against the whole world that I had built in my mind. I experienced customer sacrifice. And there was no way that I could be wrong here, because it wasn’t like I knew that that I was wrong, as in the case of the Apple fan that dreams knowing they are only dreams. In this case, it was just a matter of how.

And we know that how you do something matters a lot to a lot of people. When people don’t know how, or are marvelled by how, you have magic. But when people scrutinise how, then you have criticism.

Think about it. When books become films, what do people say?

So we’ve now got two guiding principles. Let’s go through one way to make this work – at the end of which, I’ll tell you how Apple could do an even better job with their product launches.

Episode 3. The trick of mystery is all in what you don’t see

I began this peice by discussing brand mystery. I prefer this to the idea of brand story to be honest. A story is something you read, but discovering a mystery is a game you play. It’s far more involving. It’s far more participatory. It’s far more spreadable.

If you watch Lost or 24 (two of the most enrapturing programmes on television), every clue or peice of information is made out to be of vital importance. Of course in a few episodes time, that subplot won’t matter much any more, but for the time being, it is all you can see, and accordingly your mind fixates over it with the questions “what does this mean?” and “what happens next?”

It’s funny isn’t it. What you see has made you think about what you don’t see.

(Where else does that happen? Oh yeah, with Apple!)

Take, for instance, the recent release Daybreakers. After seeing that trailer I was hooked. Questions running through my mind like “how did they become vampires?” and “how does this humanised vampire society function?” and “what’s going to happen?” The trailer didn’t make me say, “I want to go to the movies to just see that same scene again“. It made me want to go the movies to go and find the answers to all these questions that I had.

It’s like lingerie – lingerie beautifully accentuates a woman’s body by glamourously covering her up. It’s about what you don’t see as well as what you do see!

In letting “100 flowers blossom”, and for your audience to begin anticipating, you need to consider what you aren’t showing them (and what they will want to see) by what you are showing them. Philosophical I know. You could also put it this way:

People want to see what they can’t see.

If we go back to my advert for Like Minds, what am I showing them? I’m asking them “what do the thinkers have in common this February?“, so on the surface, I’m telling them that there is something for ‘thinkers’ and that it is in February. From what I have shown then, what do they not see, that they want to see?

I’m guessing they want to see what the thinkers have in common. They want to see what who the thinkers are. They want to see why there’s such little information here.

So now they have a level of suspense. Really, it’s ignorance. They don’t know what they don’t know. They probably have wrong impressions about Like Minds. I remember thinking a whole bunch of things about Nike trainers that were wrong. It’s part of the game.

Say they visit the website – now they have information, and enter a new phase of suspense, in which they’ve acquired some information. This is important. If you allow someone to feed off of ignorance for too long, then they cement their false expectations. Of course, you don’t give them all the info they need: just enough to make their expectations more aligned to reality, and enable them to make their next discovery. It’s like planting a trail. Each part only leads onto the next.

After information, comes intelligence. This is when they can decipher the bigger picture – which is still exciting, and still full of suspense. One major reason why this phase is perhaps even the most exciting is because up until this point you might not have ever purchased the thing you are in suspense and playing the brand mystery game with. Let me provide a personal example with the help of Louis Vuitton.

The first time I heard the name, I assumed this guy Louis was alive. I knew he made hangbags, because someone said they dreamt that “Louis Vuitton had asked them to make handbags”, and I had to no reason to think that Louis was dead, or that he was actually a fashion house! (On another side note, I know my friends have whacky dreams. Mine are even whackier.) At this stage, I had ignorance.

Then after sometime I began to acquire information. Louis Vuitton made a bag that has his initials on, and in actual fact, he was around a hundred years ago, and so was no longer living, except through the fashion house in his name. At this point, though, I thought all they made were bags. The intelligence started coming when I started searching online and found fakes on ebay, found they did other types of bags, and even did bags for men. But it was when I first went into a Louis Vuitton store that intelligence completely set in and I understood that Louis Vuitton was more than bags. And as I said above, at this point, I had not bought anything from Louis Vuitton – yet I was enamoured over them. I had the bigger picture.

This was many years ago, and to this date, I have not bought a Louis Vuitton item. What stage am I in now? Intention. One day, I will purchase this item. I intend to do it. Of course I do – we have history!

The below model presents these stages in the same way to the Pyramid of Expectation:

Intention means I am poised to purchase when I am in a position to. And the waiting game makes this intention stronger in many cases – especially with luxury goods.

Epilogue: One More Thing

So what about Star Wars? Did Episode III regain my trust. No. But it wasn’t as bad. And subsequently I’ve been less and less disappointed with movies. You know why? Because I don’t expect much from them anymore.

And this is the danger when your audience experiences customer sacrifice, they stop expecting. They stop getting too excited.

There is a lesson here for Apple. It’s hidden in all this thinking, but hear me out:

When Apple announced the iPhone there was fanboy hysteria. There it was, in Steve Job’s hands in January 2007, and over the following 6 months I, along with many others I’m sure, browsed the pages of the iPhone website over and over, watching tutorials and seeing how it would work. When it came to seeing the phone for the first time, there was still hysteria. I was pumped to get my hands on it (I was in America for the launch), and when I laid my hands on the thing after this 6 month wait .. I surprisingly .. had little to do with it.

You see, Apple had done such a good job of pre-selling the iPhone, that when it came to holding it my hands, there was nothing new for me, because I’d done it all over the 6 months.

You know what would’ve been cool? If there had been one more thing. Steve’s awesome product lacked his defining line.

What if there had been something on the phone that they didn’t tell you about upfront? A surprise. What if when you held the phone, there was an app, or something that it did, that made you hold the thing for longer and really want to explore it because you hadn’t seen it online and read about it ad nauseum?

That would’ve created a whole new surge of Fanboy interest – the fact that there was something on the phone that you could only see if you went and held onto it – not just looked at it online. That would’ve been innovative. But it’s not too late, Steve, if you’re reading – you still can do it with other products!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I pointed out brand examples I’d use at the beginning of this post, and a few times said I’d get to discussing a point in full later in the article – and took a while to get around to them. My expectation would be that you might’ve forgotten about those by now – but when you read them, they created just a little bit of suspense that helped you get through this post!

So let me hear from you. I’ve used these ideas for numerous events and campaigns, but I wonder if you’ve been using them too. I’m also curious about how you think this works with Social Media and a ‘connected lifestyle’. For instance, didn’t the article title create a little bit of I want to see what I can’t see in you?

Finally, there’s one more thing: there’s more in the post than there was in the title. That doesn’t seem to be the case with many blogs today, where there’s more in the title than there is in the preceding 400 words. One more thing – the hidden thing – is what you put in when you are more interested in connections that crowds.

At the end of every play I see at the theatre, I feel so connected to the actors that I always wish I could go and have a drink with them and thank them. It’s as if they’ve given a part of themselves to me. If I wait around long enough, I get to talk to them. But I can’t just see the headline of the play, I have to experience all of it, and get to the end.

The one more thing that I put into Like Mind,  and those of you who read this blog regularly, is me. It’s not in the title. It’s hidden.

You have to get to the end to get it.

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Thus when I repeatedly failed in delivering expectations, I learnt the further lesson that expectation is closely linked with communication – or the lack thereof.

Yesterday, out of the blue, I received the package pictured here. When I opened it was I both surprised and excited by the gift of Thorntons chocolates sent to me by Optix Solutions. I was surpised because, of course, I wasn’t expecting it – it hadn’t been communicated to me. So therefore when I received the chocolates, my expectations (which were nil) were delightfully over-delivered on.

Enter the state of many failing businesses and we find the opposite scenario. My expectations as a customer or client are high, as I have been communicated to with grand promises of what they can do and what they’ll do. Then comes the execution – the delivery of said promise – and my expectations are frightfully unmet by lacklustre performance.

In fact, it isn’t just failing businesses that do this. I find it funny how many companies make a song and dance about having satisfied customers. But satisfaction just comes from doing what you said you’d do – not exactly the world’s highest goal is it?

I’m more interested in customer surprise – the game of exceeding expectations. There’s one really easy way to do this: under promise and over deliver. Don’t promise your clients everything in the world. In fact, promise them only half of what you intend to do – so that when you do deliver on the other half, they are surprised as they didn’t expect it. That sure leaves them with a great experience.

What I don’t advise doing is over promising and under delivering – unless you intend to then massively over deliver on your under delivery. But that’s another strategy altogether

One final footnote: take advantage of it when people underestimate you – don’t argue with them or try to get them to correctly estimate you – instead use their under estimation to increase your stature in their sight when your produce something they never even estimated you could do.