Key points for how brands can apply the neuroscience of surprise:

• Research in neuroscience suggests a simple formula for harnessing surprise: A Good Experience + Surprise = A Great Experience

• Brands can apply the “surprise formula” in a wide range of scenarios, especially by creatively integrating it into the customer journey

• Surprise can also be a key differentiator for brand loyalty. Airline programs, for example, integrating surprise into their perks to great effect

Think back to the last time you got a gift you really loved. Did you know it was coming, or did it come as a surprise? 

Surprise doesn’t have to be relegated just to gift-giving. Brands can utilize it too. Oftentimes, very simple things, when delivered as a pleasurable surprise, have the ability to transform the consumer experience. And along with it, provide a significant boost to the overall impression of the brand. 

At the same time, the mechanism of surprise is poorly understood. For the brand, using it to create positive experiences is not quite as simple as doing something completely unexpected. Done incorrectly, and surprise can easily backfire. 

To fully harness its powers, we first need to understand the neuroscience of surprise, and the conditions that are required to produce it. When we understand this, we can derive a simple formula for applying it to a wide range of branded experiences.

The Neuroscience of Surprise

Put simply, surprise turns good experiences into great ones. This can be seen deep in the brain. In 2001, neuroscientist Greg Burns looked at how surprise influences pleasure on a human level using fMRI - a brain scanning technique that allows researchers to eavesdrop on the brain’s activity. 

As a participant, it’s a pretty fun experience - you get to lie awake in the scanner, and sip tasty juice through a plastic straw. In one condition, the juice came at regular ten-second intervals. In the other condition, the same overall amount of juice was given, but the timing of the administration was random, thus coming as a surprise. 

Not only did participants in the random condition report enjoying the experience more, but the researchers found that activity in the nucleus accumbens - closely associated with the raw experience of pleasure, displayed increased activation. 

In other words - Juice is good, but ‘random’ juice is great. So how can you use random actions in your branding?

The Formula for Applying Surprise

Thankfully, this isn’t just applicable to drinking juice. Instead, we can apply this to a range of consumer experiences, by extracting the basic template from the enjoyment of juice. Put simply, the formula for applying the neuroscience of surprise is: 

A Good Experience + Surprise = A Great Experience

It’s a simple, yet powerful abstraction. And the brand can utilize it across a range of scenarios.

For one, brands can creatively integrate it into the consumer experience. The British Cafe and sandwich shop Pret a Manger empowers employees with a fund to comp random customers of their choosing, a plan their CEO affectionately calls “random acts of kindness.” 

Imagine you walk in having a bad day, or maybe a really good day - the barista surprises you with a drink or pastry “on the house.” That surprise is likely to make your day, and in the process, make you feel more positively about Pret a Manger. 

Additionally, your brand can apply the principle of a surprise to its customer service guidelines. This doesn’t mean anarchy - it means giving yourself the flexibility to positively surprise your consumers.

The Power of Surprise in Brand Loyalty

The surprise formula is put into play in an important way in the airline industry, where margins are razor-thin, and brands fight tooth and nail for brand loyalty.

Researchers Lena Steinhoff and Robert Palmatier examined the effectiveness of airline loyalty programs and found that those which rely on transactional, rule-based dynamics were the least effective in generating positive feelings towards the brand. Instead, those which provided more flexibility and opportunity for surprise were the most effective. 

These are programs like Delta’s “surprise and delight,”. In addition to the classic perks like first-class travel and early boarding, customers in this program are also sometimes treated to a service they can’t book in advance - a luxurious, complimentary ride directly from the tarmac upon arrival. And it’s this serendipitous perk, which comes randomly and unpredictably, which customers enjoy the most. 

Even a brand like Southwest Airlines–built on egalitarian treatment–will still allow themselves the freedom of random surprises. In fact, they’re famous for it. Southwest will go out of its way to surprise flyers with gifts or free flights when they fly on their birthday or anniversary, or just because. It’s the unpredictable positive experiences that seem to bring the greatest joy and create the strongest feelings of loyalty.

Final Thoughts

Surprise is one of the most underutilized elements of consumer psychology. Ultimately, this is about providing enjoyment in a way that can’t easily be predicted. Whether it’s providing your own version of ‘random acts of kindness’ in the customer experience, or devising a general program that distributes perks that ‘surprise and delight’ in your own way. 

Recall the basic formula for the neuroscience of surprise: A Good Experience + Surprise = A Great Experience.

If you’ve already created a “good” experience, the hard part is done already. Now it's about taking it a step further by introducing a bit of pleasurable surprise. Ultimately, it’s about applying the basic formula for surprise through the unique lens of the brand. 

Just as with gift-giving, there’s always room for a bit of random joy. 

Photo by Erik Brolin on Unsplash

References for “How Brands Can Harness The Neuroscience of Surprise”

Berns, G. S., McClure, S. M., Pagnoni, G., & Montague, P. R. (2001). Predictability modulates human brain response to reward. Journal of neuroscience, 21(8), 2793-2798.

Steinhoff, L., & Palmatier, R. W. (2016). Understanding loyalty program effectiveness: managing target and bystander effects. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(1), 88-107.