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Episode: Captivating Creative

Author: Think with Google / Gimlet Creative
Duration: 00:16:54

Episode Shownotes

The fast pace of the internet presents several challenges for marketers today, especially when it comes to how to captivate consumers. In this episode, we explore one advantage that marketers should never underestimate in their campaigns— the power of surprise. We’ll learn how one Google Doodle won the hearts of

Selena fans and even hear from Surprisologist, Tania Luna. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Full Transcript

00:00:02 Speaker_08
Welcome to the Think with Google podcast. I'm your host, Tess Viglund. Today, we're going to explain how a marketing campaign and even any piece of creative should never underestimate the power of surprise.

00:00:16 Speaker_08
Surprise can bring something special to a consumer's day that ultimately creates a connection to the brand. According to a Nielsen Catalina Solutions study from 2017, creative assets are the most important element in driving sales.

00:00:33 Speaker_08
But as a whole lot of marketers have been telling us throughout the reporting of this show, it can be seriously difficult to be seen and heard in today's world, much less surprise your audience.

00:00:46 Speaker_01
You know, I always say the toughest thing to do in this business is get someone's attention.

00:00:50 Speaker_03
It's a skippable world.

00:00:52 Speaker_01
You're competing with the entire internet, right?

00:00:55 Speaker_03
What are you going to do to tell stories in ways that will capture and connect with someone and what they really want to see immediately?

00:01:03 Speaker_08
In fact, according to the 2019 Customer Experience Trends Report, the vast majority of people surveyed said brands that should get them, understand them, simply didn't.

00:01:18 Speaker_08
So here we are in a time where the internet bombards us with so much so fast that we aren't easily captivated or surprised anymore.

00:01:27 Speaker_08
But using surprise in a creative can elicit feelings like delight or humor that open the door to a sense of relationship with a brand.

00:01:38 Speaker_08
We're going to start by taking a look at one kind of creative that not only made people stop and want to talk about it, but also moved them. And surprise was a key element.

00:01:49 Speaker_02
I was like lying in bed one of those times when you can't fall asleep and you're just sort of scrolling through your phone and happened to open up my Google tab and it was a stunning moment.

00:02:01 Speaker_02
I just felt this wave of emotions of like pride, excitement, surprise.

00:02:07 Speaker_08
That is Adan Garcia, and that sleepless night was on October 17th, 2017. When he logged onto Google's website, a Google Doodle popped up.

00:02:19 Speaker_08
For those of you who don't know, a Google Doodle is when Google alters the logo on its homepage to celebrate something, like a holiday or a notable person.

00:02:29 Speaker_08
And on that day in October, the Google Doodle was an illustrated music video of Mexican-American pop star Selena Quintanilla Perez, known worldwide as Selena. Her success turned tragic when, two decades ago, she was murdered by a fan.

00:02:45 Speaker_08
The Doodle was honoring her on the 28th anniversary of her debut album called Selena. When you hit the purple play button that was next to the logo, you were pulled into Selena's world.

00:02:58 Speaker_08
A tour bus with the family band, a purple jumpsuit, and floating pizza pies.

00:03:04 Speaker_05
It starts with her as a little girl, dancing around and singing, and then she transforms into this you know, icon of a woman.

00:03:12 Speaker_08
That's Madeline Mendoza. She saw the Google Doodle when she logged on at home in San Antonio, Texas. And on the same day in Chicago, Mindy Barraza-Corral saw it, too.

00:03:23 Speaker_06
The color purple is very much associated with her. Her, like, super famous outfit that she wore, like, purple and sparkling, and, like, every little girl wanted to wear that outfit. And so I did tear up a little bit.

00:03:38 Speaker_06
She was one of the things that I could latch on to. And you see her, Mexican-American girl. She died really, really young, but she still made an impact. She's still important.

00:03:50 Speaker_08
Even though they were all in different cities, Mindy, Adan, and Madeline were all connected by their love of Selena through that doodle. The woman who spearheaded the project is Perla Campos. She's the global marketing lead for Google Doodles.

00:04:05 Speaker_08
How does it feel to hear those people's reactions about the Selena doodle?

00:04:12 Speaker_04
Well, you guys are trying to make me cry like I have goosebumps right now. It gave me goosebumps to hear those respondents because quite honestly, the whole thing was, she deserves this, our community deserves to have this done right.

00:04:31 Speaker_04
And to hear someone say like, you know, they took the time to do this right, that means the world because that was 100% the intention and it just means so much to hear that people felt that way.

00:04:41 Speaker_08
Perla and the rest of her team of doodlers are incredibly passionate about the doodles they create. They kind of nerd out on what types of things should go into each and every doodle you see.

00:04:52 Speaker_08
And they found that in order to make a doodle successful, like many pieces of creative, you need two things. The first is data. Perla and her team can use data to make good bets on which doodles will really speak to people who use Google search.

00:05:09 Speaker_04
We keep an eye out on trends, like what are the things that people care about right now. Those are insights that go into informing how we build our pipeline.

00:05:21 Speaker_08
And the second thing is being able to tap into your audience's or market's passion. That was easy for Perla, being a huge Selena fan herself.

00:05:31 Speaker_04
I grew up in a really small town in Texas, daughter of an immigrant mom, and there weren't a lot of people in, you know, the Mexican community around me.

00:05:43 Speaker_04
And watching Selena, I remember just always lighting up when I would see her, looking at her and thinking, like, God, I want to be, I want to be like her and I can be like her if I, you know, if I work hard enough.

00:05:57 Speaker_08
So for Perla, it was really important to make this doodle perfect.

00:06:02 Speaker_04
You know, we were able to get clearance to use Bidi Bidi Bom Bom and just develop a really amazing, beautiful partnership with her family, primarily her dad, Abraham, and sister Suzette.

00:06:16 Speaker_08
Perla and her team used very specific details that they found in their research.

00:06:21 Speaker_04
They have a museum in Corpus Christi in Selena's honor, and so, you know, Suzette taking us through the museum and Abraham, too, and showing us the different mementos and, you know, like, things that we just had to get right, right?

00:06:33 Speaker_04
Like, for example, the lipstick on the mic. You know, they have a mic in the museum that actually has Selena's lipstick on it.

00:06:40 Speaker_08
And that kind of specificity really resonated with Selena fans.

00:06:45 Speaker_05
I noticed there's a part that shows her microphone.

00:06:48 Speaker_02
The level of specificity of putting the red lipstick on her microphone.

00:06:53 Speaker_06
You can tell that whoever or however many artists that were working on that really cared to get it right.

00:07:01 Speaker_08
On October 17th, 2017, the Selena Doodle was ready to go live. Nearly two years went into this moment.

00:07:10 Speaker_04
And finally it goes up and I'm seeing it and I just burst into tears.

00:07:22 Speaker_08
Worldwide, there are more than 3.5 billion Google searches every minute. The Selena Doodle ran in the U.S., Mexico, and other places like India, so you can imagine how many people saw it that day. It's safe to say that it went viral.

00:07:39 Speaker_08
Going viral is the thing that so many marketers dream of, but All the testing in the world can't guarantee that your creative will forge a strong bond with the consumer.

00:07:50 Speaker_08
So what was it about this doodle in particular that made people connect to it and want to share it?

00:07:57 Speaker_07
Surprises the very heart. It's the engine of something spreading virally. That's Tanya Luna, and she has a pretty cool job. I am the co-CEO of a leadership training company called LifeLabs Learning.

00:08:11 Speaker_08
LifeLabs basically trains companies to think more creatively, and Tanya's job is studying surprise for a living.

00:08:21 Speaker_07
What we focus on are what we call the tipping point skills. What are the smallest, most critical kind of foundational skills that make the biggest impact in the largest number of domains?

00:08:31 Speaker_08
Surprise is something that makes a day extra notable. You know, when an unexpected person, place, or thing stops you short, delights you, or forces you to reassess expectations.

00:08:42 Speaker_08
Like maybe you ran into an old friend you hadn't seen in a while, or your local barista had your order ready before you even walked through the door. Chances are, after those kinds of moments, you tell your friends about it.

00:08:54 Speaker_08
All of those steps, from being surprised to sharing it with others, are what Tanya's interested in.

00:08:59 Speaker_07
Surprise is an event. It's not really one thing. It's a sequence of things. We call it the surprise sequence.

00:09:06 Speaker_08
And after the break, we'll explain the science behind the surprise sequence and what marketers can learn from it.

00:09:22 Speaker_00
You're listening to the Think with Google podcast, brought to you by Google. At Think with Google, it's their mission to make marketers more knowledgeable by providing research, insights, and perspectives that change the way marketers do business.

00:09:36 Speaker_00
In this episode, we're talking about how important creativity and surprise are in marketing.

00:09:41 Speaker_00
For more insights and research on creativity and other topics on the future of marketing, visit thinkwithgoogle.com or subscribe to their email newsletter at thinkwithgoogle.com slash subscribe. Now back to the show.

00:10:02 Speaker_08
Welcome back. When we last left off, we were talking about this thing that Tanya coined, the surprise sequence. It's the building blocks of how we react to the unexpected.

00:10:13 Speaker_08
So let's get back to the Selena doodle, which was definitely a surprise for the fans who saw it that day. They were excited to share it.

00:10:22 Speaker_08
When Perla Campos and her team created it, they had no idea it was going to make as much of an impact as it did on fans like Adan Garcia.

00:10:32 Speaker_02
I just felt this wave of emotions of like pride, excitement, surprise.

00:10:39 Speaker_08
He and many others were going through the surprise sequence.

00:10:44 Speaker_07
opening your browser for the day, which could feel really non-eventful, all of a sudden this totally ordinary thing becomes just a little bit extraordinary because consciously or unconsciously your brain is going, what's it going to be?

00:10:56 Speaker_07
And that questioning by your brain has an impact on you biologically. So the first thing that happens when you're surprised is what we call the freeze phase. You know, when that surprise completely stops you in your tracks.

00:11:11 Speaker_07
It lasts for about 1 25th of a second, it turns out. If you ever give someone surprising news while they're eating, it's really fun because you just see them sort of stop with their mouth hanging open and their fork midair.

00:11:23 Speaker_07
Meanwhile, your brain has to process the unexpected moment. It sort of has to change gears. And the shift phase is where your mind changes, maybe your emotion changes. This is where if you think, you know,

00:11:36 Speaker_07
A person holds the door open for you on a day where you were particularly cranky and you're like, oh, people are kind, people are good, you know?

00:11:43 Speaker_08
And the end of the sequence is when a person really wants to share the experience.

00:11:48 Speaker_07
And share is the point in which your brain is kind of, it's like so overwhelmed with all that cognitive processing that you want to talk about your experience with others.

00:11:58 Speaker_07
As a species, we survive because when we learn that we were wrong in our assumptions, we passed on that information to others.

00:12:07 Speaker_08
And there's research to prove it. According to a study by Rust and Oliver in 2000, the memory of a delightful experience may last longer than the memory of just a satisfying experience.

00:12:19 Speaker_08
And a study by Berger and Schwartz in 2011 says interesting buying experiences get more positive word of mouth. So for marketers, how does this science play out?

00:12:31 Speaker_08
Tanya says she's seen companies leverage surprise in really creative ways, resulting in great campaigns.

00:12:38 Speaker_07
I think Lyft, they did something really delightful where they would give you this report at the end of the year that would tell you what kind of rider are you? Are you a night owl? And just gives you this sort of playful look at

00:12:52 Speaker_07
how you can see yourself and your relationship with this brand, with this company.

00:12:58 Speaker_08
So Lyft is an example of how a brand can use surprise to make a direct connection between that brand and its consumers. But then there's this other pretty funny way. Tanya gives us an example from MailChimp, a newsletter company.

00:13:14 Speaker_07
When you send off your newsletter, have you ever seen what happens?

00:13:19 Speaker_08
No, I don't think I've paid attention.

00:13:20 Speaker_07
Oh my gosh, okay. The chimp gives you a high five. If you click the high five, he or she, or they, take you to a different chimp-inspired place on the internet. What?

00:13:34 Speaker_07
And you just see all these people in the comment section just being like, I can't believe I'm here.

00:13:38 Speaker_08
I had no idea.

00:13:39 Speaker_07
You have to click the, you have to hit the chimp hand. In the digital age, we can certainly make everything lean, clean, efficient, predictable, but that would not be designing for humans.

00:13:54 Speaker_07
Humans need to feel play and delight and wonder, and that makes it feel meaningful. I care about the male chimp. I'll spend more money on the male chimp just because he high-fives me.

00:14:08 Speaker_08
This Easter egg generated a raft of fun feelings with something that didn't have anything to do with what MailChimp is really all about, uh, sending newsletters. You're delighted and brought in on an inside joke.

00:14:23 Speaker_08
And that leads to a pretty notable moment in your day, which is now tied to a brand that won't be forgotten. This is the same thing that happened with our Selena fans at the top of the episode, where surprise created such an emotional reaction.

00:14:38 Speaker_08
Here's Adan Garcia again.

00:14:39 Speaker_02
It made me teary. I don't know that I have words. I was proud to see her up there in the way that I see other icons and other heroes get celebrated by Google.

00:14:53 Speaker_08
In marketing, it's so easy to focus on the corporate side of things. But ROIs and KPIs, they mean nothing without knowing how to connect on a human level.

00:15:05 Speaker_07
In moments where you actually see a Google Doodle that really speaks to you, that means something to you, where you're like, oh my gosh, it's a holiday that you didn't realize that Google would care about, or an individual, that triggers that surprise sequence and just makes it incredibly meaningful.

00:15:21 Speaker_08
So in a time where it's so hard to cut through the clutter and make pieces of creative that stand out, the difference between the forgettable and the unforgettable in so many cases is the use of surprise.

00:15:46 Speaker_08
The Think with Google Podcast is brought to you by Google and Gimlet Creative. This episode was produced by James T. Green, Carrie Anne Thomas, and Katie Shepard. Gabi Bulgarelli is our fact checker. We are edited by Andrea Bruce.

00:15:59 Speaker_08
Bumi Hidaka mixed this episode. Katherine Anderson is our technical director. Our theme is by Marcus Thorne Begala. Additional music from Marmoset, Billy Libby, and So Wiley. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

00:16:14 Speaker_08
And if you like what you've heard, or maybe you've been surprised and delighted, share with your friends and colleagues.