The Startling Power of Surprise with Adam Morgan

**Jon Evans** (0:00)
Hey, everyone. Now, if you want to know the secret to more impactful creator ads, then this is good news. Stop obsessing over engagement rates and start pulling the three levers that really make a difference to your brand. Now, what are they? They are creative quality, creator fame, and brand fit. And they're revealed in a brand new report from WPP Media, a system one and TikTok called The Creator Effectiveness Playbook.
This is your guide to making fantastic creator advertising that works for your brand. Now, to get a hold of it, all you have to do is go over to systemonegroup.com and download the report today.

**Adam Morgan** (0:38)
All right.

**Jon Evans** (0:38)
Without further ado, let's go on with the show. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. Now, two years ago, Adam Morgan and myself were on stage at the Cannes Lions Festival, talking about the extraordinary cost of being dull. Little do we know that we hit a nerve in the industry by illustrating how much money people waste every single year, making advertise that people basically ignore. Now, since then, we think about what is the answer to all this? We've come up with an idea, surprise. In this episode, we're going to be talking about The Startling Power of Surprise, why it matters, and how to do it. So here we go.
Adam, welcome back to Uncensored CMO.

**Adam Morgan** (1:21)
Thank you very much indeed.

**Jon Evans** (1:21)
A returning guest, of course.

**Adam Morgan** (1:23)
I know, I know, I think it's my third time.

**Jon Evans** (1:25)
Indeed, yes, I used to do a Hall of Fame, I think, for the returning guest. But look, we were on stage with me and Cannes two years ago, presenting the extraordinary cost of being dull, which as we know is inspired by some work you and Peter did, putting a monetary value on dull. And it seemed to go down all right, certainly based on the number of presentations you and I have done in the two years since.
I never thought in my career that I would be going around the world telling people how dull they are.

**Adam Morgan** (1:53)
And then paying you to do it.

**Jon Evans** (1:54)
Yes, I know. It's an extraordinary outcome.

**Adam Morgan** (1:56)
It's a great model, I think.

**Jon Evans** (1:57)
It's a great model. But as you reflect back on that talk two years ago, what were the kind of surprising outcomes?

**Adam Morgan** (2:03)
Well, I think one of the things I've been really gratified about is the deep level of interest in it. So for instance, I'm meeting up with somebody on Thursday who's been replicating this in Canada and exploring kind of the data in Canada. We've got a lot of interest in replicating it across Asia with a couple of partners. I think Australia have been doing some work on it as well as some interest in France. So there's a real interest in the substance, which I think is great. But one of the other things I think that has been surprising is it's quite hard to tell, isn't it? When you put something out like this in the world, it's quite hard to know what your audience is making of it. And you and I went to speak to a very nice group of people in a pharmaceutical company in the States last year.
And we gave our presentation with passion and energy, as we always do, to this audience who appeared entirely impassive at the end of it, didn't laugh at any of our jokes, and it was quite funny, I thought. I thought they're funny jokes. Didn't laugh at any of it, didn't appear to have any kind of reaction, didn't really follow up in any kind of way, thought that this hadn't landed in the right way at all, and then find out a few months ago that made a huge impression and encouraged them to produce a new startling, surprising Super Bowl ad that had landed really well. So it's quite hard to tell exactly what ripple effects you're having, isn't it?

**Jon Evans** (3:09)
Yeah.
And it was a surprising Super Bowl ad, particularly given how conservative the pharmaceutical industry are as well. That was a similar experience, actually, because we also went to a major global restaurant chain down in LA and had a great time there and got a message from one of their... This is a kind of global meeting of their CMOs, and one of them messaged me a few weeks later to say, oh, by the way, I'm setting up my own agency, and my mission is to defeat Dull, inspired by a presentation. So even birth creative agencies on a mission to take the insight and run with it, which is great.