The element of surprise can elevate a good incentive experience to a great one.
Surprise — your insurance doesn’t cover the anesthesiologist for your recent colonoscopy. Surprise — your car doesn’t start and you’re already late for that important meeting. Yep, a lot of times, surprises aren’t exactly a wonderful thing.
But when an incentive planner can pull off a surprise that also delights — now that’s pure incentive magic, says Kelsey Nicol, Vice President of Strategic Accounts with One10, which provides travel and events, incentives and recognition, and marketing services to support its clients in improving human performance.
Prevue recently sat down with Nicol to learn more about how the element of surprise can wow even the most jaded incentive attendees.
Prevue: It must be difficult to come up with ideas that will make a big impression on incentive winners, especially those who have been on a few incentive trips already or do a lot of travel on their own.
Nicol: One of the key things is to give them an experience they couldn’t have on their own — take them to a bucket-list destination or have them stay in an amazing property that they may have seen on a TV show or movie and always wanted to experience for themselves. But one thing I have learned through working in this industry is that the element of surprise can be surprisingly powerful.
It doesn’t have to be a huge thing, but it should be unexpected. For example, instead of having them get into a motor coach or minibus between venues, surprise them with a ride in a vintage car or a luxury sports vehicle. There’s something about being surprised that makes it feel like more care went into creating that experience, it just feels more heartfelt and thoughtful.
Prevue: But isn’t it tempting to lay out all the cool elements up front? You want to make the program sound amazing so they’ll work hard to qualify for it and leaving out some of the details must be difficult.
Nicol: It is difficult, especially if the qualifiers can do a lot of amazing things on their own. I do sometimes have that conversation with clients about the importance of not giving everything away. You can say it will be a final night event, but you don’t have to give away all your secrets up front.
If you lower the expectations just a bit and then you give them a big wow, they walk away saying, “That was amazing! I didn’t have any idea that was coming.”
For example, I was part of a program for a major tech company where an entire evening was a series of surprises. They thought they were just going to a dinner, but we folded in a series of surprises from the cocktail reception through unbelievable dinner entertainment and ended it by surprising them with a drone show. It was one of the best events I have ever been a part of throughout my career.
Prevue: How else have you seen planners surprise and delight people?
Nicol: One great example was last year’s IRF Invitational, which had a “surprise and delight” theme. The team asked certain questions during registration, then surprised select attendees based on their responses. One person had a daughter heading off to college, so they recorded a video with her daughter and played it during the general session and gave her a t-shirt of the university her daughter would be going to. Another attendee’s mother had a dream of going to Hawaii but passed away before she could make it there. IRF worked with its Hawaii partners to surprise her on stage with a trip to Hawaii.
These surprises also were personal, which made them feel even more special and impactful.
Of course, you can’t do it for every one of the 2,000 people in attendance at a large incentive program, but everyone is moved by surprises with such personal connections. People want to be a part of that, even if they’re not chosen. And it provides an emotional connection to the company, because you are showing that you really do care about attendees as human beings, not just employees.
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