Episode 002 · Brand · Creativity · Emotion Excitement Unlocked
Excitement is one of the most underrated forces in brand building — and one of the hardest things to engineer deliberately.
Show notes
Gordon Euchler and Maik Hoffman from The Spikes join David to explore what excitement actually is in a business context — not as an aesthetic quality, but as a strategic outcome.
They look at brands that excite successfully, examine counterintuitive examples that work against expectation, and build a practical case for why more companies should treat excitement as a design goal.
"Excitement is when a company manages to stand out — because every day, hundreds of companies with thousands of approaches try to reach out to people."
"80% of companies claim to be customer centric. 80% of people think companies are customer centric. But you can feel it every day that there's so much activity, and it doesn't reach out to the people."
"Switch the perspective from the company to the people's perspective. Switch from what we're sending to what people are receiving."
"Things that might sound counterintuitive or even impossible are possible and are relevant to people."
The Playbook
The reusable principles from this conversation.
The Playbook
1. Excitement is comparative. What thrills today becomes baseline tomorrow.
The Spikes have asked 156,000 people one question: did a company recently do something that you truly enjoyed? Out of the thousands of companies trying to reach each person, they can name only one. Excitement is not an absolute. It is relative to everything else happening in the category. A competitor who significantly raises their excitement score creates a new baseline — for everyone.
Why it's overlooked: Companies monitor competitor features and pricing. Almost none monitor competitor excitement scores. The gap you cannot see is the one that surprises you.
The Playbook
2. The most exciting moves are often counterintuitive
A bank sends a bot to handle customers who have missed loan payments. Standard logic says use your most empathetic human for that call. The data says the bot performs better — because the customer is ashamed and would rather admit it to a machine. A post-purchase discount arrives after the transaction is complete. To the customer, it feels like a gift, not a promotion. These ideas only emerge when you switch from what you are sending to what they are receiving.
Why it's overlooked: Counterintuitive ideas are hard to defend before testing. They sound wrong. The data consistently shows they work. Most companies never test them because the proposal does not survive the internal review.
The Playbook
3. Ask what excited people, not what they prefer
80% of companies claim to be customer-centric. 80% of people do not experience companies that way. Preference surveys and satisfaction scores show what people want to be seen as preferring. Excitement research — asking what actually surprised and delighted them recently — shows what actually happened. The gap between those two is where the opportunity lives.
Why it's overlooked: NPS and CSAT scores are in every dashboard. They are easy to benchmark and easy to report to leadership. Excitement research is messier, harder to operationalise, and harder to compare quarter-over-quarter.
The Playbook
4. Look outside your category for the next idea
A chatbot that evokes friendship works in telecoms. That same mechanism — using technology to remove emotional friction rather than add efficiency — can work in banking, healthcare, or retail. The mechanism transfers. The specific tactic does not. The companies that find the next big customer experience idea in their category usually borrowed it from somewhere else.
Why it's overlooked: Industry benchmarking feels rigorous and responsible. It is also the fastest way to converge on the same set of ideas as every competitor and call it innovation.
The Guest
Gordon Euchler & Maik Hoffman
The Spikes
"It's easy to be cynical about advertising. But it's possible to make a difference and to excite people — and it is worth pursuing that." — Gordon Euchler.
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