The Anatomy of Delight

A Broadway show, a YouTube video, and a classic movie lead me to explore how surprise comes from novelty on the other side of familiarity… & why that’s actionable for creators and business leaders.

People call things delightful all the time, but what exactly is delight? It’s not just pleasure, nor is it simply more pleasure. There’s a qualitative difference between delight and pleasure, and that difference is surprise.

If you search dictionary definitions of delight, you’ll find “children squealing with delight” as a frequent example. A squeal doesn’t happen when you get the thing you expected when you expected to get it: it happens when either the thing itself or the timing of getting the thing wasn’t the plan for that moment.

But to create delight, the surprise can’t be a random, “things popping out at you” moment. That’s what horror movies are for. Instead, the surprise of delight has to happen within an experience that makes sense.

Here’s what I mean.

Novelty on the Other Side of Familiarity

It’s impossible to wear out a DVD, but as a tiny girl my daughter Helena tried valiantly by watching Singin’ in the Rain in continuous rotation with Cinderella (the animated Disney version). Helena loved Singin’ so much that when the studio released a special edition I bought it, and we watched the documentaries. I learned that the songs had come first. The studio handed the screenwriters, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, a collection of tunes and asked them to build a story.

This historical tidbit came to mind a few days ago when I got to see the new hit Broadway show & Juliet at the Sondheim during a short break from an Iditarod of NYC meetings. It’s wonderful fun, and I grinned my way through the performance. (If you can see it, see it.)

Like Singin’ in the Rain, the story came second. & Juliet started with the portfolio of Max Martin, a prolific Swedish songwriter and producer who has written for Katy Perry, Coldplay, Kelly Clarkson, Pink, The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Céline Dion, Justin Timberlake, and more. A large sign outside the Sondheim proclaims Martin “The Shakespeare of Pop,” and the playbill includes a page of instantly recognizable songs dating back to the 1990s.

The plot of & Juliet is ridiculous and not what I am writing about this week.  (Spencer Kornhaber already wrote a thoughtful analysis for The Atlantic.)

I do, however, want to call out the dancer Bobby Pocket Horner, who is mesmerizing, magical, and ecstatic every time they take the stage as Rumour. Horner reminds me of Heather Morrisin Glee, who always seemed to move twice as much as the other performers while staying perfectly in sync. I’ll see anything Horner does.

What & Juliet achieves so delightfully is novelty on the other side of familiarity.

Digression: I’m stealing the structure of this idea from Oliver Wendell Holmes, who once wrote, “For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life.” “Simplicity on the other side of complexity” is a favorite quote of my old CEO, Randall Rothenberg, for whom it is an intellectual North Star. It means finding the unifying, true, and compelling idea that brings together a lot of disparate observations with forceful clarity. (End of Digression.)

Novelty on the other side of familiarity means pulling ah ha! flashes out of moments when you’re navigating new territory. Early in & Juliet, when Juliet (who has survived the original plot) mourns Romeo with a slowed-down version of “Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears, that cover does interesting work. Most audience members recognized the song, but the older ones also remembered Spears’ early persona as a girl in a Catholic School Girl uniform moving into a world of adult desire. Deploying that song emphasizes Juliet’s appalling youth (she’s 13 in Shakespeare’s original), which & Juliet goes on to interrogate for the rest of the night.

For the person who does the recognizing (audience member, viewer, customer) these ah ha! moments complicate an experience with a wait a sec! realization of an extra cognitive layer. That realization is a reward, enabling the noticer to feel like an expert, which everybody likes.

This is delight.

Axis of Awesome’s “Four Chords” video (seen more than 81 million times)

You don’t have to go to a Broadway show to experience novelty on the other side of familiarity. In “Four Chords,” the Australian comedy group Axis of Awesome created a medley of nearly 40 pop hits that share the same structure. The medley contains songs from Journey, The Beatles, Maroon 5, Elton John, Pink, Lady Gaga, Natalie Imbruglia, and many, many more.

You should watch this entire, hilarious YouTube video, but you can get the idea in the first 90 seconds.

When Benny, the pianist, starts playing, you think that you recognize Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” But then Benny sings James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful,” and then transitions into “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz. This goes on for dozens more songs.

You’re not wrong when you recognize “Don’t Stop Believing.” The point of the medley is that you’re right: the same four chords define dozens of songs. Axis of Awesome takes familiar songs, reveals something they share, and in doing so creates delightful novelty.

So what?

Watching something delightful—where surprise gets to novelty through familiarity—is a different kind of immersion than the kind we usually talk about.

Technology drives many of our typical conversations about immersion: Avatar: The Way of Water with its three-dimensional depth is immersive. Virtual Reality is literally so immersive that it cuts us off from our surroundings and plunges us into a different world.

The immersion of delight is different: it connects the world we live in and the world of whatever we’re watching, leading us to see new things about both.

If Max Martin had written new songs for & Juliet, it would have been a nice night at the theater, but I doubt it would have been delightful. This is also true of Mamma Mia!

Artists, creators, marketers, business leaders, and others understandably focus on the products that they spend their time making and selling, but what the anatomy of delight shows us is that context amplifies content.

What your audience or customer gets out of your product depends on more than just who they are before they show up and whatever it is that you’re selling: it also depends on where they’ve been.