When does the rubber band break?

When does the rubber band break?

When does the rubber band break?

The art of communicating is to find the limit on how far you can stretch your “communications rubber band” before it breaks. It’s the fast track to increase the impact of your communications.

When do you lose the contact between surprise and relevance? We have all seen campaigns that engaged us by delivering a surprise, where the final twist made them memorable. On the other hand, we have also seen those campaigns that surprised us, but we never remember why we saw them or who the sender was.

The rubber band can be a metaphor for the power of communication. The longer we can stretch an imaginary rubber band between surprise and relevance, the greater the effect. But if it breaks, we lose everything. So interesting communication must always be at the forefront and challenge us. Give us something that makes us smile, upset, happy, angry, wiser, interested… to trigger a reaction. But it can’t go too far in front so that it risks disappearing beyond the horizon. If your message, so to speak, disappears beyond the horizon, when the surprise takes over and shadows the message, the communication becomes irrelevant and fails. So you have to stay interesting but relevant.

To surprise is often to dare to break patterns. To do something that has unintended consequences by seeing things from a new direction or placing something familiar in a new environment. Successful communication is based on being able to surprise, and this, in turn, requires that you dare to do something differently. Simple in theory but challenging in practice. Dare to stretch a little bit further, but not too long, and your communication can support your path to leadership.

Do you have examples of communication where the surprise was greater than the relevance?

Interesting facts:

Did you know that the rubber band, or elastic band, was patented back in England in 1845 by Stephen Perry? Some ideas last long.

Did you also know that the rubber band is an entropic machine? Stretch it and put it to your upper lip, and you will feel heat. Release the tension, and the rubber band will feel cooler.