Contagious by Jonah Berger
by Parker · 71 things on Twos
- Contagious by Jonah Berger summary
- $100 cheesesteak from Barclay Prime
- Evoke emotion like surprise or amazement, make the story teller look cool, and offer useful information
- Six principles of contagiousness
- Social currency
- How does it make people look to talk about a product or idea?
- Make things that make people seem smart, rich, and cool
- Craft messages to help them achieve these desired impressions
- We need to find our inner remark ability and make people feel like insiders
- Leverage game mechanics to give people ways to achieve and provide visible symbols of status that they can show to others
- Triggers
- How do we remind people to talk about our products and ideas?
- Design products and ideas that are frequently triggered by the environment and create new triggers by linking our products and ideas to prevalent cues in the environment
- Emotion
- When we care, we share
- Rather than harping on function, we need to focus on feelings
- Public
- Can people see when others are using our product or engaging in our desired behavior?
- It’s hard to copy something you can’t see
- Making things more observable makes them easier to imitate, which makes them more likely to become popular
- We need to design products and initiatives that advertise themselves and create behavioral residue that sticks around even after people have bought the product or espoused the idea
- Practical value
- How can we craft content that seems useful?
- People like to help others, so if we can show them how our products or ideas will save time, improve health, or save money, they’ll spread the word
- We need to highlight the incredible value of what we offer
- Package our knowledge and expertise so that people can easily pass it on
- Stories
- What broader narrative can we wrap our idea in?
- Embed our products and ideas in stories that people want to tell
- “The most powerful marketing is personal recommendation”
- People share things that make them look good to others
- The desire to share our thoughts, opinions, and experiences is one reason social media and online social networks have become so popular
- The key to finding inner remark ability is to think about what makes something interesting, surprising, or novel. Can the product do something no one would have thought possible?
- Scarcity and exclusivity help products catch on by making them seem more desirable. If something is unavailable or sold out, people assume that it must be worth the effort
- Marketing is about tapping into people’s genuine enthusiasm for products and services that they find useful or fun or beautiful. Marketing is about spreading the love
- Rather than harping on features or facts, we need to focus on feelings; the underlying emotions that motivate people to action
- Seeing others do something makes people more likely to do it themselves
- If it’s hard to see what others are doing, it’s hard to imitate it
- If something is built to show, it’s built to grow
- Every email sent from a hotmail account was a short plug for the growing brand. At the bottom was a message and link that simple said “Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Hotmail at www.hotmail.com”
- Users can easily change the default message to something else
- Every time people use the product or service they also transmit social proof or passive approval because usage is observable
- People like to pass only practical, useful information
- Offering practical value helps make things contagious
- Sharing something useful with others is a quick and easy way to help them out. Even if we’re not in the same place. Parents can send their kids helpful advice even if they are hundred of miles away. Passing along useful things also strengthens social bonds. If we know our friends are into cooking, sending them a new recipe we found brings us closer together. Our friends see we know and care about them, we feel good for being helpful? And the sharing cements our friendship
- Helping other people feels good
- Sharing practical value is about helping others
- Sharing is caring
- People don’t think in terms of information. They think in terms of narratives
- Story is the best way to pass along information without sounding like an advertisement
- Virality is most valuable when the brand or product benefit is integral to the story
- STEPPS
- Social currency: we share things that make us look good
- Does talking about your product make people look good?
- Can you leverage game currency mechanics to make people feel like insiders?
- Triggers: top of mind, tip of tongue
- Consider the context, what cues make people think about our product or idea?
- How can you grow the habit and make it come to mind more often?
- Emotion: when we care, we share
- Focus on feelings, does talking about your product or idea generate emotion?
- Public: built to show, built to grow
- Does your product or idea advertise itself?
- Can people see when other people are using it?
- How can you make the private public?
- Can you create behavioral residue that sticks around even after people use it?
- Practical value: news you can use
- Does talking about your product help people help others?
- How can you highlight incredible value, packaging your valuable knowledge and expertise into useful information others will want to disseminate?
- Stories: information travels under the guise of idle chatter
- Is your product or idea embedded in a broader narrative that people want to share?
- Is the story not only viral, but also valuable?