Contagious: Why Things Catch On Hardcover
by Jonah Berger (Author)
New York Times bestseller
What makes things popular?
If you said advertising, think again. People don’t listen to advertisements, they listen to their
peers. But why do people talk about certain products and ideas more than others? Why are
some stories and rumors more infectious? And what makes online content go viral?
Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger has spent the last decade answering these
questions. He’s studied why New York Times articles make the paper’s own Most E-mailed
List, why products get word of mouth, and how social influence shapes everything from the
cars we buy to the clothes we wear to the names we give our children. In this book, Berger
reveals the secret science behind word-of-mouth and social transmission. Discover how six
basic principles drive all sorts of things to become contagious, from consumer products and
policy initiatives to workplace rumors and YouTube videos.
Contagious combines groundbreaking research with powerful stories. Learn how a luxury
steakhouse found popularity through the lowly cheese-steak, why anti-drug commercials
might have actually increased drug use, and why more than 200 million consumers shared
a video about one of the seemingly most boring products there is: a blender. If you’ve
wondered why certain stories get shared, e-mails get forwarded, or videos go
viral, Contagious explains why, and shows how to leverage these concepts to craft
contagious content. This book provides a set of specific, actionable techniques for helping
information spread—for designing messages, advertisements, and information that people
will share. Whether you’re a manager at a big company, a small business owner trying to
boost awareness, a politician running for office, or a health official trying to get the word
out, Contagious will show you how to make your product or idea catch on.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES (NY TIMES)
Mapping Out the Path to
Viral Fame
‘Contagious: Why Things Catch On,’ by
Jonah Berger
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: February 25, 2013
How has the Korean pop star Psy’s wacky horse-dance video, “Gangnam
Style,” managed to rack up more than 1.3 billion views on YouTube?
Why did a 30-minute video by a small nonprofit group calling for the
capture of the Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony become a media
sensation, racing across Twitter and Facebook eventually to snag the
top spot on Unruly Media’s list of the 20 most shared ads on social
media in 2012?
Enlarge This Image
Patricia Wall/The New York Times
CONTAGIOUS
Why Things Catch On
By Jonah Berger
244 pages. Simon & Schuster. $26.
Enlarge This Image
Deborah Feingold
Jonah Berger
Readers might suppose that Jonah Berger’s new book, “Contagious:
Why Things Catch On,” would shed light on these famous cases of viral
content. They would be wrong. He does not explain either case.
“Contagious” does provide some interesting insights into factors that
can help make an idea, a video, a commercial or a product become
infectious, but it’s a book that remains heavily indebted to Malcolm
Gladwell’s 2000 best seller,“The Tipping Point,” and Chip Heath and
Dan Heath’s 2007 book, “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and
Others Die.”
Mr. Berger, an assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School
at the University of Pennsylvania, acknowledges that Chip Heath was
his mentor in graduate school, and his book includes some prominent
echoes of “Made to Stick,” including a similar Halloween-orange cover.
Although Mr. Berger emphasizes the part of the equation dealing with
why things go viral, many of his central arguments owe a decided debt
to the Heaths’ observations about “stickiness.”
They argued that sticky ideas and products tend to be simple,
unexpected and credible, with concrete details, an emotional undertow
and a memorable story line. Mr. Berger, for his part, asserts that six
principles help make things go viral: social currency (making people
feel that they are cool insiders); triggers (everyday reminders of an item
or idea); emotional resonance (making people want to share the
experience with friends); observability (that is, a highly visible item
advertises itself); usefulness (people like to share practical or helpful
information); and storytelling (embedding a product or an idea in a
narrative enhances its power).
A study he conducted of the most e-mailed articles in The New York
Times, Mr. Berger says, showed that pieces about health and education
were highly shared because of their usefulness (“Advice on how to live
longer and be happier. Tips for getting the best education for your
kids”) and that science articles tended to go viral because they
“frequently chronicle innovations and discoveries” that evoke a feeling
of awe in readers.
As Mr. Berger tells it, awe (like amusement and anger) creates a state
of “physiological arousal” that goads people to take action — which
apparently means, in our Internet age, forwarding a link to an article or
a video.
Mr. Berger seems intent here on giving readers advice about how to
create viral products — he is, after all, a professor of marketing — and
he’s unfortunately adopted a ham-handed PowerPoint approach to
selling his arguments. He cites studies with dubious metrics (how, for
example, do you score newspaper articles “based on how much awe
they evoked”); repeats things over and over, as if sheer repetition would
create a kind of stickiness; and uses awful, gobbledygook terms like
“self-sharing,” “inner remarkability” and “the urgency factor.”
Many of the observations in “Contagious” are pretty obvious to even the
most casual social anthropologist. That scarcity or exclusivity can “help
products catch on by making them seem more desirable” is well known
to anyone who’s looked at Gilt Groupe’s business model or had a hard
time locating a McDonald’s McRib sandwich. And the notion that good
storytelling implants memories in listeners’ minds has been known,
well, since the time of Homer.
“Contagious” is at its most engaging when Mr. Berger is looking at
specific case studies. He writes that Steve Jobs debated whether the
Apple logo on the cover of an open laptop should be right-side up for the
user of the computer or right-side up to onlookers, and eventually
decided that “observability” to the world was more important and
“flipped the logo.” He notes that distinctiveness makes for products that
advertise themselves — whether it’s clothing logos (like Nike’s swoosh,
Lacoste’s crocodile or Ralph Lauren’s polo player); the distinctive
tubular Pringles can; or Christian Louboutin’s nail-polish-bright, red-
soled shoes.
In another chapter Mr. Berger reports that NASA’s Mars Pathfinder
project bolstered the sales of Mars bars simply by acting “as a trigger
that reminded people of the candy,” and that Cheerios gets more word
of mouth than Disney World (even though the Magic Kingdom is
presumably a more interesting topic) because so many more people eat
the cereal every day than go to Disney World. Contrary to conventional
wisdom, he says, interesting does not always trump boring.
“Contagious” is rarely boring, but it’s too derivative and too clichéd to
be genuinely interesting.
Contagious: Why Things Catch On featuring Jonah Berger
In this new Substance interview, we hear from Jonah Berger, globally recognized leader in
Word-of-Mouth Marketing, Consultant, Professor at Wharton, and New York Times/Wall Street
Journal best-selling author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On.
For seven years at Wharton, Jonah studied the science of Word of Mouth. Why do we do the
things that we do? Why do some brands get more Word of Mouth than others? In this video
interview, Jonah reveals the formula behind what makes ideas stick or spread, and shares
examples about how to make your ideas “remarkable.”
If you’re curious about how to build a great secret, watch the video to find out. As a marketer
myself, it was a pleasure to sit down with Jonah and hear about the science behind what gets
people talking. As he says, “With the right mix, anything can take off.”
We would love your thoughts, comments or questions below. Let’s strike up a dialogue!
Six steps to making your ideas
contagious, by Jonah Berger
Adam Rifkin stashed this in Growth Hacks!
In his book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Wharton
business school professor Jonah Berger lays out the six key
elements that make ideas and products catch on.
Berger was inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point:
[Link]
2013-3
Below I include notes from Eric Barker's article about the book.
1) Social Currency: “We Share Things That Make Us Look
Good”
“Does talking about your product or idea make people look
good? Can you find the inner remarkability? Leverage game
mechanics? Make people feel like insiders?”
Examples of viral videos that people want to share
[Link]
2013-3?op=1
2) Triggers: “Top of Mind, Tip of Tongue”
“Consider the context. What cues make people think about your
product or idea? How can you grow the habitat and make it
come to mind more often?”
3) Emotion: “When We Care, We Share”
“Focus on feelings. Does talking about your product or idea
generate emotion? How can you kindle the fire?”
Vinod Khosla talks about embedding emotions in a product:
[Link]
product
4) Public: “Built to Show, Built to Grow”
“Does your product or idea advertise itself? Can people see
when others are using it? If not, how can you make the private
public? Can you create behavioral residue that sticks around
even after people use it?”
5) Practical Value: “News You Can Use”
“Does talking about your product or idea help people help
others? How can you highlight incredible value, packaging your
knowledge and expertise into useful information others will want
to disseminate?”
6) Stories: “Information Travels Under the Guide of Idle
Chatter”
“What is your Trojan Horse? Is your product or idea embedded
in a broader narrative that people want to share? Is the story
not only viral, but also valuable?”
Título:
CONTAGIO
Autor / es
JONAH BERGER
Resumen
¿Por qué ciertos productos e ideas se vuelven virales? Este nuevo libro revolucionario, ya
traducido en dieciséis idiomas, explica los seis principios para crear productos e ideas virales.
El boca a boca no depende de la popularidad de la persona que habla o del medio por el que
se transmite el mensaje. Se trate de un tuit o de una conversación en persona: el contenido
viral comienza con el mensaje mismo. Sobre la base de su propia investigación original,
corroborada por la de otros expertos en marketing, ciencias sociales y negocios, Jonah Berger
ha desagregado los elementos de la elaboración de contenido viral y los ha dividido en seis
principios, los seis pasos para generar el boca a boca: • MONEDA SOCIAL • DISPARADORES •
EMOCIÓN • PÚBLICO • VALOR PRÁCTICO • HISTORIAS Contagio aplica los principios
científicos de la transmisión social para explicar las situaciones cotidianas y responder la
pregunta: ¿por qué hablamos de algunas cosas y no de otras?
Contenido
¿Por qué prenden las cosas? ¿Por qué algunas cosas se vuelven populares? ¿Qué es más
importante: el mensaje o el mensajero? ¿Puedes hacer que algo se vuelva contagioso 1.
Moneda social: Compartimos las cosas que nos hacen ver bien. 2. Disparadores: Lo que está
en la cabeza pasa a la lengua. 3. Emoción: Cuando nos importa, compartimos. 4. Público:
Construido para mostrarse, construido para crecer. 5. Valor práctico: Novedades que puedes
usar. 6. Historias: La información viaja disfrazada de charla improductiva.
1. Social Currency
Berger notes that sharable information is that which holds social currency; one way or another,
it makes us look good to those around us. This is a concept that most email marketers can learn
from and should apply to programs. Too often, we ask subscribers to share an offer or
information in an email communication, yet there's nothing in that email that would make a
subscriber look or feel good by passing it along.
2. Triggers
By Berger's definition, a "trigger" is something that is easy to remember about a product or idea,
helping to ensure it stays top of mind. It's funny to note that although email marketers use the
term "trigger" to mean something completely different, we apply triggers to our programs with
that same goal: keeping our program top of mind. Do not underestimate the power of properly
triggering your email communications--or the importance of being top of mind with the customer.
3. Emotion
Simply put, messaging with an emotional component is more likely to be shared. Email is a
relationship channel and part of any good relationship is emotion. Does that mean that every
message you send should pull on heartstrings or get subscribers mad as hell? Probably not.
However, every message you send should absolutely stay true to your brand, while remaining
focused on your customer. If your subscribers feel like your messaging is all about you, without
taking their interests into consideration, don't expect them to participate in spreading the word.
4. Public
Within the context of Contagious, the public component of a successful, shareable program
means that it's "built to show, built to grow." This is a great concept to apply to your email
program. While it is true that not all email content is meant to be shared (think exclusive offers,
transactional statements, and other personal information), many elements are designed
specifically for sharing. For these, be sure they're "built to show." Formatting content in a way
that lends itself nicely to the channels where you want the recipient to share is a great step in
building your content to show.
5. Practical Value
Although it would screw up Berger's STEPPS acronym, another word for practical value is
"relevance," practically a mantra for folks like you and me. If your email isn't relevant, why would
it go viral? Some of the most successful email programs are those that provide practical advice;
how-to information, for example, or interesting, random facts. Think top ten lists, or "did you
know" messaging. Always consider the practical value your messaging offers your audience.
6. Stories
Berger notes our rich cultural history of storytelling and, certainly, good stories get passed along
through generations. For email marketers, there are a couple different ways to tap into this and
use stories to improve our programs. Sure, you could come right out and toss an actual story
into an email every once in a while. It could help keep your content fresh, keep subscribers
engaged, and maybe even get subscribers talking. But another way to look at building stories
into your program takes a more holistic perspective: What is your brand story to consumers?
Every memorable brand makes implicit promises to consumers across key touch points. And
every great brand keeps those promises with every interaction it makes. So, if every email you
send isn't reinforcing your brand story, the absence of that story can inadvertently erode brand
value.
So is your next huge viral email campaign a mere six STEPPS away? It's hard to say for sure,
but you can absolutely apply best practices in contagious content to your email campaigns.
Consciously walk through Berger's STEPPS in your next one and watch for any measurable
difference.