Contagious by Jonah Berger

• One reason some products and ideas become popular is that they are just plain better.
• Another reason products catch on is attractive pricing. Not surprisingly, most people prefer paying less rather than more.
• People love to share stories, news, and information with those around them.
• Word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20 percent to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions.
• Consequently, social influence has a huge impact on whether products, ideas, and behaviors catch on.
• Word of mouth is more effective than traditional advertising for two key reasons. First, it's more persuasive. Second, word of mouth is more targeted.
• Word of mouth tends to reach people who are actually interested in the things being discussed.
• To fully understand what causes people to share things, you have to look at both successes and failures. And whether, more often than not, certain characteristics are linked to success.
• Virality isn't born, it's made.
• Regardless of how plain or boring a product or idea may seem, there are ways to make it contagious.
• Whether you're in marketing, politics, engineering, or public health, you need to understand how to make your products and ideas catch on.
• After analyzing hundreds of contagious messages, products, and ideas, we noticed that the same six "ingredients", or principles were often at work. Six key STEPPS, as I call them, that cause things to be talked about, shared, and imitated.
• Principle 1: Social Currency
• Principle 2: Triggers
• Principle 3: Emotion
• Principle 4: Public
• Principle 5: Practical Value
• Principle 6: Stories
• Knowing about cool things makes people seem sharp and in the know.
• We need to find our inner remarkability and make people feel like insiders.
• Triggers are stimuli that prompt people to think about related things.
• People often talk about whatever comes to mind, so the more often people think about a product or idea, the more it will be talked about. We need to 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 that environment. Top of mind leads to tip of tongue.
• Naturally contagious content usually evokes some sort of emotion.
• Emotional things often get shared. So rather than harping on function, we need to focus on feelings.
• Making things more observable makes them easier to imitate, which makes them more likely to become popular.
• 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.
• And we need to package our knowledge and expertise so that people can easily pass it on.
• People don't just share information, they tell stories.
• Information travels under the guise of what seems like idle chatter.
• These are the six principles of contagiousness: products or ideas that contain social currency and are triggered, emotional, public, practically valuable, and wrapped into stories.
• These principles can be compacted into an acronym. Taken together they spell STEPPS. Think of the principles as the six STEPPS to crafting contagious content. These ingredients lead ideas to get talked about and succeed.
• Talking and sharing are some of our most fundamental behaviors. These actions connect us, shape us, and make us human.
• The most powerful marketing is personal recommendation. Nothing is more viral or infectious than one of your friends going to a place and giving it his full recommendation.
• In case it's not already clear, here's a little secret about secrets: they tend not to stay secret very long.
• As it turns out, if something is supposed to be secret, people might well be more likely to talk about it. The reason? Social currency.
• People share things that make them look good to others.
• This desire to share our thoughts, opinions, and experiences is one reason social media and online social networks have become so popular.
• Just as people use money to buy products or services, they use social currency to achieve desired positive impressions among their families, friends, and colleagues.
• So to get people talking companies and organizations need to mint social currency. Give people a way to make themselves look good while promoting their products and ideas along the way. There are three ways to do that: (1) find inner remarkability; (2) leverage game mechanics; and (3) make people feel like insiders.
• Remarkable things are defined as unusual, extraordinary, or worthy of notice or attention. Something can be remarkable because it is novel, surprising, extreme, or just plain interesting. But the most important aspect of remarkable things is that they are worthy of remark. Worthy of mention.
• Remarkable things provide social currency because they make the people who talk about them seem, well, more remarkable.
• Our memories aren't perfect records of what happened. They're more like dinosaur skeletons patched together by archaeologists. We have the main chunks, but some of the pieces are missing, so we fill them in as best we can. We make an educated guess.
• But in the process, stories often become more extreme or entertaining, particularly when people tell them in front of a group.
• The key to finding inner remarkability is to think about what makes something interesting, surprising, or novel.
• One way to generate surprise is by breaking a pattern people have come to expect.
• The best thing about remarkability, though, is that it can be applied to anything.
• Emphasize what's remarkable about a product or idea and people will talk.
• Game mechanics are the elements of a game, application, or program--including rules and feedback loops--that make them fun and compelling.
• Good game mechanics keep people engaged, motivated, and always wanting more.
• One way game mechanics motivate internally. We all enjoy achieving things.
• But game mechanics also motivate us on an interpersonal level by encouraging social comparison.
• People don't just care about how they are doing, they care about their performance in relation to others.
• Just like many other animals, people care about hierarchy. Apes engage in status displays and dogs try to figure out who is the alpha. Humans are no different. We like feeling that we're high status, top dog, or leader of the pack. But status is inherently relational. Being leader of the pack requires a pack, doing better than others.
• Game mechanics help generate social currency because doing well makes us look good.
• After all, what good is status if no one else knows you have it?
• Leveraging game mechanics requires quantifying performance.
• Leveraging game mechanics also involves helping people publicize their achievements.
• Great game mechanics can even create achievement out of nothing.
• Effective status systems are easy to understand, even by people who aren't familiar with the domain.
• Scarcity is about how much of something is offered. Scare things are less available because of high demand, limited production, or restrictions on the time or place you can acquire them.
• Exclusivity is also about availability, but in a different way. Exclusive things are accessible only to people who meet particular criteria.
• But exclusivity isn't just about money or celebrity. It's also about knowledge. Knowing certain information or being connected to people who do.
• Scarcity and exclusivity help products catch on by making them seem more desirable. If something is difficult to obtain, people assume that it must be worth the effort. If something is unavailable or sold out, people often infer that lots of other people must like it, and so it must be pretty good.
• Scarcity and exclusivity boost word of mouth by making people feel like insiders. If people get something not everyone else has, it makes them feel special, unique, high status. And because of that they'll not only like a product or service more, but tell others about it. Why? Because telling others makes them look good. Having insider knowledge is social currency.
• Making people feel like insiders can benefit all types of products and ideas.
• The mere fact that something isn't readily available can make people value it more and tell others to capitalize on the social currency of knowing about it or having it.
• People don't need to be paid to be motivated.
• Furthermore, as soon as you pay people for doing something, you crowd out their intrinsic motivation. People are happy to talk abut companies and products they like, and millions of people do it for free every day, without prompting. But as soon as you offer to pay people to refer other customers, any interest they had in doing it for free will disappear.
• Social incentives, like social currency, are more effective in the long term.
• People like to make a good impression, so we need to make our products a way to achieve that.
• But what most people don't realize is that they naturally talk about products, brands, and organizations all the time.
• If you want to get a better sense for yourself, try keeping a conversation diary for twenty-four hours. Carry pen and paper with you and write down all the things you emotion over the course of a day. You'll be surprised at all the products and ideas you talk about.
• Give people a product they enjoy, and they'll be happy to spread the word.
• Triggers are like little environmental remainders for related concepts and ideas.
• Different locations contain different triggers.
• Most conversations can be described as small talk.
• These conversations are less about finding interesting things to say to make us look good than they are about filling conversational space.
• Triggers boost word of mouth.
• By acting as reminders, triggers not only get people talking, they keep them talking. Top of mind means tip of tongue.
• Going for interesting is our default tendency.
• Products and ideas also have habitats, or sets of triggers that cause people to think about them.
• Most products or ideas have a number of natural triggers.
• But it's also possible to grow an idea's habitat by creating new links to stimuli in the environment.
• Triggers can help products and ideas catch on, but some stimuli are better triggers than others.
• The more things a given cue is associated with, the weaker any given association.
• Linking a product or idea with a stimulus that is already associated with many things isn't as effective as forging a fresher, more original link.
• Is is also important to pick triggers that happen near where the desired behavior is taking place.
• Different environments contain different stimuli.
• Consequently, different triggers will be more or less effective depending on where people live.
• Triggers are the foundation of word of mouth and contagious.
• The more something is triggered, the more it will be top of mind, and the more successful it will become.
• Triggers and cues lead people to talk, choose, and use. Social currency gets people talking, but Triggers keep them talking. Top of mind means tip of tongue.
• Humans are social animals.
• People love to share opinions and information with others. And our tendency to gossip--for good or ill--shapes our relationship with friends and colleagues alike.
• Few people have time to seek out the best content in this ocean of information. So they start by checking out what others have shared.
• For something to go viral, lots of people have to pass along the same piece of content at around the same time.
• It turns out the science articles frequently chronicle innovations and discoveries that evoke a particular emotion in readers. That emotion? Awe.
• Awe expands one's frame of reference and drives self-transcendence. It encompasses admiration and inspiration and can be evoked by everything from great works of art or music to religious transformations, from breathtaking natural landscapes to human feats of daring and discovery.
• Awe is a complex emotion and frequently involves a sense of surprise, unexpectedness, or mystery.
• There are reasons to believe that experiencing any sort of emotion might encourage people to share. Talking to others often makes emotional experiences better. If we get promoted, telling other helps us celebrate. If we get fired, telling others helps us vent.
• Sharing emotions also helps us connect.
• The most obvious difference between different emotions is their pleasantness or positivity.
• The answer was definitive: positive articles were more likely to be highly shared than negative ones.
• Arousal is a state of activation and readiness for action. The heart beats faster and blood pressure rises. Evolutionarily, it comes from our ancestors' reptilian brains. Physiological arousal motivates a fight-or-flight response that helps organisms catch food or flee predators.
• Some emotions, like anger and anxiety, are high-arousal.
• Positive emotions also generate arousal.
• Other emotions, however, have the opposite effect: they stifle action.
• Marketing messages tend to focus on information. But many times information is not enough.
• Rather than harping on features or facts, we need to focus on feelings; the underlying emotions that motivate people to action.
• When trying to use emotions to drive sharing, remember to pick ones that kindle the fire: select high-arousal emotions that drive people to action.
• Simply adding more arousal to a story or ad can have a big impact on people's willingness to share it.
• Marketers tend to avoid negative emotions out of fear they could taint the brand. But if used correctly, negative emotions can actually boost word of mouth.
• Negative emotions, when used correctly, can be a powerful driver of discussion.
• Technology has mad it easier for people to organize behind a common interest or goal. By allowing people to connect quickly and easily, social media enable like-minded individuals to find one another, share information, and coordinate plans of action.
• Certain types of negativity may be more likely to escalate because they evoke arousal and are thus more likely to go viral.
• Understanding that arousing situations can drive people to pass things on helps shed light on so-called oversharing, when people disclose more than they should.
• If situational factors end up making us physiologically aroused, we may end up sharing more than we planned.
• Emotions drive people to action.
• Some emotions kindle the fire more than others. As we discussed, activating emotion is the key to transmission. Physiological arousal or activation drives people to talk and share. We need to get people excited or make them laugh. We need to make them angry rather than sad. Even situations where people are active can make them more likely to pass things on to others.
• Jobs realized that seeing others do something makes people more likely to do it themselves. But the key word here is "seeing". If it's hard to see what others are doing, it's hard to imitate it. Making something more observable makes it easier to imitate. Thus a key factor in driving products to catch on is public visibility. If something is built to show, it's built to grow.
• People imitate, in part, because others' choices provide information.
• Social influence has a big effect on behavior, but to understand how to use it to help products and ideas catch on, we need to understand when its effects are strongest.
• The famous phrase "Monkey see, monkey do" captures more than just the human penchant for imitation. People can imitate only when they can see what others are doing.
• Observability has a huge impact on whether products and ideas catch on.
• Observable things are also more likely to be discussed.
• Most products, ideas, and behaviors are consumed privately.
• If people can't see what others are choosing and doing, they can't imitate them.
• One way to make things more public is to design ideas that advertise themselves.
• Shapes, sounds, and a host of other distinctive characteristics can also help products advertise themselves.
• Designing products that advertise themselves is a particularly powerful strategy for small companies or organizations that don't have a lot of resources.
• Yellow is a color people almost never see.
• Behavioral residue is the physical traces or remnants that most actions or behaviors leave in their wake.
• As with many powerful tools, making things more public can have unintended consequences when not applied carefully. If you want to get people not to do something, don't tell them that lots of their peers are doing it.
• Rather than making the private public, preventing a behavior requires the opposite: making the public private. Making others' behavior less observable.
• It's been said that when people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate on another. We look to others for information about what is right or good to do in a given situation, and this social proof shapes everything from the products we buy to the candidates we vote for.
• People like to pass along practical, useful information. News others can use.
• Offering practical value helps make things contagious.
• If social currency is about information senders and how sharing makes them look, practical value is mostly about the information receiver. It's about saving people time or money, or helping them have good experiences.
• One of the main tenets of prospect theory is that people don't evaluate things in absolute terms. They evaluate them relative to a comparison standard, or "reference point".
• People like to pay less, so dropping the price makes things more desirable.
• As discussed in the social currency chapter, the more remarkable something is, the more likely it will be discussed.
• As prospect theory illustrates, one key factor in highlighting incredible value is what people expect.
• Another factor that affects whether deals seem valuable is their availability. Somewhat counter intuitively, making promotions more restrictive can actually make them more effective.
• Putting something on sale can make it seem like a good deal. But if a product is always on sale people start to adjust their expectations.
• Just like making a product scarce, the fact that a deal won't be around forever makes people feel that it must be a really good one.
• Even restricting who has access can make a promotional offer seem better.
• Researchers find that whether a discount seems larger as money or percentage off depends on the original price. For low-priced products, price reductions seem more significant when they are framed in percentage terms. For high-priced products, however, the opposite is true. Framing price reductions in dollar terms (rather than percentage terms) makes them seem like a better offer.
• A simple way to figure out which discount frame seems larger is by using something called the Rule of 100.
• If the product's price is less than $100, the Rule of 100 says that percentage discounts will seem larger.
• If the product's price is more then $100, the opposite is true. Numerical discounts will seem larger.
• Useful information, then, is another form of practical value. Helping people do things they want to do,or encouraging them to do things they should do. Faster, better, and easier.
• Our desire to share helpful things is so powerful that it can make even false ideas succeed.
• False information can spread just as quickly as the truth.
• People like to help on another.
• We need to make it clear why our product or idea is so useful that people just have to spread the word.
• That's because people don't think in terms of information. They think in terms of narratives. But while people focus on the story itself, information comes along for the ride.
• Stories are the original form of entertainment.
• Narratives are inherently more engrossing than basic facts. They have a beginning, middle, and end. If people get sucked in early, they'll stay for the conclusion.
• People are so used to telling stories that they create narratives even when they don't actually need to.
• We're so used to telling stores that we do it even when a simple rating or opinion would have sufficed.
• Stories carry things. A lesson or moral. Information or a take home message.
• Stories are an important source of cultural learning that help us make sense of the world. At a high level, this learning can be about the rules and standards of a group or society.
• Stories save time and hassle and give people the information they need in a way that's easy to remember.
• You can think of stories as providing proof by analogy.
• And that is the magic of stories. Information travels under the guise of what seems like idle chatter.
• When trying to generate word of mouth, many people forget one important detail. They focus so much on getting people to talk that they ignore the part that really matters: what people are talking about.
• There's a big difference between people talking about content and people talking about the company, organization, or person that created that content.
• Not just virality but valuable virality.
• Virality is most valuable when the brand or product benefit is integral to the story. When it's woven so deeply into the narrative that people can't tell the story without mentioning it.
• In trying to craft contagious content, valuable virality is critical. That meas making the idea of desired benefit a key part of the narrative.
• Critical details stick around, while irrelevant ones drop out.
• First, any product, idea, or behavior can be contagious.
• Second, we saw that rather than being caused by a handful of special "influential" people, social epidemics are driven by the products and ideas themselves.
• The same six principles, or STEPPS, drive things to catch on.
• Social Currency: We share things that make us look good.
• Triggers: Top of mind, tip of tongue.
• Emotion: When we care, we share.
• Public: Built to show, built to grow.
• Practical Value: News you can use.
• Stories: Information travels under the guise of idle chatter.
• So if we're trying to make a product or idea contagious, think about how to build in these key STEPPS.