Contagious: Why Things Catch On

by Jonah Berger

Having insider knowledge is social currency.

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.

But by harnessing people’s desire to look good to others, their customers did these things anyway—and spread word of mouth for free.

So while everything else suggests the proprietors want to keep the venue under wraps, at the end of the experience they make sure you have their phone number. Just in case you want to share their secret.

making access difficult is different from making it impossible.

Using scarcity and exclusivity early on and then relaxing the restrictions later is a particularly good way to build demand.

People are used to getting what they want and if they hear “no” too much they may go elsewhere.

if they need to say “no” they should try to figure out a way to say “no, but.”

If word-of-mouth pundits agree on anything, it’s that being interesting is essential if you want people to talk.

People talk about Cheerios more than Disney World. The reason? Triggers.

Marketing is about tapping into their genuine enthusiasm for products and services that they find useful. Or fun. Or beautiful. Marketing is about spreading the love.

Importantly, BzzAgents are not paid. They’re in it for the chance to get free stuff and learn about new products before the rest of their friends and families. And they’re never pressured to say anything other than what they honestly believe, whether they like the product or not.

Every day, the average American engages in more than sixteen word-of-mouth episodes, separate conversations where they say something positive or negative about an organization, brand, product, or service.

American consumers mention specific brands more than 3 billion times a day. This kind of social talk is almost like breathing. It’s so basic and frequent that we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

BzzAgent simply harnesses the fact that people already talk about and share products and services with others. Give people a product they enjoy, and they’ll be happy to spread the word.

Products can be interesting because they’re novel, exciting, or confound expectations in some way.

Since we want others to think we’re interesting, we search for interesting things to tell them.

No correlation between levels of interest, novelty, or surprise and the number of times people talked about the products. We were truly bewildered. What were we doing wrong? Nothing, as it turned out. We just weren’t asking the right questions.

Some word of mouth is immediate, while some is ongoing. Imagine you’ve just gotten an e-mail about a new recycling initiative. Do you talk about it with your coworkers later that day? Mention it to your spouse that weekend? If so, you’re engaging in immediate word of mouth. This occurs when you pass on the details of an experience, or share new information you’ve acquired, soon after it occurs. Ongoing word of mouth, in contrast, covers the conversations you have in the weeks and months that follow. The movies you saw last month or a vacation you took last year.

Both types of word of mouth are valuable, but certain types are more important for certain products or ideas.

For most products or ideas, however, ongoing word of mouth is also important.

interesting products did not sustain high levels of word-of-mouth activity over time. Interesting products didn’t get any more ongoing word of mouth than boring ones.

Sights, smells, and sounds can trigger related thoughts and ideas, making them more top of mind.

Triggers are like little environmental reminders for related concepts and ideas. ————— Why does it matter if particular thoughts or ideas are top of mind? Because accessible thoughts and ideas lead to action.

Different locations contain different triggers. Churches are filled with religious imagery, which might remind people of church doctrine. Schools are filled with lockers, desks, and chalkboards, which might remind people of children or early educational experiences. And once these thoughts are triggered, they might change behavior.

These conversations are less about finding interesting things to say to make us look good than they are about filling conversational space. We don’t want to sit there silently, so we talk about something. Anything. Our goal isn’t necessarily to prove that we are interesting, funny, or intelligent. We just want to say something to keep the conversation going. Anything to prove that we’re not terrible conversationalists.

These everyday activities make those products more top of mind and, as a result, lead them to be talked about more.

If they’re not triggered to think about it, how will they remember that ad when they’re at the store?

In contrast to the notion that any publicity is good publicity, negative reviews hurt sales for some books. But for books by new or relatively unknown authors, negative reviews increased sales by 45 percent.

Even negative attention can be useful if it makes products and ideas top of mind.

Products and ideas also have habitats, or sets of triggers that cause people to think about them.

Growing the habitat boosted buzz.

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.

These campaigns underscore how important it is to consider the context: to think about the environments of the people a message or idea is trying to trigger. Different environments contain different stimuli.

Consequently, different triggers will be more or less effective depending on where people live.

Triggers drive talking.

Triggers are the foundation of word of mouth and contagiousness.

The more something is triggered, the more it will be top of mind, and the more successful it will become.

our products and ideas need to take advantage of existing triggers.

we need to create new links to prevalent triggers.

Triggers and cues lead people to talk, choose, and use. Social currency gets people talking, but Triggers keep them talkin...

The goal of her articles was always the same: to give people even just a little bit of that excitement that she had felt back in chemistry class decades before.

When we care, we share.

most-shared lists have a powerful ability to shape public discourse.

Two reasons people might share things are that they are interesting and that they are useful.

More useful articles were 30 percent more likely to make the list.

It turns out that 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.