Contagious: Why Things Catch On

by Jonah Berger

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.

kids all seem to do the same thing once they are finished. They show someone else.

“Self-sharing” follows us throughout our lives. We tell friends about our new clothing purchases and show family members the op-ed piece we’re sending to the local newspaper.

This desire to share our thoughts, opinions, and experiences is one reason social media and online social n...

As many observers have commented, today’s social-network-addicted people can’t seem to stop sharing—what they think, like, and want—with everyone, all the time.

disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding.

They found that sharing personal opinions activated the same brain circuits that respond to rewards like food and money. So talking about what you did this weekend might feel just as good as taking a delicious bite of double chocolate cake.

This puts a new spin on an old maxim. Maybe instead of giving people a penny for their thoughts, we should get paid a penny for listening.

Think of it as a kind of currency. Social currency. 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.

We all want to be liked. The desire for social approval is a fundamental human motivation.

Remarkability explains why people share videos of eight-year-old girls flawlessly reciting rap lyrics and why my aunt forwarded me a story about a coyote who was hit by a car, got stuck in the bumper for six hundred miles, and survived.

The students exaggerated the details to make the story more remarkable.

Experts estimate that as many as 10 trillion frequent flier miles are sitting in accounts, unused. Enough to travel to the moon and back 19.4 million times. That’s a lot of miles. So if they’re not actually using them, why are people so passionate about racking up miles? Because it’s a fun game.

These elements tell players where they stand in the game and how

well they are doing. Good game mechanics keep people engaged, motivated, and always wanting more.

But game mechanics also motivate us on an interpersonal level by encouraging social comparison. A few years ago, students at Harvard University were asked to make a seemingly straightforward choice: which would they prefer, a job where they made $50,000 a year (option A) or one where they made $100,000 a year (option B)?

Option A. They preferred to do better than others, even if it meant getting less for themselves. They chose the option that was worse in absolute terms but better in relative terms.

People don’t just care about how they are doing, they care about their performance in relation to others.

They tell us where we are at any time in absolute terms. But they also make clear where we stand relative to everyone else.

After all, what good is status if no one else knows you have it?

And this is how game mechanics boosts word of mouth. People are talking because they want to show off their achievements, but along the way they talk about the brands (Delta or Twitter) or domains (golf or the SAT) where they achieved.

Building a Good Game Leveraging game mechanics requires quantifying performance.

But flying was gamified relatively recently, with airlines recording miles flown and awarding status levels.

Sure, someone can talk about how well she did, but it’s even better if there is a tangible, visible symbol that she can display to others.

Check in to the same venue more than anyone else in a sixty-day period and you’ll be crowned the mayor of that location.

MAKE PEOPLE FEEL LIKE INSIDERS

How come Rue La La was so much more successful? Because it made people feel like insiders.

Both used scarcity and exclusivity to

make customers feel like insiders.

Scarcity is about how much of something is offered. Scarce things are less available because of high demand, limited production, or restrictions o...

Exclusivity is also about availability, but in a different way. Exclusive things are accessible only to people who meet particular criteria.

Scarcity and exclusivity help products catch on by making them seem more desirable.

Scarcity and exclusivity boost word of mouth by making people feel like insiders.

Making people feel like insiders can benefit all types of products and ideas.

But since doing better than others is social currency, everyone was motivated to do well. Even without a monetary incentive.

The moral? People don’t need to be paid to be motivated. Managers often default to monetary incentives when trying to motivate employees.

Furthermore, as soon as you pay people for doing something, you crowd out their intrinsic motivation.

But as soon as you offer to pay people to refer other customers, any interest they had in doing it for free will disappear.

PLEASE DON’T TELL? WELL, OKAY. MAYBE JUST ONE PERSON

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.

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

breakfast. 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.

To Dave, marketing isn’t about trying to convince people to purchase things they don’t want or need. 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.

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.

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.

Give people a product they enjoy, and they’ll be happy to spread the word.

We started by testing an intuitive idea: interesting products get talked about more than boring ones.