Contagious: Why Things Catch On

by Jonah Berger

Did you know that frowning burns more calories than smiling? That an ant can lift fifty times its own weight? You probably didn’t. But people share these and similar Snapple facts because they are remarkable. And talking about remarkable things provides social currency.

apply in en route screen? add driver`s personal note: you should know about me.

The key to finding inner remarkability is to think about what makes something interesting, surprising, or novel.

Why does it matter if particular thoughts or ideas are top of mind? Because accessible thoughts and ideas lead to action.

a strong trigger can be much more effective than a catchy slogan.

A few years ago, auto insurance company GEICO ran ads that said switching to GEICO was so simple that even a caveman could do it. On the cleverness dimension the ads were great. They were funny and made the point that switching to GEICO was easy. But judged on triggers, the ads fail. We don’t see many cavemen in our daily lives, so the ad is unlikely to come to mind often, making it less likely to be talked about.

Contrast that with the Budweiser beer “Wassup?” campaign. Two guys are talking on the phone while drinking Budweiser and watching a basketball game on television. A third friend arrives. He yells, “Wassup?” One of the first two guys yells “Wassup?” back. This kicks off an endless cycle of wassups between a growing number of Budweiser-drinking buddies. No, it wasn’t the cleverest of commercials. But it became a global phenomenon. And at least part of its success was due to triggers. Budweiser considered the context. “Wassup” was a popular greeting among young men at the time. Just greeting friends triggered thoughts of Budweiser in Budweiser’s prime demographic.

coffee is a particularly good thing to link the brand to because it is a frequent stimulus in the environment. A huge number of people drink coffee. Many drink it a number of times throughout the day. And so by linking Kit Kat to coffee, Colleen created a frequent trigger to remind people of the brand.

frequently. Most people don’t go to Disney World unless they have kids. Even those who do go don’t go that often. Once a year if that. And there are few triggers to remind them about the experience after the initial excitement evaporates. But hundreds of thousands of people eat Cheerios for breakfast every day. Still more see the bright orange boxes every time they push their shopping carts down the supermarket cereal aisle. And these triggers make Cheerios more accessible, increasing the chance that people will talk about the product.

So we need to consider the context. Like Budweiser’s “wassup” or Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” our products and ideas need to take advantage of existing triggers. We also need to grow the habitat. Like Colleen Chorak’s Kit Kat and coffee, we need to create new links to prevalent triggers.

awe is the sense of wonder and amazement that occurs when someone is inspired by great knowledge, beauty, sublimity, or might. It’s the experience of confronting something greater than yourself.

It doesn’t require a costly ad agency or millions of dollars in focus groups to get people to feel emotion. Cafaro created the clip with four other students who had been brought in from design programs across the country.

In their wonderful book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath talk about using the “Three Whys” to find the emotional core of an idea. Write down why you think people are doing something. Then ask “Why is this important?” three times. Each time you do this, note your answer, and you’ll notice that you drill down further and further toward uncovering not only the core of an idea, but the emotion behind it.

On the positive side, excite people or inspire them by showing them how they can make a difference. On the negative side, make people mad, not sad. Make sure the polar bear story gets them fired up.

Jobs was obsessed with the absolute best possible user experience. He always put the customer first. Customers shelled out all that money; they should be treated right. So Apple carried this mantra into all aspects of product design. From opening the box to calling for tech support. Ever notice the slow delay when you first pull the cover off the box of your new iPhone?

That’s because Apple has been hard at work designing that experience to provide the perfect feeling of luxury and heft.

Observability

The more public a product or service is, the more it triggers people to take action.

Most products, ideas, and behaviors are consumed privately. What websites do your coworkers like? Which ballot initiatives do your neighbors support? Unless they tell you, you may never know. And though that might not matter to you personally, it matters a lot for the success of organizations, businesses, and ideas. If people can’t see what others are choosing and doing, they can’t imitate them. And, like the binge-drinking college students, people might change their behavior for the worse because they feel their views aren’t supported.* Solving this problem requires making the private public. Generating public signals for private choices, actions, and opinions. Taking what was once an unobservable thought or behavior and transforming it into a more observable one.

But because most devices came with black headphones, Apple’s white headphone cords stood out. By advertising themselves, the headphones made it easy to see how many other people were switching away from the traditional Walkman and adopting the iPod. This was visible social proof that suggested the iPod was a good product and made potential adopters feel more comfortable about purchasing it as well.

just because people can share with more people doesn’t mean they will. In fact, narrower content may actually be more likely to be shared because it reminds people of a specific friend or family member and makes them feel compelled to pass it along.

The harder part is cutting through the clutter. There are lots of good restaurants and helpful websites, so we need to make our product or idea stand out. We need to highlight incredible value and use the Rule of 100. Like Vanguard, we need to package our knowledge and expertise so that people learn about us while they pass it along. We need to make it clear why our product or idea is so useful that people just have to spread the word. News you can use.