Contagious: Why Things Catch On

by Jonah Berger

Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath,

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.

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.

In 1979, McDonald’s introduced Chicken McNuggets. They were a huge hit and every franchise across the country wanted them. But at the time McDonald’s didn’t have an adequate system to meet the demand. So Executive Chef Rene Arend was tasked with devising another new product to give to the unlucky franchises that couldn’t get enough chicken. Something that would keep them happy despite the shortages. Arend came up with a pork sandwich called the McRib.

All for what is mostly a mix of tripe, heart, and stomach meat.

Regardless of whether the product is hip and cool, or a mix of leftover pig parts. 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.

The moral? People don’t need to be paid to be motivated. Managers often default to monetary incentives when trying to motivate employees. Some gift or other perk to get people to take action. But that’s the wrong way to think about it.

Social incentives, like social currency, are more effective in the long term.

How do we get people talking and make our products and ideas catch on? One way is to mint social currency. People like to make a good impression, so we need to make our products a way to achieve that. Like Blendtec’s Will It Blend? we need to find the inner remarkability. Like Foursquare or airlines with frequent flier tiers, we need to leverage game mechanics. Like Rue La La, we need to use scarcity and exclusivity to make people feel as if they’re insiders.

BzzAgent

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.

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

Sadder articles were actually 16 percent less likely to make the Most E-Mailed list. Something about sadness was making people less likely to share.

Articles that evoked anger or anxiety were more likely to make the Most E-Mailed list.

Clearly, something more complicated than whether an article was positive or negative determined how widely things were shared.

The idea that emotions can be categorized as positive or pleasant and negative or unpleasant has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years.

More recently, however, psychologists have argued that emotions can also be classified based on a second dimension. That of activation, or physiological arousal.

Other emotions, however, have the opposite effect: they stifle action. Take sadness. Whether dealing with a tough breakup or the death of a beloved pet, sad people tend to power down. They put on some cozy clothes, curl up on the couch, and eat a bowl of ice cream. Contentment also deactivates. When people are content, they relax. Their heart rates slow, and their blood pressure decreases. They’re happy, but they don’t particularly feel like doing anything. Think of how you feel after a long hot shower or a relaxing massage. You’re more likely to relax and sit still than leap into another activity.

Just to recap, so far we had found that awe increased sharing and that sadness decreased it. But rather than finding a simple matter of positive emotions increasing sharing and negative emotions decreasing it, we found that some negative emotions, like anger or anxiety, actually increased sharing.

clear and concise way, it will tip the scales. Their audience will pay attention, weigh the information, and act accordingly.

Among students who had been instructed to jog, 75 percent shared the article—more than twice as many as the students who had been in the “relaxed” group. Thus any sort of arousal, whether from emotional or physical sources, and even arousal due to the situation itself (rather than content), can boost transmission.

Work groups may benefit from taking walks together because it will encourage people to share their ideas and opinions.

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.*

All these examples involve products that advertise themselves. Every time people use the product or service they also transmit social proof or passive approval because usage is observable.

Christian Louboutin felt his shoes lacked energy. Looking around, he noticed the striking red Chanel nail polish an employee was wearing. That’s it! he thought, and applied the polish to his shoes’ soles. Now Louboutin shoes always come with red-lacquered soles, making them instantly recognizable.

But anti-drug ads often say two things simultaneously. They say that drugs are bad, but they also say that other people are doing them. And as we’ve discussed throughout this chapter, the more others seem to be doing something, the more likely people are to think that thing is right or normal and what they should be doing as well.

You never see public service announcements for avoiding cutting off your hand with a saw or not getting hit by a bus, so if the government spent the time and money to tell you about drugs, a lot of your peers must be doing them, right? Some of them are apparently the coolest kids in school. And you had no idea!

But by providing social proof that others were stealing, the message had a perverse effect, almost doubling the number of people taking wood! Highlighting what people should do was much more effective. Over a different set of trails they tried a different sign that stated, “Please don’t remove the petrified wood from the Park, in order to preserve the natural state of the Petrified Forest.” By focusing on the positive effects of not taking the wood, rather than on what others were doing, the park service was able to reduce theft.

The same is true even with the word “sale.” While noting something is on sale can increase demand, if too many items in a store are listed as being on sale, it can actually reduce purchase.

If the product’s price is less than $100, the Rule of 100 says that percentage discounts will seem larger. For a $30 T-shirt or a $15 entrée, even a $3 discount is still a relatively small number. But percentagewise (10 percent or 20 percent), that same discount looks much bigger.

So while broadly relevant content could be shared more, content that is obviously relevant to a narrow audience may actually be more viral.

The key, then, is to not only make something viral, but also make it valuable to the sponsoring company or organization. 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.

Panda is part and parcel of the story. It’s an essential part of the narrative. The same can be said for Blendtec’s Will It Blend? campaign. It’s impossible to tell the story of the clips where the blender tears through an iPhone without talking about a blender. And without recognizing that the Blendtec blender in the videos must be extremely tough—so strong that it can blend almost anything. Which is exactly what Blendtec wants to communicate.

In trying to craft contagious content, valuable virality is critical. That means making the idea or desired benefit a key part of the narrative.

So build a Social Currency–laden, Triggered, Emotional, Public, Practically Valuable Trojan Horse, but don’t forget to hide your message inside. Make sure your desired information is so embedded into the plot that people can’t tell the story without it.

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 third point: certain characteristics make products and ideas more likely to be talked about and shared.

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

Social Currency 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? Triggers 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? Emotion Focus on feelings. Does talking about your product or idea generate emotion? How can you kindle the fire? Public 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? Practical Value 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? Stories 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?