Fascinate Quotes

“Fascination takes many forms, but all tap into instinctive triggers, such as the need to hunt, to control, to feel secure, to nurture and be nurtured. Some fascinations last only a heartbeat, while others last beyond a seventy-fifth wedding anniversary.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“People don’t want to connect with brands. They want to connect with each other. Fascinating companies create more opportunities for people to connect with each other, through the brand.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“I call these ingredients “fascination badges” because they’re emblematic of what you represent. So how, exactly, are you fascinating? Seven potential areas:   1. Purpose: Your reason for being; your function as a brand.   2. Core beliefs: The code of values and principles that guide you; what you stand for.   3. Heritage: Your reputation and history; the “backstory” of how you came to be.   4. Products: The goods, services, or information you produce.   5. Benefits: The promises of reward for purchasing the product, both tangible and abstract, overt and implied.   6. Actions: How you conduct yourself.   7. Culture: All the characteristics of your identity, including personality, executional style, and mind-set.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“Why would our brains throw us into a temporary insanity? What’s the evolutionary purpose for this whacked-out loss of control? To understand why fascination grasps us so irresistibly, keep in mind the illogic of flirtation, and the lunacy of love. Fascination, as we’ve seen, is a visceral and primal decision-making process, one that’s largely involuntary. Fisher says that our brains are literally “built to fall in love” because it’s in our evolutionary best interest not to think clearly during the two-year time period it takes to meet, court, and produce a child, or else we might come to our senses and avoid the inconvenience of child rearing altogether.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“Psychologists suggest that when people are no longer in charge of basic elements of a situation (such as where they sit, or when they go to the restroom), they must give over some degree of control that they normally use to define their independence, and thus themselves.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“People identify with fascinating brands: They identify themselves, their opinions, and their community. (As the commercial says, “Are you a Mac, or PC?”)”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“One school is changing the rules, giving kids a “happy meal” of a different sort. This lunch doesn’t come in a box printed with puzzles, but rather from a garden planted by the kids themselves. Alice Waters, a major proponent of the organic food movement who is credited with developing California Cuisine, piloted the Edible Schoolyard. Waters started the program in 1994 in Berkeley, an outgrowth of the Chez Panisse Foundation, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.* Students turned the school’s parking lot into a garden, or an “edible schoolyard.” Teachers and students cleared the land and developed a garden to teach kids about the entire process of how food comes from the earth to their plates. Kids don’t just eat the food; they experience it. And they start to choose it over unhealthy food.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“The word “familiar” comes from familia, meaning family. Family is more than just an emotional bond, and so is familiarity. Neurochemically, there’s a lot going on with familiarity. Our minds look for patterns. When we recognize them, we not only rely on them, but also develop preferences based on pattern repetition. Our brains use these patterns to map everything we see, hear, and experience in order to establish an expectation for the future.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“Emblems fulfill a deep, instinctive need because they say something about us. Abraham Maslow calls this “esteem”: the need to feel important, respected, and recognized as an achiever. We satisfy this need by communicating our value to the world around us.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“Alarm-based marketing logic often goes something like this: There is a limited quantity (scarcity). Unless you act now (urgency), you’ll lose your opportunity (consequence). When crafting a message for an audience who is stuck in apathy or indecision, deadlines and consequences overcome inertia to create action.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“When a Single Glance Can Cost a Million Dollars Under conditions of stress, the human body responds in predictable ways: increased heart rate, pupil dilation, perspiration, fine motor tremors, tics. In high-pressure situations, such as negotiating an employment package or being cross-examined under oath, no matter how we might try to play it cool, our bodies give us away. We broadcast our emotional state, just as Marilyn Monroe broadcast her lust for President Kennedy. We each exhibit a unique and consistent pattern of stress signals. For those who know how to read such cues, we’re essentially handing over a dictionary to our body language. Those closest to us probably already recognize a few of our cues, but an expert can take it one step further, and closely predict our actions. Jeff “Happy” Shulman is one such expert. Happy is a world-class poker player. To achieve his impressive winnings, he’s spent much of his life mastering mystique. At the highest level of play, winning depends not merely on skill, experience, statistics, or even luck with the cards, but also on an intimate understanding of human nature. In poker, the truth isn’t written just all over your face. The truth is written all over your body. Drops of Sweat, a Nervous Blink, and Other “Tells” Tournament poker is no longer a game of cards, but a game of interpretation, deception, and self-control. In an interview, Happy says that memorizing and recognizing your opponent’s nuances can be more decisive than luck or skill. Imperceptible gestures can reveal a million dollars’ worth of information. Players call these gestures “tells.” With a tell, a player unintentionally exposes his thoughts and intentions to the rest of the table. The ability to hide one’s tells—and conversely, to read the other players’ tells—offers a distinct advantage. At the amateur level, tells are simpler. Feet and legs are the biggest moving parts of your body, so skittish tapping is a dead giveaway. So is looking at a hand of cards and smiling, or rearranging cards with quivering fingertips. But at the professional level, tells would be almost impossible for you or me to read. Happy spent his career learning how to read these tells. “If you know what the other player is going to do, it’s easier to defend against it.” Like others competing at his level, Happy might prepare for a major tournament by spending hours reviewing tapes of his competitors’ previous games in order to instantly translate their tells during live competition.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“Drops of Sweat, a Nervous Blink, and Other “Tells” Tournament poker is no longer a game of cards, but a game of interpretation, deception, and self-control. In an interview, Happy says that memorizing and recognizing your opponent’s nuances can be more decisive than luck or skill. Imperceptible gestures can reveal a million dollars’ worth of information. Players call these gestures “tells.” With a tell, a player unintentionally exposes his thoughts and intentions to the rest of the table. The ability to hide one’s tells—and conversely, to read the other players’ tells—offers a distinct advantage. At the amateur level, tells are simpler. Feet and legs are the biggest moving parts of your body, so skittish tapping is a dead giveaway. So is looking at a hand of cards and smiling, or rearranging cards with quivering fingertips. But at the professional level, tells would be almost impossible for you or me to read. Happy spent his career learning how to read these tells. “If you know what the other player is going to do, it’s easier to defend against it.” Like others competing at his level, Happy might prepare for a major tournament by spending hours reviewing tapes of his competitors’ previous games in order to instantly translate their tells during live competition.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“Of the seven triggers, this is the most nuanced, and perhaps the most difficult to achieve. Mystique invites others closer, without giving them what they seek.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“Mystique can add anticipation and curiosity to any relationship, from new business pitches to social invitations, by motivating others to return for more.* There are four main ways to trigger mystique’s delicate balance: Spark curiosity. Withhold information. Build mythology. And limit access. Begin by sparking an intense behavioral motivator: curiosity.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“For marketers, it’s not about marketing a message—it’s about getting the market to create messages about you.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“The Wizard of Oz said, “A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.” The true measure of fascination lives not in your own communication to the world, but in how the world communicates about you. If this sounds emotional, that’s because it is. We don’t intellectually evaluate messages—any more than we intellectually evaluate whether someone’s voice is high or low. A voice either intimidates us, or it doesn’t. A message either does or doesn’t grip our interest (and more often than not, it doesn’t).”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“fascination has little to do with what you say, and everything to do with what you inspire others to say about your message. Fascinating people, like fascinating companies, don’t try to explain why they’re fascinating. (Explaining to people why you’re fascinating is about as effective as explaining to an employee why you deserve respect,”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“David Dilcher wrote, “flowering plants were the first advertisers in the world. They put out beautiful petals, colorful patterns, fragrances, and gave a reward, such as nectar or pollen, for any insect that would come and visit them.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“A million generations after our reptilian brains retreated to the base of our brain stems, fascination continues to be our most basic form of attention. Why? Because fascination, at some level, is based upon survival. And to survive, you must fascinate.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

“By developing symbols of value, groups can strengthen participation and commitment. People eagerly work to acquire and show off emblems. So it only makes sense that companies should develop emblems of value. Prestigious groups monitor access to remain sought-after, rare, and valuable. Insider brands usually control how many people get access to the brand; otherwise, oversaturation cheapens status and destroys value.”
― Sally Hogshead, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation