In Contagious, marketing expert Jonah Berger argues that the driving force behind products and ideas catching on—or, in his words, becoming “contagious”—is word of mouth. For something to be popular, he says, it (or its marketing) has to be interesting enough to get people talking. He then explains how to harness word of mouth to make something popular—whether it’s a product, a work of art, an article, or even just an idea.
(Shortform note: In Contagious, Berger describes the book (and the way it defines word of mouth) as a rebuttal to Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell argues that a few socially influential people are responsible for most word of mouth—and are therefore responsible for things catching on. He then explains that catering specifically to those influential people will make your product or idea popular. On the other hand, Berger suggests that word of mouth consists of thousands of small-scale conversations between everyday people. As you read through the guide, consider how Berger’s principles focus on these individual conversations—and how they refute Gladwell’s theory of a few particularly influential individuals.)
In Part One of our guide, we’ll explore Berger’s arguments for why word of mouth is the primary source of popularity. In Part Two, we’ll explore his principles for generating word of mouth, which we’ve organized into three steps:
Through our commentary, we’ll bring in psychological research and alternative perspectives that add nuance and contrast to Berger’s strategies. In addition, we’ll provide real-world examples of Berger’s principles and practical advice on how to adapt them to your product or idea.
Berger begins by discussing what causes massive, viral popularity—of ideas, articles, internet videos, products, and everything else. His argument has two main points:
To start off, Berger discusses conventional wisdom on what makes a product popular. He suggests that people usually point to three main factors: low price, high quality, and lots of advertising. However, Berger argues that while these factors can contribute to popularity, they aren’t the defining factor of popularity—in other words, they don’t make a product popular by themselves.
(Shortform note: The conventional marketing wisdom Berger discusses typically takes the form of “mass-marketing strategies”: marketing that tries to reach as many people as possible. To sell to as many people as possible, mass-marketed products have low prices. Then, mass marketing uses lots of ads touting the quality of a product to try and reach large audiences. However, companies have shifted away from mass-marketing strategies in the past few decades—supporting Berger’s claim that conventional wisdom doesn’t explain the true cause of popularity.)
The true source of popularity is word of mouth, according to Berger. Word of mouth consists of conversations, recommendations, and gossip between people. This personal communication is uniquely effective at creating popularity because it’s frequent, trustworthy, and targeted. Let’s look at how these three qualities contribute to popularity:
1) Frequency: People chat with each other all the time, Berger notes. This means that if a person wants or thinks about a product, they’ll mention it frequently to many different people—and if those people are also interested, they’ll do the same. This allows ideas to spread exponentially.
2) Trustworthiness: According to Berger, people are more likely to trust those they know than they are to believe any kind of advertising. Advertising, by definition, presents an ideal version of a product—people know this, so they don’t trust what they see in ads. On the other hand, friends, family, and coworkers are much more likely to give honest opinions. This means that people will value word of mouth more than advertising when they consider buying a product.
3) Targeted: Berger argues that word of mouth automatically targets an interested audience. Interested people are more likely to buy and talk about a product, contributing to its popularity. Additionally, people tend to recommend or mention products to people they think would like them. Then, if those people do like it, they’ll be more likely to pass it along to other interested people. This also contributes to a product’s exponential growth in popularity.
Influencer Marketing, Word of Mouth, and Popularity
While Berger discusses word of mouth in the context of many one-on-one conversations, some advertisers try to create frequent, trustworthy, and targeted ads through influencers—people who promote products to their large (usually online) followings. Here are their arguments for how influencers replicate the benefits of word of mouth:
1) Frequent: To gain and maintain a large online following, influencers create online content frequently, often posting once a day or more. This means an influencer partnered with your product will mention it frequently.
2) Trustworthy: Influencers typically position themselves as authority figures on a particular topic, so audiences are more likely to believe their opinions on products. For example: An influencer that creates makeup tutorials demonstrates a level of expertise in makeup—so if they recommend a product, people will trust that recommendation.
3) Targeted: Influencers have existing audiences who are already interested in their content. Therefore, if you partner with an influencer who makes content related to your product, your marketing will target an existing interested audience. For example: An influencer that makes video game content has an existing fanbase that’s interested in video games. If a video game studio works with that influencer to promote their new game, they focus on an interested audience that the influencer has already built.
After explaining why word of mouth should be the goal of your marketing, Berger outlines how to generate word of mouth. He explains six principles, which we’ve organized into three main steps:
First, you’ll need to get people to notice your product. Berger provides two main marketing strategies for attracting your target audience: creating public visibility and using effective triggers.
Berger explains that to attract an audience, people should be able to see others using your product publicly. This allows people to consistently see your product around them—and when they see it frequently, they’ll start thinking about it frequently. To ensure your product is publicly visible, make it advertise itself by prominently displaying your product’s name or logo on it. You can see examples of this all around you: on computers, sneakers, headphones, and so on.
If people don’t use your product publicly or it isn’t clear that they’re using your product (for example, if someone is reading a book, it isn’t clear that they bought it from your bookstore), then Berger suggests finding an alternate way to publicly show that people buy it. For example, your bookstore could give your customers a free gift like a reusable water bottle so when they use it in public they show off your brand.
(Shortform note: While Berger limits his discussion to how to create public visibility, Ryan Holiday (Perennial Seller) suggests you also consider when to create public visibility. He argues that word of mouth is more likely to spread when a product is new, since people like talking about novel and interesting things. Therefore, he says to push particularly hard for public visibility when your product first launches. The resulting buzz will create the perception that your product is getting big quickly—another reason people will talk about it.)
To get people to notice your product, connect it to effective triggers. A trigger is a stimulus that acts as a reminder for something else. When you link your product or idea to a trigger, people will automatically think of your product when they encounter that trigger. For example: An ice cream brand associates their product with sunny weather in their marketing. Then, sunny weather triggers people to think about that brand of ice cream.
(Shortform note: The practice of using and refining triggers is central to “neuromarketing”: marketing strategies based on brain science. Neuromarketing has grown in popularity over time, and it often uses tools like eye tracking or brain scans to understand how people make decisions about products or respond to marketing. Triggers are essential parts of this research: Neuromarketing often studies how triggers lead to actions (like buying or talking about a product) and how they lead to social interaction—both crucial components of word of mouth.)
An effective trigger must have long-term relevance. This allows people to encounter the trigger frequently over an extended period of time—this way, they’ll keep thinking about your product. Berger offers two methods to make your product relevant for a long time:
1) Relevance: Connect your trigger to something highly relevant to people’s everyday lives like a common phrase, activity, or feature of an area. This way, your trigger will activate frequently so people think about your product frequently. For example, a business based in New York City connects its product to traffic jams—something that its target audience encounters frequently.
2) Long-term: Make sure your trigger will continue to be relevant weeks, months, and even years into the future. This creates a far more effective trigger than one connecting your product to a temporary trend or uncommon occurrence. For example, a trigger that connects your product to vampires will only work around Halloween, or if a piece of vampire media is popular.
(Shortform note: With the rise of data-driven marketing, some experts suggest that ads should rely not on triggers that an audience will likely experience every day or in the long term, but rather on what they are currently experiencing. By using data collected from electronic devices, advertisers can recognize what consumers are doing—and then use mobile ads to make them think of a product that suits their circumstances. Experts argue this approach is better because by design, it targets an interested audience—so ads will convince a higher percentage of their audience to buy a product. For example: An advertiser can use data to recognize if someone has been outside all day in sunny weather—and then directly advertise ice cream to them.)
Berger explains that attracting an audience for your product isn’t enough—you then have to keep them interested in it. Someone who sees your product but quickly forgets about it won’t generate word of mouth, while someone who’s interested will think and talk about it much more.
(Shortform note: Some experts argue that engaging an existing audience is more important than finding a new one. Studies show that gaining new customers can cost more than five times as much as keeping customers you already have—and that increasing customer retention (how many customers you consistently keep) by 5% can increase profits by anywhere from 25% to 95%. From this perspective, engaging an existing audience is a cheaper and more profitable way to generate word of mouth than attracting new customers.)
In this section of our guide, we’ll explain Berger’s two methods for keeping an audience engaged: inspiring an emotional response and telling a story.
When people get emotional, they like to talk about how they’re feeling and what made them feel that way. Therefore, when your product inspires an emotional response, it’ll also generate word of mouth. Berger suggests using marketing that focuses less on delivering lots of information and more on inspiring an emotional response.
(Shortform note: Experts suggest that emotional marketing doesn’t just get people talking about your product—it can also make them feel an emotional connection to your company or brand. If your marketing makes an audience feel proud to buy your products or somehow “close” to your company, then they’ll want to be loyal customers that talk about and buy your products long-term. For example: Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke'' campaign put common names on Coke products that customers could share with friends and family. This campaign associated Coke with emotional relationships, and it made customers feel involved or personally attached to the company.)
However, not every emotion has this effect. Berger says to aim for emotions that generate “physiological arousal”: a state of physical readiness for action. People respond to physiological arousal in various ways: running around, jumping for joy, or—most importantly—telling others about what caused their emotional response. The five main high-arousal emotions are anger, anxiety, awe, amusement, and excitement. Meanwhile, low-arousal emotions include sadness and contentment. Inspire high-arousal emotions with your marketing—for example, you could amuse people by adding humor, or awe them with breathtaking nature photos.
Is Focusing on High-Arousal Emotions Enough to Generate Virality?
Further research on the link between emotions and popular, “viral” content suggests that physiological arousal alone can’t explain audience engagement. Instead, studies show that emotional “virality” depends on three different standards:
Physiological arousal
Valence: positivity or negativity
Dominance: how much people feel in control (for example, inspiration is a high dominance emotion while fear is low dominance)
Psychologists argue that different combinations of emotions can create different kinds of “virality”: Divisive and controversial viral stories inspire a mix of high arousal and low dominance emotions, while uplifting “feel-good” viral stories inspire a mix of positive valence and high dominance emotions. Therefore, following Berger’s advice and solely focusing on high-arousal emotions may not be sufficient to emotionally engage your audience—instead, consider how you can use all three factors above to your benefit.
To engage your audience, Berger recommends telling a gripping narrative with your marketing and making your product crucial to this narrative. People love to share interesting stories. When your product is crucial to the story, they’ll have to mention it—generating word of mouth.
For example: In 2019, PepsiCo created a Superbowl commercial that told a story about people proud of drinking Pepsi. They based their story on the phrase: “Is Pepsi okay?” This phrase is essential to the story, and it centrally features the product—so people can’t explain the narrative without talking about Pepsi.
Add Context to Your Stories
Some experts recommend that to engage an audience, you shouldn’t just tell a story that features your product—you should also tell a story about when and why people use it. This way, you engage the audience by showing them why they might need your product or what benefits it might provide.
For example: An ad for a smartphone tells the story of kids pranking their dad by hiding his phone charger. This ad tells a story about the product, but it doesn’t show an audience why they should want it. Consider how the same ad with context shows the benefits of the product: Kids prank their dad by hiding his phone charger. But their dad’s new smartphone has such good battery life that a week goes by without him looking for the charger—so the kids get bored and give up on their prank.
Once you’ve attracted and engaged an audience, Berger says to focus on the third method of generating word of mouth: making sure your audience gets something out of talking about your product. If they get something out of it, then your audience will want to generate word of mouth.
(Shortform note: While Berger offers benefits as one of many ways to create word of mouth, some experts claim that you should build your marketing entirely around these benefits. People focus on their own personal lives and problems—so if your marketing doesn’t provide a personal benefit, people will ignore it. But if you focus entirely on benefitting your customer and providing them with a positive experience, then you’ll get people interested and talking about your product.)
In this section of the guide, we’ll explore the two benefits Berger says to offer your customers: social currency and practical value.
Berger says your product should provide “social currency” to your customers—in other words, talking about it should give them social influence and make them look interesting. If talking about your product makes someone look good in this way, then they’ll generate much more word of mouth. On the other hand, if talking about your product makes someone seem dull, they’re probably not going to choose it as a topic of conversation.
(Shortform note: For a further explanation of what “looking good” means in a social context, researchers studied why people share viral videos and found three main reasons that relate to social currency: 1) They want to be the first to show their friends something interesting, 2) they want to demonstrate their knowledge of something, and 3) they want to show that they’re up to date on current trends.)
To make your product or idea a source of social currency, Berger suggests:
Berger notes that people love talking about remarkable things because doing so makes them seem remarkable, thus increasing their social currency. Make your product or service seem remarkable by identifying and emphasizing the thing that makes it interesting. If your product does something previously thought to be impossible, or if it improves upon a traditional formula, make sure to mention this in your marketing. For example: In 2006, Gillette launched the world’s first five-blade razor. This “world first” made the product remarkable and featured prominently in its marketing.
(Shortform note: For advice on how to make your product remarkable, Seth Godin (Purple Cow) argues that you must take risks—playing things safe and going for broad appeal means you won’t stand out. To take risks, Godin suggests consistently trying new ideas and taking on large and ambitious projects—even if you fail spectacularly, you’ll still get people talking about you and your product.)
Berger suggests adding “game mechanics”—the components of a game that measure accomplishment—to your product. Game mechanics might include systems like reward points or bonuses for frequent customers. When people interact with these mechanics and “win” the game, they’ll feel a sense of achievement—and they’ll brag about this achievement to gain social currency and impress others. When they brag, they also generate word of mouth about the product or service that gave them a sense of achievement.
(Shortform note: Game mechanics don’t just generate social currency—they can also psychologically motivate people to buy or use your product. Research suggests that game mechanics can increase motivation and make tasks feel more meaningful. This means customers might engage with your product’s game mechanics just to enjoy them for their own sake. And if they enjoy them enough, they might recommend the game to others, which generates word of mouth about your product. For example, the US Army created and ran their own video game for over two decades—a multiplayer game that people could play with (and recommend to) their friends.)
According to Berger, making a product or service scarce gives social currency to the people who do manage to get hold of it. These customers seem “special” because they’ve accessed something that’s out of reach to a lot of people. When bragging about their “special” status, these customers will spread word of mouth about the scarce thing they’ve bought. To add the perception of scarcity to your product, give the impression that it’ll be difficult to get hold of. For example, tell customers that you expect the product to sell out quickly.
(Shortform note: In addition to providing social currency, scarcity can also generate word of mouth through stories of how hard it is to obtain your product—and how far people go to get it. This was a crucial part of toy company Ty’s billions made from their plush toys, Beanie Babies. Ty tightly controlled limited runs of certain Beanie Babies, creating scarcity. This scarcity led people to incredible lengths to get certain Beanie Babies, even reselling the toys for thousands of dollars. Stories of these devoted customers generated word of mouth not just about the products, but about the Beanie Baby “craze” as a whole.)
Berger argues that exclusivity works on a similar principle—if customers feel like they’re part of a group that not just anyone can join, they’ll brag about it to gain social currency. And if your product made them feel that way, then they’ll mention it and generate word of mouth. To add the perception of exclusivity to your product, create the impression that only a select few people can access it. First-class seats on an airplane are a great example: Airlines separate first class passengers into their own section and provide them extra benefits so they feel like they’re part of a special group. These customers then brag about these benefits or how comfortable their trip was—generating word of mouth.
(Shortform note: While Berger suggests exclusivity as one possible method of generating word of mouth, some marketing relies entirely on exclusivity. These strategies are often known as “anti-marketing”: Marketing strategies that actively avoid advertising or intentionally defy normal marketing principles to create an image of exclusivity. For example: In 2011, Patagonia ran a Black Friday ad that said, “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” Anti-marketing campaigns give the impression that your product or company doesn’t need to attract new customers—which makes it look exclusive. However, anti-marketing is risky. Customers might never notice a product or take its ironic approach at face value, like with Coca-Cola’s failed “OK Soda” product.)
The easiest way to benefit your audience is to make your product or service a source of “practical value”: useful things that make life easier. Examples of practical value include money-saving or advice on “life hacks.” Practical value generates word of mouth because people want to share it to benefit their friends and family—and in the process, they’ll talk about your product.
(Shortform note: You might wonder why Berger emphasizes practical value when earlier on he noted that things like price and quality can’t make something popular on their own. To clear up this confusion, think of it this way: What matters isn’t how much value you provide to your customers, but rather how much they talk about the value you provide.)
Berger suggests two sources of practical value that get people talking:
The first way to add practical value to your product or service is to give it a significant discount. Berger notes that if your product or service is a real money-saver, people will want to tell other people about it.
(Shortform note: While Berger recommends discounts—a type of temporary value-adding promotion—Ryan Holiday (Perennial Seller) suggests always making your customers feel like they’re saving money with payment models that require little to no upfront cost. This could include free trials, offering portions of your product for free, or even monetizing your product entirely through ads and sponsorships. Requiring little to no cash upfront means your product will provide more value to potential customers that want to try it. As a result, more people will try your product—and then more people will talk about it.)
The second way to add practical value to your product or service is to provide useful information to your customers, sending them advice or practical tips to make life easier. When your customers receive this information, they’ll create word of mouth by passing it on to friends or family members they think would benefit from it. In the process, they’ll also inform others about your company as the source of that information. Berger suggests you limit information to three or four simple and engaging points at a time: If it’s short, people will be more likely to actually read it. If it’s interesting, they’ll be more likely to tell others about it.
Share Useful Information About Problems Your Product Solves
Berger mostly talks about useful information as small tips for solutions to everyday challenges. While Chet Holmes (The Ultimate Sales Machine) also suggests providing useful information, he argues that it should instead educate your audience on the problem your product solves. The more your audience understands this problem, the more they’ll understand the benefits of your product—and the more they’ll share this information.
An example of problem-focused information marketing is Listerine’s popularization of “halitosis.” In the 1920s, halitosis wasn’t a medical term—it was just Latin for “bad breath.” But Listerine’s marketing reframed bad breath as a serious medical problem with a formal-sounding name. The marketing created buzz (and fear) around halitosis, and their products, which they positioned as the solution to this problem, became massively successful because of it.
Every day, people introduce countless new ideas to the world—for example, new products, new political policies, and new businesses. Many of these ideas get lost in the crowd and never really “catch on.” Businesses fail, new behavioral ideas fail to take root, and new content is ignored.
However, some ideas sweep across society and become the next “big thing.” They become contagious. Suddenly, everyone wants to buy the latest new product, visit the trendy new gym in their area, or read the latest viral article. This process of ideas catching on is called a “social epidemic.”
Why is it that some new products and ideas gain widespread popularity while others fail to “catch on”? Research has provided three simplistic explanations at to why certain things become so popular:
While these factors do contribute to social epidemics, they don’t tell the full story. Some things become popular or “go viral” without any of these factors being true. For example, consider viral YouTube clips. All YouTube videos are free to view, so their cost can’t be a factor in them going viral. The videos don’t get advertised, so that can’t be it either. While some videos are of a higher quality than others, the ones that go viral are commonly blurry or poor-quality.
If these three factors aren’t the true causes of virality, what is?
According to marketing professor Jonah Berger, the driving force behind products and ideas catching on—or, in his words, becoming “contagious”—is “social transmission”; a process otherwise known as word of mouth. People generate word of mouth when they tell their friends and family about interesting new products they’ve tried, or when they send a friend an online article that they enjoyed.
Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool. Research has shown that 20% to 50% of all purchasing decisions have word of mouth as their driving force. It’s at least ten times more effective than traditional advertising, for two reasons.
First, our friends and family are more trustworthy than ads. They’re objective sources of information about a product or idea because they have no stake in whether we accept their recommendation or not. They’re likely to tell the truth about a product’s effectiveness. Meanwhile, ads aren’t credible sources of information. Because their main purpose is to sell things, they focus on the good things about a product or idea and hide its flaws.
Second, word of mouth is more targeted than advertising. Of all the people who see ads each day on TV and on billboards, very few are actually going to be interested in buying the product being promoted. Meanwhile, word of mouth is naturally targeted because people only tell you about products that they know you will be interested in. For example, your friend isn’t going to tell you about some really cool skis she’s bought if she knows you don’t like skiing. Capitalizing on this targeted form of marketing is beneficial to companies because it means they don’t waste money on ads that very few people will be interested in.
Now that you’ve learned how powerful word of mouth is, you’re probably wondering how you can get people talking about your product or idea. There are lots of conflicting ideas about how word of mouth is generated. Some people believe that it’s impossible to plan or predict, and that which products or ideas are widely discussed and shared is totally random.
Others think that some products or ideas generate more discussion because they’re naturally more exciting. For instance, a smartphone with all of the latest technology is naturally going to be more interesting to talk about than a budget toaster.
Meanwhile, in his work The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell suggests that to successfully create word of mouth, you need to get the right people talking about your product or idea. Specifically, focus on attracting the attention of people who are influential, persuasive, or have lots of people to talk to—for example, public figures, natural salespeople, and people with lots of friends. Gladwell argues that these people can use their personalities and connections to make any product popular through word of mouth.
(Shortform note: For more on Gladwell’s theory on how to create a social epidemic, see our summary of The Tipping Point.)
However, Jonah Berger believes that none of these explanations are quite right. According to his research, word of mouth isn’t random and uncontrollable. It’s something that can be generated, by making your product or idea compelling: interesting enough to spark discussion. Berger claims that even the most outwardly ordinary products—such as blenders or toasters—can become the topic of word of mouth if you frame them in a compelling way. The person talking about the product or idea doesn’t need to be compelling, but the product or idea itself does.
Berger’s research showed that contagious ideas and products often have six attributes that make them compelling:
In Contagious, Berger explores how you can add these six qualities to your product or idea—and why doing so might just make your product or idea contagious.
Before we discuss the first attribute of contagious ideas, we need to bust a myth about word of mouth. Many people believe that these days, most word of mouth occurs on social media.
At first glance, this seems logical. People spend a lot of time browsing social media and probably see many statuses from friends and “influencers” recommending certain products or pushing certain ideas. Therefore, you might think that the best way to get the word out about your product or idea is to do so on social media.
However, research has shown that only 7% of word of mouth actually takes place online. Most still happens in “in-person” conversations. People overestimate the importance and prevalence of online word of mouth because it’s much more visible. You see people’s tweets and statuses about products, but you don’t hear their private conversations about them. Remember that just because you don’t hear these discussions doesn’t mean they don’t happen!
When the time comes to start generating buzz about your idea or product, make sure that your strategy reflects this truth. Don’t waste too much energy trying to generate online discussion. Ultimately, the benefits aren’t that great.
The first attribute of contagious ideas and products is that they give people social currency. The theory of social currency is based on the idea that everything you talk about affects how people see you and impacts your level of social influence. For example, if you only talk about boring things, people will think you’re boring. They won’t want to talk to you anymore, meaning your social influence will decrease. However, if you talk about interesting, witty, or unusual things, people will think you’re fun to be around. They’ll want to spend time with you, and your social influence will increase.
Because what people say has such a big impact on their public image, they’re inclined to choose their topics of conversation carefully. They’re only willing to talk about things that they think will add to their social currency, not deplete it. For this reason, if you want information about your product or idea to disseminate through word of mouth, make sure that discussing it gives people social currency rather than taking it away.
You can make your product or idea a source of social currency by implementing three principles:
The first way to make your product or idea a source of social currency is to make it remarkable—somehow interesting or innovative enough to get people talking. Berger’s research has shown that people love talking about remarkable things—for example, improbable or interesting facts and innovative products—because doing so makes them seem remarkable.
Berger’s research has also demonstrated that people tend to exaggerate the remarkability of what they’re talking about just to make themselves seem even more remarkable. For example, someone might frame an innovative product that helps them to chop a vegetable in less than ten seconds as a five-second chopping sensation. Therefore, if you can get people talking about your remarkable product, they’ll probably make it seem even better than it actually is. This will only help in your mission to generate word of mouth.
You can make a product or idea seem remarkable by using your marketing materials to emphasize the thing that makes it interesting or notable. Clearly tell the consumer what makes your product so special. For instance, can your product do something that was previously thought to be impossible? Does it break and improve upon an expected or accepted pattern? If so, make this a key element of your marketing strategy.
Take the example of Blendtec blenders. These products seem ordinary enough. They’re just blenders, right? Well, not quite. Blendtec products became remarkable when it emerged they were strong enough to blend items as tough as golf balls. No other blender had done that before.
Another example of this principle is JetBlue, a popular budget airline. Most low-cost airlines have small seats, very few snacks, and no in-flight entertainment. JetBlue flights are remarkable because they break all of these conventions—so people talk about and recommend them.
A more unusual way to make your product remarkable is to add an element of mystery or controversy to its marketing. Give it a mysterious provenance, or make it challenge social convention somehow. People love talking about things that raise questions or trigger outrage.
A famous example of this is the marketing around the movie The Blair Witch Project. The movie was initially marketed as “found footage”—the real recordings of three filmmakers who’d gone missing, possibly at the hands of a witch. People constantly discussed and questioned whether the footage was real or not, contributing to the film’s popularity.
The second way to harness the power of social currency is by applying game mechanics to your product or service. Game mechanics are the elements of a game that measure accomplishment—for example, points systems, leaderboards, and in-game trophies. When people meet these mechanics’ requirements and “win” the game, they get the sense that they’ve achieved something.
This achievement becomes a form of social currency. The winner knows that telling people they’ve “won” at something will make them appear impressive, so they brag about their achievement whenever they can. In the process, they share information about the thing that gave them their sense of accomplishment. They inadvertently promote the product or service that made them feel good. In other words, they spread word of mouth about it.
For example, if a friend mentions to you that they came top of the leaderboard in a certain online game, they’re also going to tell you the game’s name and what it involves. They’re going to spread word of mouth about the product without even realizing they’re doing it.
To apply game mechanics to your product or service and generate word of mouth, find a way to replicate the sense of achievement that people feel when they win a game. One way to do this is to introduce a reward system for using your product or service. If the customer uses your product or service enough, they advance to the next tier of the system and unlock a reward. This gives them a sense of achievement, and a feeling of high status: two things they’ll go on to brag about while also handily mentioning your company.
For example, airlines have “gamified” air travel by introducing frequent flier reward programs. The more a person flies with the company, the more “air miles” they collect, and the higher up the rewards hierarchy they advance. This is an achievement they’re bound to share with friends.
Another way to apply game mechanics is to run contests for your customers. This is particularly effective if you make your contest have multiple winners who can all brag about their achievement and spread the word about your company. Even better, run a contest with a voting process. That way, all of the entrants will work hard to gain votes by telling everyone they know about the contest, again generating discussion about your company.
One brand that successfully generated word of mouth through contests is Burberry. The brand once ran a competition in which customers submitted a photo of themselves or a loved one wearing the famous Burberry trench coat. The best photos would be posted on Burberry’s website. In the wake of the contest, the brand’s sales increased by 50% and its website got millions of views from all over the world. Berger believes that this success was due to the word of mouth generated by the contest’s entrants and winners.
To make game mechanics even more effective at generating word of mouth, make it very easy for people to share their achievements with others. For instance, once someone has achieved a certain membership tier, send them a physical membership card that they can easily show off to their friends and family.
The final way to use social currency to your advantage is to use scarcity and exclusivity to make your product or service desirable.
“Scarcity” is all about controlling the perception of your product’s availability. It involves making people think that they’ll struggle to get hold of whatever you’re selling. You can do this by:
“Exclusivity” also relates to availability, but in a slightly different way. It’s about creating the perception that only a select few people have access to your product or service. A simple way of doing this is to make the product or service more expensive. That way, only richer people can afford it.
However, a much more effective method of generating exclusivity is making information about and access to your product hard to come by. For example, you could make your product or service “members only,” or only let people access it if they’ve been recommended by a current member.
Another option is to not traditionally promote your product or service that much. This will limit the amount of public information about it and make it seem like a “secret.” Knowledge of this secret product or service will then become something “exclusive.” (However, it probably won’t remain secret for long. Humans are notoriously bad at keeping secrets.)
Note that you don’t want to make the existence of your product or idea completely secret. You won’t generate word of mouth if absolutely nobody knows about the thing you’re offering. You merely want to present the illusion of secrecy—something you can do by limiting the amount of public information about it, not releasing no information whatsoever.
Both of these suggestions may seem counterintuitive compared to the usual marketing advice of making your business as visible as possible. However, they can have a powerful effect when trying to generate word of mouth due to the benefits of scarcity and exclusivity.
Making your product or service appear scarce and exclusive will benefit you in two ways. First, it will make customers want to purchase your product or service and do so right now. Consumers tend to believe that if a product or service is hard to get hold of, it must be good and therefore worth buying. After all, there must be a reason why it’s constantly sold out. Perhaps it’s unique, or particularly high-quality. They decide that they must purchase this popular product or service as soon as possible so they don’t miss out when it inevitably sells out again.
Second, making a product or service scarce and exclusive gives social currency to the people who do manage to get hold of it. It makes them seem like “insiders,” special individuals who were somehow able to access something that’s out of reach to a lot of people. These people know their “insider” status will make them look good, so they brag about it to their loved ones. Their loved ones may then decide they want the “insider status” that comes with using the product or service, too. They’ll be driven to buy it and will inevitably brag to others about doing so. This continues the cycle of social currency and word of mouth.
(Shortform note: To learn more about how the principle of scarcity influences your customers’ buying decisions, read our summary of Robert Cialdini’s Influence.)
SmartBargains was a website that sold discounted designer items such as clothes and homeware. At first, it saw a lot of success. However, by 2007, it was struggling. People weren’t as excited about the brand anymore and it was losing customers.
In 2008, SmartBargains’ CEO decided to set up a new website called Rue La La. Rue La La sold exactly the same products as SmartBargains. However, its mode of operation was slightly different. The goods were sold during “flash sales” that only lasted for a day or two. This created an impression of scarcity. To access the sales, customers had to be invited by an existing user of the site. This generated a sense of exclusivity.
Rue La La became extremely successful because of this approach. Gaining access to its products became a form of social currency. This meant that its members bragged about their use of the site, spreading the word about it to their friends and family and increasing the site’s customer base.
Learn how to make a product a source of social currency.
Think of a time you tried to tell someone about a product—either a product you’re marketing yourself, or a product you’ve used—but they seemed uninterested in what you were saying. What was the product? Why do you think your discussion of it fell flat?
In your eyes, what makes this product remarkable? (For instance, does it do something you previously thought was impossible? Does it modify a tried and tested formula? Is it in some way mysterious or controversial?)
Does the product have any other attributes that could give it social currency? (For example, is it part of a reward system that leverages game mechanics? Is it somehow scarce or exclusive?)
Now that you’ve considered the product’s remarkability and other interesting attributes, do you think you’d gain social currency if you talked about it again? Why or why not?
The second attribute of contagious products and ideas is that their marketing strategy contains triggers. A trigger is a stimulus that reminds you of something else. For example, smelling food as you walk down the street might remind you that you need to grab some lunch. Seeing a book that a loved one likes will remind you of that person.
If you can link your product or idea to a trigger, you can ensure that people think about it whenever they encounter that trigger. For instance, say you‘re launching a new type of ice cream. In the marketing for your product, you decide to strongly associate eating the ice cream with sunny weather. From now on, whenever it’s sunny, people will be triggered to think about your product.
Triggering people to think about your product helps to generate word of mouth because people tend to talk about whatever’s on their mind in a given moment. Therefore, if your product or idea is the thing on someone’s mind, it’ll become the thing they choose to talk about.
This is especially true when people are making small talk—for instance, when parents are talking on the sideline of their kids’ soccer game, or when colleagues chat on their lunch break. In this type of conversation, people aren’t too bothered about talking about something cool or interesting. Cashing in social currency isn’t their main objective. Instead, they just want to fill the silence with something—anything. In their desperation to do this, they turn to the most obvious thing to talk about: the thing that’s at the forefront of their minds.
Companies use triggers in their marketing campaigns all the time. However, Berger’s research has shown that not all triggers are created equal. Some lead to huge increases in popularity for brands, while others fall flat.
For a trigger to be effective, it needs to be designed very carefully. It must have the following five features:
The trigger also needs to be consistently and strongly linked to your product in your marketing campaign.
If you want people to consistently think and talk about your product, you need to remind them of its existence regularly. Therefore, you need to pick a trigger that activates frequently.
The easiest way to make your trigger activate frequently is to make it a common stimulus that people will encounter a lot in their everyday lives. Make the trigger something people might come across on their way to work, while they’re seeing friends, on a walk around the block.
For example, a successful Budweiser marketing campaign used the word “wassup” as a trigger. In the brand’s TV ads, young men were shown saying “wassup” to each other as they met up and drank Budweiser. At the time, “wassup” was a common phrase used by young men, who happened to be the company’s target demographic. These men encountered the term “wassup” a lot in their everyday lives, and every time they did, they would think of Budweiser.
In contrast, insurance company GEICO used cavemen as a trigger in one of their marketing campaigns. Their ads stated that switching to their insurance was easy enough even for a caveman to do. Unfortunately for GEICO, most people don’t come across cavemen very much in their everyday lives. The trigger wasn’t activated frequently enough for it to be effective, and the marketing campaign wasn’t successful.
A common mistake that companies make when it comes to choosing triggers is making the trigger too time-constrained. For example, the beer brand Michelob initially made its trigger “the holidays.” This limited how frequently the trigger could activate. Holidays don’t come around all that often, so people weren’t triggered to think about Michelob beer all that often. The marketing campaign fell flat.
If you decide to make your trigger time-related, choose a time period or a time-constrained event that happens frequently enough to generate consistent interest in your product. For example, when Michelob switched their time-related trigger from “the holidays” to “the weekend,” interest in their product increased again. People were triggered to think about the beer every weekend—much more frequently than before.
Successful triggers must have long-term relevance. They must be something that people will keep encountering weeks, months, or even years into the future. If your trigger quickly disappears from public view, people will swiftly stop thinking and talking about your product. You won’t generate ongoing word of mouth or create long-term product success.
For instance, while Budweiser’s “wassup” trigger worked well in the short term, it had a time limit because popular slang changes pretty frequently. “Wassup” wasn’t going to remain a commonly used phrase forever. As a trigger, it would eventually become obsolete.
Meanwhile, in the late 2000s, Kit Kat chose a trigger that has remained relevant for years and will continue to do so: drinking coffee. People will always want to drink coffee, meaning the trigger’s effectiveness will never wane.
For a trigger to be successful, it must activate close to a place where people can act on it. If it doesn’t, people will likely forget about your product before they get the chance to do what you want them to do. For instance, if the behavior you want from your customers is for them to talk about your product, make your trigger something that will appear when they’re around other people. It does no good for the trigger to be activated when they’re alone and have nobody to talk to.
In many ways, Kit Kat’s coffee trigger does this. People frequently get coffee with other people—for example, with their colleagues on work breaks or with friends at the weekend. This means that when people make a coffee and start to think about Kit Kats, they’re in a prime position to discuss the product with other people.
Conversely, a New Zealand public service announcement about slipping in the bathroom proved ineffective because its trigger wasn’t close enough to the site of the desired behavior. The ad’s ultimate aim was to get people to buy a bath mat. This would stop them from slipping on the wet floor after their shower and injuring themselves.
As their trigger, the producers of the ad chose the action of taking a shower. This meant that every time people took a shower, they thought of the ad and were reminded to buy a bath mat. But, they couldn’t act on their thoughts. They were in the shower, not in a shop or near a device that they could use to shop online. Consequently, the ad was ineffective.
When you pick a trigger for your product, make sure it’s unique—that people haven’t used that trigger to make people think about other products or ideas in the past. If you choose a trigger that’s been used before, there’s a high chance that people won’t think about your product or idea when they see it. Instead, they’ll think of the previously linked product or idea. Your product will get lost in the crowd.
For example, if you choose the color red as your trigger, it will probably be ineffective. People are going to think about things like Coca Cola and Santa Claus before they think of your product.
Different geographical areas have different environments and therefore contain different potential triggers. For example, palm trees are common in Los Angeles, but not so much in the Pacific Northwest. New York City has packed streets with honking yellow cabs, while rural Minnesota has open roads with far fewer cars. People in these different locations experience vastly different situations, meaning they come across very different stimuli.
Be mindful of this fact when choosing your trigger. If you pick a trigger that isn’t present in the local environment of your target audience, it’s going to be ineffective. People simply won’t see the trigger often enough for it to spark consistent thoughts about your product.
For instance, imagine you’re marketing a new brand of bottled water. Your target audience is professionals who work in Washington DC. When formulating your marketing strategy, you decide to make the desert your trigger. You design your campaign around the idea that this water is the perfect drink to quench your thirst if you’re walking through the desert. However, there is no desert in Washington DC. Your target audience is very unlikely to come across your chosen trigger. Therefore, they’re very unlikely to be reminded of and talk about your product.
Once you’ve created an effective trigger, use marketing materials to consistently link your product to your trigger. People need to frequently see the product and the trigger together so that they strongly connect the two concepts in their minds. Only then will encountering the trigger make them think of the product.
Incorporate the trigger into every element of your marketing campaign. Find a way to include it in your product’s slogan, and include the trigger in your visual or radio advertising. Keep pushing the idea that your trigger and your product are connected.
For example, when Kit Kat wanted to make coffee its new trigger, it introduced a series of radio ads. All of the ads somehow connected Kit Kats and coffee. One ad described a Kit Kat being placed next to a cup of coffee in someone’s kitchen. Another described someone immediately requesting a Kit Kat after purchasing a cup of coffee. These ads were the key to cementing the connection between Kit Kats and coffee in customers’ minds.
A slightly sneaky and unusual way of using triggers is the “poison parasite” method. This involves making a competitor’s marketing campaign a trigger for your own—making people think of your product whenever they hear about your competitor’s offering.
To implement this method, reference your competitor’s product or messaging in your marketing campaign. For instance, make a TV ad that’s a spoof of your competitor’s earlier ad. From now on, when a customer sees your competitor’s ad, they’ll immediately think of your spoof. The attention will be taken from the competitor’s product and placed on yours instead.
A famous example of this is an anti-smoking campaign that spoofed a Marlboro cigarette ad. The campaign used the same characters as the Marlboro ad, but instead of gleefully sharing Marlboro cigarettes, the characters talked about the health issues they’d developed due to their smoking. From then on, when people saw the Marlboro ad, they immediately thought of the anti-smoking campaign. Consequently, they were discouraged from buying cigarettes.
Learn how to create an effective trigger for your product or idea.
Think of a product you’ve created (or one that you enjoy using). Brainstorm five to ten possible triggers for this product. (Try to make sure that these triggers haven’t been used by other companies before. Likewise, try to make them relevant to your target audience’s local environment.)
Now, it’s time to narrow down these possible triggers. Which three or four triggers do you believe are likely to activate the most frequently, and why?
Out of these three or four frequently activating triggers, which one do you think will have the most long-term relevance? Why is this trigger unlikely to fade out of public view?
Which of your remaining triggers is most likely to activate close to the site of your desired behavior, and why? (“The site of your desired behavior” may be the place where people can buy your product, or a place where people can talk about it.)
The third attribute of contagious products and ideas is that they generate an emotional response. When people experience strong emotions, they often like to talk to others about how they’re feeling. For instance, someone who’s had a bad day at work will want to go home and vent their anger to their family. Someone who’s just gotten promoted will want to share their excitement with their loved ones.
When people do this, they inevitably share all the details about what made them so emotional in the first place. So, if you can make your product or idea generate an emotional response in people, it may get them talking not only about their feelings but also about your product or idea itself.
An important caveat to this principle is that not all emotions are equally effective at getting people to discuss your product or idea. Berger’s research found that only emotions that generate high amounts of physiological arousal push people to talk about how they’re feeling.
Physiological arousal is, in simple terms, your body being “activated”—being readied for action. Signs of physiological arousal include a racing heart, tensed muscles, sweaty palms, and a general feeling of your senses being heightened.
In the early days of the human race, physiological arousal readied us for the body’s fight-or-flight response. It prepared us to either run from predators or attack prey. These days, the responses that physiological arousal triggers are somewhat less life-or-death. When people are highly physiologically aroused, they may jump up and down on the spot, pace back and forth, or fidget.
Crucially, highly physiologically aroused people also tend to rush to tell others about the source of their arousal—the thing that’s got them so fired up. Therefore, if you can make your product or idea a source of high physiological arousal, you’ll get people talking about it and generate word of mouth.
So, which emotions generate high physiological arousal, and which don’t? According to Jonah Berger, the five main high-arousal emotions are anger, anxiety, awe, amusement, and excitement. These are the emotions to incorporate into your marketing plan.
Meanwhile, low-arousal emotions include sadness and contentment. These emotions discourage action rather than drive it. For instance, sadness tends to de-energize the body. It makes people want to stay put on the couch and wallow, not rush about telling people about the source of their sadness. Likewise, contentment has a relaxing effect on the body. It makes people’s blood pressure go down and their heart rate decrease. People often want to relish this feeling of relaxation, not cut it short by snapping into action again.
Over ten years, Denise Grady had written numerous articles about science for the New York Times. Her articles had always been popular but had never become truly “contagious”—until October 27, 2008, when one of her pieces went viral.
The viral piece appeared to be quite dry. It was about fluid dynamics: specifically, how you can use a certain type of photography to capture an image of the airflow that’s released by a human cough. It was a technical article that discussed complex scientific techniques. However, it spread like wildfire among the general population.
The reason behind this article’s virality was the photo that accompanied it. It was an image of a person coughing captured using the technology Grady discussed and showed a huge, visible plume of air emanating from the person’s mouth. The photo was striking. It made people feel awed.
As awe is a high-arousal emotion, the readers of the article were driven into a state of action by what they’d seen. The action they chose was sharing the article with everyone they knew, thus making the piece go viral.
You’ve learned which emotions will drive people to discuss your product or idea. Now, it’s time to explore how you can make your product or idea inspire these high-arousal emotions. The key to doing this is devising a feelings-based marketing strategy.
A lot of marketing strategies focus too much on information: on telling the consumer everything they need to know about the product or idea. Unfortunately, hearing lots of dry details about a product or concept is unlikely to inspire high-arousal emotions. It’s probably just going to bore people. Therefore, instead of bombarding consumers with information, give them the bare basics about your product or idea and focus the rest of your efforts on making them feel a high-arousal emotion.
You could try to make people feel angry. This is a common tactic when trying to generate word of mouth around a charitable, social, or political cause. For instance, imagine you’re trying to promote a charity that wants to tackle child poverty. In your marketing, you could include the stories of real-life families who’ve struggled to feed their children. At least some people will hear these stories and feel anger that families still struggle this way in the twenty-first century. Consequently, they’ll be more likely to spread the word about your cause.
Another possibility is to focus on adding humor to your brand’s slogan, TV ads, or radio spots. This will help you generate amusement in your potential customers. For instance, in 2008, Old Spice amused its customers by making its tagline “If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist.”
What if you’re not sure which emotion to use in your marketing materials, or which emotion will be the most effective at generating interest in your product? How can you decide which emotion to use?
When answering this question, Jonah Berger takes his lead from Chip and Dan Heath and their work Made to Stick. The Heath brothers advise repeatedly asking yourself why people might want to use your product or adopt your idea. The first answer will likely be practical and related to the product or idea’s obvious purpose. But, keep digging deeper and deeper until you find the reason that’s emotion-driven. This will show you which feeling the product or idea ultimately relates to.
For example, why might people want to support your climate change initiative? The practical answer might be because they want to stop the ice caps from melting. However, why do people want to stop the ice caps from melting? Because sea levels will rise, possibly flooding low-lying areas. Likewise, animals such as polar bears will lose their habitats. These prospects make people scared and angry. You’ve found the emotion-driven reason behind people supporting your campaign.
(Shortform note: For more on finding the right emotion to use in your marketing campaign, see our summary of Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick.)
If you’re really struggling to link your product or idea to a high-arousal emotion, consider trying to capitalize on existing physiological arousal instead. Make sure people see your product or hear about your idea when they’re already physically aroused. It doesn’t matter if your product or idea isn’t the source of the person’s arousal. When they’re already in the aroused state, they’ll rush to talk about any product or idea that’s presented to them.
For example, consider placing ads for your product or idea near a gym. Berger’s research has shown that exercise is very effective at generating physiological arousal. So, if you can catch people just after a workout, they might transfer their arousal to your product or idea.
Another option is to place TV spots for your product or idea just after the really exciting part of a TV show—for instance, just after the part of a game show in which the contestant finds out if they’ve won. The excitement of the TV show will have already generated physiological arousal in the viewer, and you can capitalize on that.
Learn how to get people talking about a product or idea by making them feel a high-arousal emotion.
Think of a product or idea that you’ve created or that you support. Describe this product or idea.
Imagine you had to create a marketing campaign about this product or idea. How could you incorporate a high-arousal emotion into this campaign? (For example, could you make your marketing materials amusing? If you’re trying to promote a cause, could you make your audience angry about the injustice you’re challenging?)
After brainstorming, do you feel confident that this marketing campaign would get other people talking about the product or idea? Why or why not?
The fourth attribute of viral products or ideas is that they’re publicly visible. Ultimately, people are never going to talk about your product or idea if they never see it in the first place. So, to generate as much word of mouth about your product or idea as possible, make it very easy to observe. People need to see it often—or, if that’s not possible, it needs to be striking enough that once they’ve observed it once, they remember it for a long time.
If people see your product or idea a lot, they’re likely to start thinking about it a lot, too. For instance, they might start to contemplate why it’s so popular. This drives word of mouth because, as you learned in Chapter 2, people tend to talk about the things they’re thinking about.
There are two possible ways to increase the visibility of your product or idea. These are making the private public and making your product advertise itself.
Making the private public means finding a way to make it publicly clear that people use your product or support your idea, even when this information would usually be private.
Some purchasing decisions are naturally observable—for instance, which cars people buy. People drive these vehicles around in public, so you see which cars are popular. However, many other purchasing decisions are usually private—for example, which makeup products people buy. People usually apply makeup in the privacy of their own homes, and which brand they’re wearing isn’t obvious when they’re out in public. Therefore, makeup brands may struggle to generate the word of mouth that comes from a product’s use being publicly visible.
To get people talking about a product or cause that’s usually kept private, find a way to move it into the public eye. Find a way for people to display that they’re buying your product or supporting your idea. For example, a makeup brand could give its customers a “free gift” that they’ll use in public, such as a branded tote bag. When the customer uses the bag in their daily life, it will make their usually private purchasing decision public. This adds the visibility that’s crucial in generating word of mouth about a product.
Making your product advertise itself means visibly including your branding on your product so that people can immediately see who’s made it. For example, make your logo or tagline visible on the product. That way, when people see others using your product, they’ll learn about the existence of your brand.
If people start to see your branded products a lot, this may become a talking point. For instance, people might start to comment on the fact that the brand seems popular, or ask their friends if they’ve heard of this newly visible brand. This will generate word of mouth about your product and company.
Apple has found various ways to make its products advertise themselves. One example of this is the “Sent from my iPhone” email signature. Whenever anyone receives an email sent by an iPhone user, they’re greeted by this signature—unless the iPhone user decides to turn the signature off, and very few people can be bothered to do so. This signature works as an indirect iPhone ad. It tells people, “Your colleagues and friends have iPhones—why don’t you?”
Another example of this principle is Apple’s earphones. When Apple first developed earphones, it decided to make them white. This was in direct contrast to the majority of earphones on the market, which were black. This design choice meant that whenever someone saw another person using white earphones, they knew these earphones were Apple. The brand was being indirectly advertised to them.
No matter which of these two tactics you choose to employ, there’s an extra requirement you need to factor in. Make sure that your product or idea remains visible for a long time—for long after a customer has bought the product or decided to support the idea.
The process of making visibility long-lasting is often referred to as adding behavioral residue. Adding behavioral residue is important because if your product or idea’s visibility is fleeting, people will quickly forget it exists. Word of mouth about it will swiftly die down.
If you try to make the private public, you can add behavioral residue by making sure that the thing that publicizes your product or idea is durable—that people will keep using it again and again. For the makeup company that gives customers branded tote bags, those bags need to be high-quality enough to be used for months or years. Only then will the brand remain visible for a long time.
If you try to make products advertise themselves, ensure that these products are of good-enough quality that people keep using them. The product won’t advertise itself and generate visibility if it’s thrown to the back of a cupboard and never used.
If you’re trying to promote a cause, you might find generating behavioral residue particularly difficult. Causes are often promoted through short-term fundraising drives: for example, a one-off event or a limited-time ad campaign. At the time, your event or campaign will generate a lot of interest and make your cause very visible. But, as soon as it’s over, that visibility is going to start to fade away. Eventually, people will forget the event or campaign ever happened—and they’ll forget your cause, too.
You can remedy this by giving the people who participate in your fundraising drives a long-lasting token of participation: a memento that reminds them of what they did. Make this memento something that will easily get public visibility—for example, a plastic wristband with your charity or cause’s name on it. A wristband is something durable that people can wear for months or years to come. When others see the person wearing the wristband, they’ll be reminded of your cause’s existence. Therefore, the cause will remain visible in the long-term.
It’s easy to assume that a cause gaining visibility will always be a good thing. Visibility is going to get people talking, and all word of mouth is good, right? Unfortunately, not always. Sometimes, making a cause visible can be counterproductive. It can encourage the opposite behavior of what you intended.
This is especially true if your cause involves challenging a negative behavior—for example, smoking. By raising awareness of why this negative behavior is problematic, you’re also increasing the visibility of the bad behavior itself. Sometimes, this leads to the bad behavior itself becoming the thing that catches on, not the message challenging the behavior.
A famous example of this is the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign. This ad campaign showed children and teenagers being offered drugs by their peers but choosing to say no: to reject drug-taking. It was hoped that the campaign would make the act of rejecting drugs more visible. Its organizers hoped that children and young people would imitate this behavior and also talk amongst themselves about how good it is to say no to drugs.
However, the campaign actually had the opposite effect. It led to an increase in young people using drugs. This increase occurred because the campaign had inadvertently raised the visibility of drug-taking. It showed young people that other people their age were taking drugs. The viewers thought, “If those people are taking drugs, why shouldn’t I do it, too?” In the end, drug-taking was the behavior that they decided to imitate.
You can avoid this issue by changing the focus of your campaign’s message. Don’t remind people that their peers are doing bad things. Instead, focus the campaign on the good thing that will happen to the people if they abandon the problematic behavior. For instance, replace the anti-drugs message “Lots of your peers are doing drugs. If they offer you drugs, say no” with “If you refrain from doing drugs, you’ll protect your physical and mental health.”
Learn how to add visibility to your product or service.
Think of a product or service you’re selling (or would like to sell). How publicly visible do you consider this product or service to be? (For instance, is it easy for people to observe your customers using the product or service? Do people only tend to buy or use it in private?)
Now, brainstorm how you might make your product or service more visible (or visible at all). (For instance, could you make your product advertise itself by clearly displaying your branding? Could you find a way to make people’s private purchasing decisions public—for example, by sending them a publicly usable free gift alongside your product?)
Evaluate whether this method of increasing visibility has behavioral residue. Will it continue to make your product or service visible in the long term? If so, how? If not, how could you amend your approach to add behavioral residue?
After brainstorming, are you confident that you can add visibility to your product or service? Why or why not?
The fifth attribute of contagious products or ideas is that they provide practical value—they’re useful in some way. People love gathering practical information that will make their lives easier. Most commonly, they like to collect information that will help them to complete tasks more quickly and easily, or information that will help them to save money.
Crucially, people also love sharing this information with other people. They do so because they want to help the people they care about. Therefore, if you make your product or service a source of practical value, people will talk about it because they’ll want to share its value with others. In short, you’ll generate word of mouth.
There are two ways to add practical value to your product or idea:
The first way you can give your product or service practical value is to apply an amazing discount. Make your product appealing and shareable by making it a money-saver.
This discount can’t just be an “okay” saving that doesn’t really stand out. If it is, people will take advantage of the deal themselves, but probably won’t tell others about it. For a discount to be worthy of sharing, it needs to be truly amazing.
But what makes a discount “amazing”? In general, amazing discounts usually four principles:
For a discount to be amazing, it has to be big. For instance, a 5% discount will be perceived as an okay deal, not an amazing one. It doesn’t knock that much off the original price, so it’s not that attractive. A 50% discount, however, is a pretty big saving and is therefore more likely to impress customers.
Customers are more likely to share information about a big discount for two reasons. First, a big discount is more helpful than a small one. To many people, sharing information about a 5% discount doesn’t seem worth it. It’s not going to save their loved ones much money, so what’s the point in telling them about it? However, sharing information about a 50% discount is incredibly helpful—it’ll help the person’s loved ones make a huge saving. Therefore, this larger discount is more likely to be shared.
Second, big discounts are remarkable. They’re surprising, impressive, and exciting—and therefore worthy of remark. As you learned in Chapter 1, people love to talk about remarkable things because they’re a source of social currency. They’re going to share information about your remarkable deal because they know doing so will make them look good.
When placing a big discount on a product, remember that people judge how good a deal is using the item’s original price as a reference point. They like to know the precise monetary difference between the item’s original price and its new price.
Because of this, simply stating that your product has a big discount—for instance, putting a label on the product saying “50% off”—might not be enough to entice customers. To get them truly excited about the deal, show how much more they could have paid, not just what they will pay. You can do this by making sure you clearly display your product’s original price next to its sale price. This gives customers the reference point they need to determine whether your deal is good or not.
Another reason why keeping your discounts big is important is the principle of diminishing sensitivity. This principle states that the exact same monetary discount can seem good or bad depending on its proportional relationship to the original price of the discounted item.
Take the example of a $10 discount. If the original price of the product was small—say, $35—this discount will seem like a good deal because proportionally, it knocks off a big chunk of the price. However, if this same $10 discount is applied to a product that cost $3500 originally, it’s not going to seem like a good deal. Proportionally, this is barely a discount at all.
The moral of this principle is that you can’t just place the same monetary discount on every product. For example, don’t apply a blanket “$10 off” discount to all of your items. While this deal might work for cheaper products, it’ll seem like a bad deal on more expensive ones. Instead, keep your discount large in proportion to your product’s original price. If you don’t, people won’t be impressed by the deal, and they won’t share it.
If you approach the process of devising a deal with the mindset that your deal needs to be big, you’ll naturally avoid this issue. You won’t even contemplate putting a small monetary discount on an expensive product.
The second way to make your discount amazing is to ensure it isn’t too readily available. For example, don’t run a constant discount on a particular product. If you do, people will start to see the item’s lower price as the norm and not as a great deal. The deal will no longer seem special.
Instead, find a way to make your discount scarce or exclusive. For instance, you could make it available for a limited time only, or a “members only” deal. Another option is to add a quantity limit per customer for the discounted item, so that their ability to purchase it is curbed.
Adding scarcity or exclusivity to a deal will make it look more valuable—like a special opportunity that can’t be missed. People tend to think that a deal must be really good if a store limits access to it. For instance, customers might think that a store has added a quantity limit to a discounted item because the discount’s popularity has led to the product almost selling out. They may decide that if the discount is that popular, it must be good.
When people believe that deals are valuable in this way, they’re more likely to tell others about them. Likewise, as you’ve already learned, making something seem scarce or exclusive increases its social currency. This also makes people more likely to talk about it.
The third attribute of amazing discounts is that they follow the Rule of 100. If you apply this rule when creating your discount, you can maximize its attractiveness and increase the likelihood that it’ll be shared.
The Rule of 100 is based on research that investigated whether percentage-based discounts (for instance, 50% off) or numerical discounts (for instance, $50 off) are more effective. The answer to this question depends on whether the item’s original price was above or below $100.
If the price was originally below $100, percentage discounts are more impressive. This is because when lower prices are involved, a percentage discount seems much higher than a numerical one. For example, imagine a hat was originally $10 but has a 25% discount applied. This discount seems pretty big—a quarter off! However, in numerical terms, it’s only a $2.50 discount—not a huge amount of money. Therefore, this deal seems much better if you frame it as a percentage, not a numerical discount.
If a product’s price was originally above $100, the reverse is true. A numerical discount will seem higher than a percentage discount, thus making the former more attractive to customers. For example, a 10% discount on a $5000 product is equivalent to $500 off. A $500 discount seems much higher than a 10% discount, even when the two have the same value in reality.
The final attribute of amazing discounts is that they’re obvious and easy to observe. As you learned in Chapter 4, things need to be publicly visible if people are going to share information about them. Discounts are no exception to this.
The majority of discounts are stated quite obviously. Stores put stickers on items to indicate to customers that they’re on sale. They display huge posters highlighting their best deals.
However, sometimes stores make the mistake of hiding the value of their discounts. A major example of this is store loyalty cards: cards on which people accrue points if they spend enough at the shop. They can then cash in these points to get discounted goods.
These cards do have practical value. They can save customers a lot of money. However, it’s not easy to share that value with other people. Most people only find out how many points they accrue when it’s printed on their receipt, and they’re unlikely to show their receipts to other people. Therefore, the word about these cards never gets out.
A better approach to publicizing the value of store cards might be ringing a bell when people use their card to get a discount of a certain size—for instance, $25 or over. Or when a customer arrives at the checkout, they could be greeted by a screen that tells them how much customers have saved today using their loyalty cards. These actions will show customers the practical value of the cards. They’ll be more inclined to get a card and tell other people about them, too.
In addition to creating an amazing discount, you can add practical value to your product or service by finding a way to provide useful information to your customers. Once they’ve engaged with your product or service, send them advice or practical tips that will make their life easier in some way. For example, if you’re a financial services company, send your customers a newsletter with money-saving tips. If you sell groceries, include a free healthy eating advice pamphlet with every purchase.
When your customers receive this information, they’ll pass it on to friends or family members who they think would benefit from it. In the process of doing so, they’ll inform other people that your company exists. They’ll spread word of mouth about your business.
People are inundated with information every day. They probably receive multiple email newsletters, read dozens of articles and blogs, and get offered many free pamphlets. In this information-rich landscape, it’s easy for your offering to get lost in the crowd. You must make sure that your method of sharing information stands out—that people choose to absorb and share your practical tips, not those sent to them by your competitors and other businesses. Your information must be as engaging and shareable as possible.
One way to make your information shareable is to package it in a concise and accessible way. People respond better to short, snappy text, not something that’s going to take them a long time to comb through. Don’t send your customers a three-page essay filled to the brim with useful information. They won’t read it all, and if they don’t read it, they won’t share it. Even if they do battle through your wall of text, they’re not going to pass it on. They’ll be too worried about boring people and losing social currency.
Instead, limit the information you share to three or four simple yet engaging points. For example, send customers your four most effective money-saving tips, not every money-saving tip ever to exist. Likewise, make sure you make these points clear and streamlined. Don’t embed them in lots of exposition. People won’t take the time to comb through fluffy text to find the point of what you’ve sent them. They’ll quickly get bored and move on before they’ve had a chance to absorb and share your information.
The second way to make your information shareable is to ensure that it’s relevant to your target audience. Your customers aren’t going to read or share information if it doesn’t have any relevance to them or their loved ones. For example, if you’re a financial services company with a predominantly US-based clientele, there’s no point sending your customers information about the best bank accounts currently available in Germany. This information is very unlikely to be useful to your target audience or anyone they know. Keep your advice US-centric.
The final way to ensure that people share your information is to make it targeted, specific, and likely to appeal only to a set group of people. For example, don’t send out a newsletter that contains financial tips that anyone could implement. Send out targeted advice, such as tips specifically for people who are buying their first house.
This might seem counterintuitive. Surely information that’s relevant to lots of people will be shared more widely? However, Berger argues that just because someone can share the information with everyone they know doesn’t mean they will. In fact, he suggests people may be more inclined to share information that reminds them of just one other person. Because the information seems to be so uniquely suited to this individual, the customer feels like they just have to share it with them.
For instance, imagine you decide to target your financial services newsletter towards first-time buyers. When your customers receive the email, they’ll immediately think of any first-time buyers in their social circle. They’ll forward the newsletter to these people because it would seem silly not to. The information is incredibly useful to the first-time buyers and perfectly matches their situation.
One of the ways to give your product or service practical value is to create and apply an amazing discount. In this exercise, learn how to ensure that your discount is amazing.
Think of a product that you’ve created (or want to create). What price would you usually sell this product for? If you were asked to devise a discount for this product, what saving would you consider applying?
“Amazing” discounts must be big enough to impress customers (for instance, 50% off as opposed to 5% off). Likewise, they must follow the Rule of 100, which states that if a product’s original price is under $100, a percentage-based discount will appear more attractive to customers. Meanwhile, if it’s above $100, a numerical discount will impress customers more. Does your discount fit both of these criteria? If not, how could you amend it so that it does?
People are more likely to share information about discounts that are somehow limited in their availability. How would you limit the availability of your discount? (For instance, could you make your discount “members only”? Could you make your discount available for a short time only?)
For your discount to be effective at generating word of mouth, it needs to be publicly visible. How might you add visibility to your discount? (For instance, could you put posters up in your store advertising the discount? Could you send your customers an email informing them of the discount?)
The final attribute of contagious products or ideas is that their marketing materials tell people a story. Information about the product or idea is subtly woven into a gripping narrative that grabs people’s attention. For example, you could embed factual information about your product into a heartwarming story about how using it changed someone’s life. If your story is interesting or exciting enough, people will retell it to their friends and family—and they’ll pass on information about your product or idea in the process.
People pass on interesting stories about products or ideas for two reasons. First, they know that telling someone an interesting story will give them social currency—that telling it will make them seem interesting, too.
Second, sharing a story about a product or idea is much more socially acceptable than simply spouting facts about it. If you approached someone and, totally out of context, started listing the specifications and functions of a product that you really liked, the other person would find you boring at best and strange at worst. Whatever the case, you’re going to lose social currency. Meanwhile, embedding these specifications and functions in a story puts them back into context, making the fact you’ve brought them up a little bit less bizarre. Likewise, as long as the story is interesting, you’ll preserve your social currency.
Subway’s menu offers several sandwiches that contain fewer than six grams of fat. Imagine you’ve just found out about this healthy fast-food option and want to tell others about your intriguing discovery. If you went up to someone and started suddenly listing the nutritional facts and figures about these sandwiches, people would be confused and probably a bit bored.
Conversely, if you embedded these facts and figures into the story of Jared Fogle, a man who lost nearly 250 pounds by eating nothing but healthy Subway sandwiches, people are going to be interested. This is a compelling story about a man who did something remarkable. The story may well include dry nutritional information about the low fat content of the sandwiches Jared ate. However, because this data is woven into a narrative, discussing it is more socially acceptable.
By including this information about Subway sandwiches in a story, you’ve made it much more shareable. People are more likely to pass on the information now that it’s part of a narrative. In many ways, you’ve inadvertently done Subway a favor. You’ve helped them generate word of mouth about their low-fat sandwiches. You wouldn’t have done so if you’d stuck to the “spouting facts” approach.
It’s important to note that you can’t just incorporate information about your product or idea into any story and expect that story to automatically generate word of mouth. You need to tell the right kind of story: one that’s actually effective at getting people talking about your product or idea.
Effective stories have two main attributes:
As you’ve learned, things that give people social currency, inspire high-arousal emotions, and offer some practical value are more likely to be talked about. Therefore, if your story has these attributes, it’s more likely to be passed on.
For example, imagine you’re trying to market a new energy bar. You decide to come up with a story for your marketing materials in which a man is in a rush to get to work and doesn’t have time for breakfast. He decides to eat your energy bar at his desk. You tell consumers that doing so leaves the man full until lunchtime, but don’t explain the “why”: for instance, the nutritional content of the bar that makes it so filling.
This story doesn’t really give social currency. It’s not remarkable because it’s a fairly ordinary, everyday scenario. It’s also arguably quite boring. Because of this, it fails to inspire any high-arousal emotions. Finally, it doesn’t provide the consumer with much practical information. All of these factors mean that people are unlikely to pay much attention to or even remember your story, making it equally unlikely that they’ll pass it on.
In contrast, you could tell a story about a man who’s in the process of climbing Mount Everest. His energy levels are depleting, so he decides to snack on your company’s energy bar. The man is revitalized because of the numerous nutritional benefits of the bar. You make sure to mention these benefits in your ad. He continues his trek up the mountain, eventually reaching the summit.
This story is much more remarkable—climbing Mount Everest is a pretty impressive feat. Therefore, telling the story provides more social currency. Climbing Everest is also pretty awe-inspiring. In this way, your ad generates a high-arousal emotion. Finally, you’ve made sure to include some information about the nutritional value of the bar in your ad, giving it some practical value.
For your story to be effective, people need to pass on the “right” part of it: the part that contains information about your product or idea. Unfortunately, it’s not always guaranteed that they will.
Research has shown that when people retell a story, they only pass on information that they consider to be absolutely integral to the story. This means that once a story has been passed along five or six times, around 70% of the information that was originally included in it is lost. If the information about your product or idea is part of that 70%, you’ll fail to generate word of mouth. People may keep telling the story, but they won’t talk about your product or idea when they do.
A famous example of this problem in action is Ron Bensimhon’s publicity stunt at the Athens 2004 Olympics. Bensimhon, a notorious streaker, jumped off the Olympic diving board and belly-flopped into the pool, wearing nothing but a tutu and a pair of tights. He also had the name of an online casino, GoldenPalace.com, written on his chest.
You might think that this stunt would generate lots of word of mouth for GoldenPalace.com: that lots of people would talk about the stunt and would mention the involvement of the website in the process. (Note: for the record, GoldenPalace.com claimed they had nothing to do with the incident and didn’t ask Bensimhon to mention them in the stunt.) But, this didn’t happen. The fact that Bensimhon had the website written on his chest was a detail that, compared to the rest of this bizarre tale, was pretty uninteresting and could be left out. People talked about Bensimhon’s tutu and tights, the fact he was arrested, and the fact that security was apparently lax enough at the Olympics for him to break in. However, they didn’t mention the website.
To avoid this issue, ensure that your product or idea is so crucial to the narrative’s progression that people can’t leave it out when they retell the tale. If they were to do so, the story would become completely nonsensical. Follow the example of the Egyptian dairy firm Panda, which masterfully put this principle into action in a series of TV spots.
One of Panda’s commercials tells the story of a father and his young son doing their grocery shopping. When the pair comes across some Panda cheese, the son asks the father if they can buy some, but the father says no. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a man dressed in a giant panda costume appears. He wreaks havoc, flipping over the family’s shopping cart and kicking the food that’s spilled onto the floor. He does so as revenge for the family not buying Panda products.
This story is effective because you can’t tell it without mentioning the presence of the man in the panda costume. Likewise, you can’t explain why the man in the panda costume is there without adding the context that the brand name is Panda. If you fail to do this, the ad makes no sense. People will question why a panda-costume-adorned man would turn up in a supermarket. In short, you can’t recount the story of this commercial without spreading word of mouth about the company that created it.
Learn how to market a product by telling a shareable story.
Think of a product that you’ve created (or want to create). How and why did you first decide to create this product? Outline its “origin story” below.
Now, think about your product’s benefits and unique selling point. Tell a story that incorporates one or both of these factors. (For instance, tell the tale of how using your product changed someone’s life, or how someone discovered that your product was totally different from everything else on the market.)
Do you feel confident that either (or both) of these stories could form part of a successful marketing plan? Why or why not? (Remember: successful stories make the product an integral part of the narrative, and may also incorporate the principles of social currency, emotions, and practical value.)