Contagious: Why Things Catch On - Book Review

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The book "Contagious: Why Things Catch On" was written by Jonah Berger in 2013. This book can be viewed as an expansion of Malcolm Gladwell's famous book "The Tipping Point."

Berger addresses the question of how to take any idea or product and, on a modest budget, make it go viral - and for those wondering, not by selling it at a loss...

What is a viral idea? An idea "that has a greater chance of spreading from person to person"; effective word-of-mouth marketing. Not just through that handful of people with rare transmission abilities, but simply through every one of us. A focused, relevant target audience. Authentic knowledge spreaders who are familiar to us and trusted by us.

The book is fascinating, and this summary serves as a reminder for those who have already read it, as well as a recommendation for those who haven't had the chance yet.

Six Key Components That Help Share Information About a Product or Idea:

1. Social Currency

2. Triggers

3. Emotions

4. Public

5. Practical Value

6. Stories

To make these easier to remember, consider the acronym STEPPS, which represents the steps to upgrade the distribution of your product or idea.

This is a wonderful book, both in its content and presentation. I highly recommend it!

P.S. The last chapter teaches how much this review, which includes only the ideas themselves and not the story, can never be a substitute.

Social Currency

In one sentence: Create essence or messages that people will want to share, because sharing implies a status symbol for them.

Details:

People love to talk about themselves; they also love to enhance their status among their acquaintances.

Recommendations:

• Emphasize uniqueness and differentiation. Offer innovation and exceptional or surprising things. Remember that uniqueness can be extracted from any product or idea.

• Leverage gaming aspects. Gaming mechanisms strengthen engagement, creating motivation on both a personal and interpersonal level. Create comparative gaming mechanisms (those who use our product or service gain something compared to others). Give rewards.

• Make it so that those who share can show they are "in the know." Create demand through time-limited accessibility. Create exclusivity through a closed club.

Examples:

1. Bars with secret entrances that are "forbidden" to share.

2. Airline mileage programs. The right to board flights before others.

3. Create a club of people who are exposed to products or capabilities before others.

Note: Keep in mind that information won't pass exactly as you planned. Aim and hope it will work in your favor.

Triggers

In one sentence: Connect the products and ideas we want to share to things found in the daily environment, so there will be a trigger that reminds and enables sharing.

Details:

People are exposed to many opportunities for small talk and information transfer daily.

The idea of triggers is to create associations with things that are on the edge of everyone's consciousness in daily life, and when we encounter them, we'll want to share them. Why?

• Because it's interesting (social currency above)

• Because it's important to us to fill the conversational void and not stay silent.

Either way, it deepens the speaker's connection with their conversation partners and benefits them.

Another important point: There are two types of information transfer: immediate and delayed. The immediate occurs close to the experience or knowledge, while the delayed has a continuous nature and echoes over time. An example of such a message is related to changing habits and perceptions, such as reducing consumption of soft drinks.

Recommendations:

• Look for possible context to create the trigger; the effect of a good trigger is usually more important than a good slogan.

• Utilize every opportunity for consciousness threshold, even if associative and not direct; landing on Mars is an opportunity to increase consumption of Mars bars.

• The saying that bad publicity is better than no publicity can sometimes be relevant here, too. Don't dismiss a trigger connection just because it's originally negative. Even so, it might help you share the idea and increase product usage.

• Frequency is important. Prefer a daily trigger, like drinking coffee, over a sophisticated trigger that isn't common.

• Repetition helps. Even if a trigger isn't natural, repeated and consistent pairing between it and your product can achieve the desired effect.

• Ensure that you choose a trigger that allows for a smooth transition to action when activated. Someone remembering a good idea while in the shower is less effective.

Emotions

In one sentence: Connect messages to emotions, and specifically to those with high arousal (like laughter and anger).

Details:

Many emotions encourage us to share. Why? Because sharing them allows us to experience a shared feeling with our colleague and thereby deepen the connection between us.

But not all emotions work equally. Emotions, whether negative or positive, will make us share more when they cause high arousal (exciting, causing an accelerated heart rate). Examples include awe, laughter, anger, anxiety, and excitement.

Recommendations:

• Don't settle for just conveying information. Make sure to also wrap emotions in the message.

• Look for the emotional core connected to your idea. Ask yourself - why is this important? Build on this emotion.

• Physical arousal, such as participating in gym activities, can also encourage sharing. If relevant, leverage it to your advantage.

Public

In one sentence: Ensure that sharing will be public, and even better: that there will be a residue that remains over time.

Details:

Publicity deals with distribution and copying, even without speech.

Two main tools:

1. Imitation: People tend to imitate others, including their friends and close reference groups, as well as those they encounter and want to feel similar to.

2. Giveaway: People are happy to receive giveaways. And giveaways with publicity pass the message forward to anyone who sees the giveaway recipient using it. Giveaways advertise themselves.

But to achieve imitation and copying, visibility is required. If you want people to copy each other, ensure it's easy to see the behavior pattern of the model to be copied.

Publicity also enables memory and visibility over time. Think about shirts, hats, or laptops bearing a company logo and accompanying message. If they're useful, beautiful, or cool, people will want to use them, and in doing so will spread them further. Socks - however special or comfortable they may be aren't public.

Publicity is closely related to triggers, as public things have a high consciousness threshold and are

therefore likely to spark conversation and sharing.

Recommendations:

• Choose a giveaway that has visibility, i.e., it's in the shared space and not the private one.

• Make use of unique color, shape, or sound (like Apple's white iPod, which is unique in the headphone world).

• Prefer giveaways that continue to "live" over time.

• People will want to imitate others, so in messages about correct behavior, don't say that many of their friends behave in the undesired way (for example, drinking and driving).

Practical Value

In one sentence: Create the feeling of practical value resulting from implementing the idea or product.

Details:

This principle is easy to understand and usually easy to implement. People value information they find useful and will be happy to share it with others. Why? Both because they want to help their colleagues, and if something helps them, they'll want to "pass it forward." Additionally, it will give them a good feeling from sharing information and thereby doing a worthy deed.

Recommendations:

• To increase value, when dealing with discounts, choose which numbering system to use:

  • Percentage discounts sound better when the original cost is higher than 100;

  • Absolute numbers make an impression of more value when dealing with smaller numbers.

• Using certain terms, such as "sale" (even when raising prices beforehand), increases the sense of value.

• Limiting accessibility (see social currency principle above) creates a sense of increased value.

• Useful information is easy to share and can be shared with more people. Try to aim for such information.

Stories

In one sentence: Package everything in a story that people will want to tell and pass forward.

Details:

As human beings, we think in terms of narratives. Beyond the importance of the message and its practical value, it's more enjoyable for us to share a story, easier to remember, and certainly to experience emotions when the message or product is all packaged in a story.

Recommendations:

• Create stories that people will want to share ("This is a secret, and it's forbidden to share" - a sure recipe for a story they'll want to share).

• Ensure there's a connection between the story and the message itself. Otherwise, they'll remember the story but not the core for which it was created (everyone will surely remember a cool commercial they saw, without being able to remember what it advertised).

• Ensure it won't be possible to tell the story and share it forward without mentioning the product or idea. Otherwise, you'll find that, like in the game of "telephone," the story passes forward - but you're not part of this virality.

Stories pass under the guise of small talk, and therein lies their greatness. They have more opportunities to be passed along.

Remember one word - STEPPS. And if you manage to implement the six principles within it, even without a huge budget, you'll succeed, as Berger promises us, in making your idea or product viral too.

Summary

Remember - people want to share. We need to direct them toward what they'll want to share more and what will benefit us. The rest will work by itself.

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