Contagious: Why Things Catch on

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The child's palms and fingers have many pink spots and patches on them. Most spots are round, but some are an uneven shape. The centre of some spots is light pink or the same colour as the person's skin. Other spots are dark pink or red without a lighter centre. Standing out in today’s market is harder than ever as advertising clutter projects 4,000 – 10,000 ads and brands at American consumers every day. But the most effective and prosperous ideas have been empowered and supported by one or more of the 6 STEPPS in some way. Leveraging good stories that are useful, engaging, and that drive value will help you and your product, idea, cause increase social influence and word-of-mouth transmission and propel it to be the next big thing. In Contagious, Berger reveals the secret science behind word-of-mouth and social transmission. Discover how six basic principles drive all sorts of things to become contagious, from consumer products and policy initiatives to workplace rumors and YouTube videos. Learn how a luxury steakhouse found popularity through the lowly cheesesteak, why anti-drug commercials might have actually increased drug use, and why more than 200 million consumers shared a video about one of the most boring products there is: a blender.

If whooping cough is diagnosed within 3 weeks of the infection, you'll be given antibiotics to help stop it spreading to others. Antibiotics may not reduce symptoms. Human minds are hardwired to remember only about 20% of what we see and roughly 65% of what we hear. In terms of virality, this means that the easiest way to get people to remember your product is to find a clever way to incorporate it into a real-world experience. Social currency. We share things that make us look good or help us compare favorably to others. Exclusive restaurants utilize social currency all the time to create demand. In community: involvement in an effort to solve seemingly intractable problems would provide social currency, but if jargon makes it too hard to explain either the issue or the solution we preclude virality.So to get people talking, companies and organizations need to mint social currency. Give people a way to make themselves look good while promoting their products and ideas along the way. There are three ways to do that: (1) find inner remarkability; (2) leverage game mechanics; and (3) make people feel like insiders." Making things more observable makes them easier to imitate, which makes them more likely to become popular.” Jonah Berger At times, the book became a little US-centric, but it wasn't too distracting. I found it dragged slightly towards the end, however, and by that time, I was wanting to apply some of the principles, instead of reading more product stories I didn’t care about.

In trying to craft contagious content, valuable virality is critical. That means making the idea or desired benefit a key part of the narrative. Certain characteristics make products and ideas more likely to be talked about and shared. Recommended Reading People like helping and feeling useful to others. Practical value is all about sharing useful information that will help others save time, energy and resources. When there is is a product, services, cause or article that provides practical applicability for someone you know, you will likely share with them. Moreover, products and ideas with practical value is passed along to help others despite geographic distances. That’s why parents often send useful articles, coupons, as well as cooking & cleaning advice to their kids – it strengthens social bonds, even when distance makes things difficult.In an analysis of thousands of New York Times articles to better understand why certain pieces of online content are widely shared, Berger found that positive articles were more likely to be highly shared than negative ones. The human brain is hot-wired to use this so-called “currency” to make a good impression on others. Companies and individuals can use this to their advantage, by providing their customers with products, experiences, and content that connect directly with them in a way that encourages sharing with others, while promoting the company’s ideas, causes and/or products simultaneously. Berger also discovered that people were more likely to share articles that evoked anger or anxiety. Why? Because anger and anxiety are high-arousal emotions.

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He emphasizes the importance of creating narratives. You should have stories that you can use to explain your product or idea and not just cold, hard facts. Narratives are more interesting than statistics, anyways. People are inherently pro-social. Our social wiring is a fundamental aspect of the human psyche. This can be leveraged to help spread awareness in a concept Berger calls "social currency":

So, If you want your ideas and brands to influence your audience’s mind, you need to build up a story around your brand that how it started,d and how It’s going on because our unconscious mind is more attracted to it. Contagious Book Quotes

5. Practical Value

the SSTEPS model:Social Currency; triggers; emotions; public; practical values; stories. Is very practical, and has small utility for those NOT in PR firms, biz people etc. That said it's always interesting why one product is well received over another, and what standards (cost, especially) are determined by way of a very simple and predictable (now that I read the book) process. The use of well known products are utilized to further help the reader understand the books content. Stories are the most effective way to share ideas and information. As Berger explains, “Information travels under the guise of what seems like idle chatter… we need to… (embed) our products and ideas in stories that people want to tell… [by making] our message so integral to the narrative that people can’t tell the story without it.” When it comes to CTV, sharing metadata and contextual information is key, as are traditional TV metrics such as about time of the day and where and how to best reach the audiences. This information can be all put together to create a relevant ad experience for consumers. When it comes to stories, this refers to the fact that people tend to enjoy telling and hearing stories. Therefore, ideas, products and behaviors that are wrapped in narratives (and especially compelling narratives) are more likely to be shared than those that are just presented as information. Google’s ‘Parisian Love’ commercial, The Dove ‘Evolution’ commercial, and Panda’s ‘Never say no to Panda’ campaign are all good examples of products being wrapped in compelling narratives.