Book Summary: Contagious by Jonah Berger

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The Book in One Sentence

Virality isn’t born; it’s made.

The Six Big Ideas

People share things that make them look good to others.
Top of mind means tip of the tongue.
When we care, we share.
If something is built to show, it’s built to grow.
People like to pass along practical, useful information. News you can use.
Information travels under the guise of idle chatter.

The 6 Principles of Virality

After analyzing hundreds of contagious messages, products, and ideas, Jonah Berger noticed that the same six “ingredients,” or principles, were often at work:

Social Currency
Triggers
Emotion
Public
Practical Value
Stories

These principles can be compacted into an acronym. Taken together, they spell STEPPS.

Contagious Summary

Word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20 percent to 5o percent of all purchasing decisions.

Yet, according to research by the Keller Fay Group, only 7 percent of word of mouth happens online.

1. Social Currency

People share things that make them look good to others.

“Just as people use money to buy products or services, they use social currency to achieve desired positive impressions among their families, friends, and colleagues,” writes Berger. “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.”

Berger recommends three ways to get people talking about a product or an idea:

Find inner remarkability;
Leverage game mechanics; and
Make people feel like insiders.

Let’s discuss each briefly.

i. Inner Remarkability

According to Berger,

Remarkable things are defined as unusual, extraordinary, or worthy of notice or attention. Something can be remarkable because it is novel, surprising, extreme, or just plain interesting. The most important aspect of remarkable things, though, is that they are worthy of remark. … Remarkable things provide social currency because they make the people who talk about them seem, well, more remarkable … Sharing extraordinary, novel, or entertaining stories or ads makes people seem more extraordinary, novel, and entertaining.

The key to finding inner remarkability, says Berger, is to consider what makes something interesting, surprising, or novel.

One way to generate surprise, for instance, is by breaking a pattern people have come to expect. Barclay Prime, a Philly-based restaurant, got buzz by selling a $100 cheesesteak. It defied expectations and, thus, got people talking.

It’s possible to find the inner remarkability in any product or idea by thinking about what makes something stand out. Blendtec, for instance, was able to get millions of people talking about their products with a series of YouTube infomercials.

ii. Leverage Game Mechanics

Game mechanics are the elements of a game, application, or program—including rules and feedback loops—that make them fun and compelling. What’s interesting about game mechanics, though, is they motivate on an interpersonal level by encouraging social comparison.

We don’t just care about others are doing; we care about our performance compared to others. We care about hierarchy, and for that reason, game mechanics generate social currency. Why? Because doing well makes us look good.

Game mechanics boost word of mouth because people want to show off their achievements, but along the way, they talk about the brands (e.g., Delta or Twitter) or domains (e.g., our golf handicaps or kids’ SAT scores) where they achieved.

Leveraging game mechanics requires quantifying performance. But if a product or idea doesn’t automatically do that, it needs to be “gamified.” Furthermore, leveraging game mechanics involves helping people publicize their achievements.

Foursquare, the location-based social networking website, lets users check in at bars, restaurants, and other locations using their mobile devices. Checking in helps people find their friends, but Foursquare also awards special badges to users based on their check-in history.

iii. Make People Feel Like Insiders

Scarcity and exclusivity boost word of mouth by making people feel like insiders.

“If people get something not everyone else has, it makes them feel special, unique, high status,” writes Berger. “And because of that, they’ll not only like a product or service more, but tell others about it. Why? Because telling others makes them look good. Having insider knowledge is social currency.”

2. Triggers

Not all word of mouth is created equal.

New food products, for instance, rely on immediate word of mouth. If consumers don’t immediately start buying a new anticholesterol spread, the store may stop stocking it. Other products or ideas, by contrast, like anti-bullying campaigns and new policy initiatives, benefit more from ongoing word of mouth.

What keeps people talking, says Berger, are triggers—little environmental reminders for related concepts and ideas. Why? Because accessible thoughts and ideas lead to action. Berger ever found that different locations contain different triggers. In one study, voters were more likely to vote in favor of school funding when the polling place was a school.

“So, rather than just going for a catchy message, consider the context,” posits Berger. “Think about whether the message will be triggered by the everyday environments of the target audience.”

Products and ideas have habitats or sets of triggers that cause people to think about them. What’s more, it’s possible to grow an idea’s habitat by creating new links to stimuli in the environment. Kit Kat wouldn’t normally be associated with coffee, but through repeated pairing in an ad campaign, it was able to link the two and lift sales by 8 percent.

When choosing a trigger, pick one that occurs frequently and happens near the desired behavior is taking place. Lastly, forge a fresh one rather than link a product or idea that is already associated with many things.

Triggers and cues lead people to talk, choose, and use. Social currency gets people talking, but Triggers keep them talking. Top of mind means tip of the tongue.

3. Emotion

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.

No surprise there. After all, when we care, we share.

But that wasn’t the full picture.

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.

So, to make products or ideas catch on, focus on feelings; the underlying emotions that motivate people to action. What’s more, remember to pick ones that kindle the fire, activate people, and drive them to action.

On the positive side, excite people or inspire them by showing them how they can make a difference. On the negative side, make people mad, not sad.

4. Public

Observability has a huge impact on whether products and ideas catch on. Why? Because observable things are also more likely to be discussed. The more public a product or service is, the more it triggers people to take action.

One way to make things more public is to design ideas that advertise themselves. Every email sent from Hotmail, for instance, had a link that said, “Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Hotmail at www.hotmail.com.”

Designing products that advertise themselves is a particularly powerful strategy for small companies or organizations that don’t have a lot of resources.

We need to be like Lululemon and Livestrong and create behavioral residue, discernible evidence that sticks around even after people have used our product or engaged with our ideas.

If something is built to show, it’s built to grow.

5. Practical Value

People like to pass along practical, useful information. News others can use. Offering practical value not only helps make things contagious, but it also strengthens social bonds.

If Social Currency is about information senders and how sharing makes them look, Practical Value is mostly about the information receiver.

Judgments and decisions are not always rational or optimal. Instead, they are based on psychological principles of how people perceive and process information.

One of the main tenets of prospect theory is that people don’t evaluate things in absolute terms. They evaluate them relative to a comparison standard, or “reference point.”

In one study, using the word “sale” beside a price increased sales even though the price itself stayed the same.

Diminishing sensitivity reflects the idea that the same change has a smaller impact the farther it is from the reference point.

Promotional offers that seem surprising or surpass expectations are more likely to be shared. This can be because the actual deal itself exceeds expectations (for example, the percentage off is so unbelievable) or because the way the deal is framed makes it seem that way.

Another factor that affects whether deals seem valuable is its availability. That’s why restricting availability through scarcity and exclusivity makes things seem more valuable.

Another framing factor that impacts practical value is how promotional offers are expressed. Some offers are expressed in dollars off, or absolute discounts ($5 or $50 off). Other offers are expressed in percentage off, or relative discounts (5 percent or 50 percent off).

Researchers find that whether a discount seems larger as money or percentage off depends on the original price. For things like laptops or other big-ticket items, framing price reductions in dollar terms (rather than percentage terms) makes them seem like a better offer. If the product’s price is less than $100, the Rule of 100 says that percentage discounts will seem larger.

In thinking about why some useful content gets shared more, a couple of points are worth noting. The first is how the information is packaged. The second key is the audience.

Of the six principles of contagiousness that Berger discusses in the book, Practical Value may be the easiest to apply.

6. Stories

Information travels under the guise of what seems like idle chatter.

Virality is most valuable when the brand or product benefit is integral to the story. When it’s woven so deeply into the narrative that people can’t tell the story without mentioning it.

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.