Jonah Berger is a marketing academic at the Wharton School. He says I read a book, and my life changed. He says that after her grandmother gave him the Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell’s) book as a gift, he read everything about that subject, but what he found about it was mostly descriptive. Afterwards, Berger begins to conduct more data-based and modelling studies on this subject. The Contagious book was written after Berger got encouragement from colleagues and students for his lecture about the viral dissemination of content on the internet in which he tells about his work and what he has read.
In the book, he talks about 6 elements that are important for the contagious dissemination of products, services or ideas. These consist of Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value and Stories. The author uses the STEPPS acronym and makes these contents more memorable.
Before I touch upon these elements one by one, let me state that what I liked most about the book is the catchy phrases that stick with you. For example, “Top of mind means the tip of the tongue.” For example, you can take this phrase as a very useful statement that summarizes word of mouth. Many parts of the book contain similar summative and poetic phrases.
Let’s get to the contagion elements… Social currency is our desire to look better to others with the content we share and make a premium from it. Berger says that people would rather look smart than look stupid and look rich than look poor. Therefore, we try to increase our value in our social life with the posts we make and the topics we talk about. That’s why you need to give people something to share and make them feel valued. Things like status symbols and gamification features can come in handy here.
People would rather look smart than look stupid and look rich than look poor.
The Triggers section mostly talks about understanding the working mechanism of our brain and identifying our brand or product with certain objects, events, symbols and making people remember us every time they are exposed to those objects. For example, the KitKat brand integrates itself with coffee and communicates with it alongside coffee, making people think of Kitkat every time they want to drink it. In a way, it is an example of conditioning. If you show KitKat and coffee together so many times to your audience, they will want both of them together.
Emotions… We all like to share things that make us feel intense emotions, but in Berger’s work, anger and happiness are the emotions that make us share the most. If we can produce things that evoke emotion, they are shared. “When we care, we share.” he sums it up. That’s why it is important to arouse emotions in your communication in terms of contagiousness. Here, too, you can see how a brand, perhaps far from sentimental, like Google, instilled sentiment into a search engine with its “Parisian Love” advertisement (video below) and how thousands of people shared it. We said that after happiness, the most powerful sharing emotion is anger, so “If it bleeds, it leads.” says the writer.
In the community section, he talks about the visibility factor, which is also used by authors who have previously worked on the diffusion of innovations. So people want to use what they see. Rogers (1995) calls it Observability, Moore and Benbasat (1991) call it Visibility, but it’s all the same thing. Here, he gives an example of Steve Jobs’ designing the Apple logo so that it would be straight for the people around when it is opened, not the person using it. Jobs says that the one who bought the product from us has already bought it, but when he goes to a cafe and opens the computer cover, it should attract the attention of those who look around. He also mentions Daniel Kahneman, who received the Nobel Prize in December 2002 for his work in Behavioral Economics, and quotes his work in which he says people actually make very irrational purchasing decisions. For example, if we see that the price of a product has decreased from $1000 to $900 lira in a store, and if we see that another product has decreased from $300 to $200, we do not want to miss the second product because its price has dropped too much. However, both of them have decreased by $100, but we are trying to make a non-rational comparison by comparing them to the main price.
Usability, or practical value, is the most effective premise in all the work done in the diffusion of innovations so far. Rogers (1995) calls it “Relative Advantage,” while Davis (1986) calls it “Perceived Usefulness.” Additionally, Moore and Benbasat add “Result Demonstrability”. All of them actually say this: if the product I use is useful, I will tell it to others. So products that actually solve a problem are more likely to spread contagiously.
Finally, he talks about the power of stories. If you connect your product or service to a story or if it has a story, then it will be more memorable, and share value will increase. This topic is already on the agenda of those who know. Storytellers have already taken their place in the marketing world. Many brands have started to use this element in their advertisements. That’s why we’re seeing more ads now. Certain characters are written for the commercial series so that they will be remembered like the story characters.
While the Tipping point book focuses more on people and those who spread the message, Berger’s book Contagious focuses more on the message, product, and event. We’re all aiming for why some products or services work and why others don’t. I will continue to share with you the work done on this path.
Hope you like it.
Tell me what you think in the comment section!
References
Davis, F. D. (1986). A technology acceptance model for empirically testing new end-user information systems: Theory and results. Management, Ph.D.(April), 291. https://doi.org/oclc/56932490
Moore, G., & Benbasat, I. (1991). Development of an Instrument to Measure the Perceptions of Adopting an Information Technology Innovation. Information Systems Research. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2.3.192
Rogers, E. (1995). Diffusion of innovations (1995th ed.). Simon and Schuster.