I recently finished listening to the audio book version of “Contagious: Why Things Catch On,” a book from Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger. It’s a great book and I highly recommend it if you’re interested in media, marketing, or just generally how to generate word of mouth about something you’ve created.
As I’ve done before, I thought I’d share some of what I learned from the book. Since I listened to this one as opposed to reading it, these aren’t exact quotes but rather my interpretation of what was said in the book.
In the book Berger shares a wide variety of stories and examples of how people have succeeded (or failed) at generating word of mouth and draws some interesting conclusions about why some things spread and other don’t.
Online Word of Mouth Is Overrated
One of his early points in the book is the degree to which most people overestimate the importance of online activity and social networking when it comes to word of mouth. He claims only 7% of word of mouth actually happens online.
He also talks about how the most targeted word of mouth you can generate can come from enabling people to identify who is most likely to be into your product for you. For example, he references an author who sent early copies of their book to professors hoping they would consider asking their students to read the book as part of their curriculum. But rather than just send one sample copy to each teacher, they sent two – and encouraged the recipient to give the second copy to somebody they know that would be likely to find it interesting. They did that because they knew that the professors would be able to identify the most likely people to enjoy the book better than they could ever hope to.
The Myth of Viral
There’s a lot of talk about the idea of viral content, especially viral videos, in the book and Berger points out that the “rules” of what makes a video go viral pretty much don’t exist. People claim cat videos are “viral,” but the reality is that most funny cat videos don’t go viral. He points out that 50% of YouTube videos have less than 500 views.
The Power Of Triggers
One of the most interesting things to me in the book was the section on triggers – essentially environmental cues that can drastically impact how likely something is to catch on. For example, sales of Mars candy bars went up the year of the Mars space mission, even though there was no direct connection. Just the chatter about Mars pushed the candy bar to top of mind for people and drove an increase in sales.
A really interesting story was one about a study on the relationship between somebody’s polling place for an election and how they voted. Long story short, if your polling place is in a school, you’re a lot more likely to vote in favor of increased school funding.
Berger goes on to make the argument that a strong trigger is way more important than a strong slogan when it comes to advertising. He cites the example of the “Wassup!” Budweiser campaign compared to the Geico Cavemen commercials. People saw both campaigns, enjoyed both of them, but the Bud campaign was more effective because people were reminded of it every time they said “What’s up” to a friend. On the other hand, nobody ever runs into cavemen so there was no environmental trigger to further power the campaign.
Another great example of the power of triggers was the fact that Cheerios gets discussed more on Twitter than Disney World, despite it seeming like people would want to share their vacation experiences a lot more than their breakfast cereal. But the trigger of eating it every morning leads to more word of mouth – and predictably, Cheerios gets mentioned the most around breakfast time each day.
Focus On Feelings, Not Facts
Berger talks a lot about the power of emotions and stories to drive word of mouth. He talks about how people aren’t really interested in straight facts and are much more likely to talk about stories. As he says, people don’t want to be told something – they want to be moved.
In this section of the book he also references how anything can be made emotional with the right approach – just look at how Google managed to make search engines emotional.
Social Proof
It’s certainly not a new concept, but Berger has some good examples of how social proof can impact word of mouth as well. He points out how various brands incorporate social proof into what they do.
Those “Sent from my iphone” blurbs at the bottom of emails you send? Those are social proof (and free advertising) for iPhones. Apple also did it brilliantly by creating white earphones for their first iPods when every other mp3 player had black headphones – suddenly, they turned every user into a walking advertisement for their product.
Other social proof examples included the Live Strong wristbands, voting stickers, and Movember, which came up with a great way to make the private (contributing to a good cause) public (by sparking conversations about why you’re growing a mustache).
And A Whole Lot More…
There’s a whole lot more in Contagious that’s worth your time and I really recommend you check it out. You can buy it here.