Book Excerpt Six Principles of Contagiousness

After analyzing hun- dreds of contagious messages, products, and ideas, we noticed that the same six

“ingredients,” or prin- ciples, were often at work. Six key STEPPS, as I call them, that cause things to be talked about, shared, and imitated.

Principle 1: Social Currency How does it make people look to talk about a product or idea? Most people would rather look smart than dumb, rich than poor, and cool than geeky. Just like the clothes we wear and the cars we drive, what we talk about influences how others see us. It’s social cur- rency. Knowing about cool things … makes people seem sharp and in the know. So to get people talking we need to craft messages that help them achieve these desired impressions.

Principle 2: Triggers How do we remind people to talk about products and ideas? Triggers are stimuli that prompt people to think about related things. Peanut butter reminds us of jelly and the word “dog” reminds us of the word “cat.” We need to design products and ideas that are frequently triggered by the environment and

create new triggers by linking our products and ideas to prevalent cues in that environ- ment. Top of mind leads to tip of tongue.

Principle 3: Emotion When we care, we share. So how can we craft messages and ideas that make people feel something? Naturally contagious content usu- ally evokes some sort of emotion. Emotional things often get shared. So rather than harp- ing on function, we need to focus on feelings. We need to kindle the fire. Sometimes even negative emotions may be useful.

Principle 4: Public Can people see when others are using our product or engaging in our desired behavior? The famous phrase “Monkey see, monkey do” captures more than just the human tendency to imitate. It also tells us that it’s hard to copy something you can’t see. Making things more observable makes them easier to imitate, which makes them more likely to become popular. So we need to make our products and ideas more public. We need to design products and initiatives that advertise them- selves and create behavioral residue that sticks around even after people have bought the product or espoused the idea.

Principle 5: Practical Value How can we craft content that seems useful? People like to help others, so if we can show

them how our products or ideas will save time, improve health, or save money, they’ll spread the word. But given how inundated people are with information, we need to make our message stand out. We need to understand what makes something seem like a particularly good deal. We need to highlight the incredible value of what we offer

— monetarily and otherwise. And we need to package our knowledge and expertise so that people can easily pass it on.

Principle 6: Stories What broader narrative can we wrap our idea in? People don’t just share information, they tell stories. But just like the epic tale of the Trojan Horse, stories are vessels that carry things such as morals and lessons. Informa- tion travels under the guise of what seems like idle chatter. So we need to build our own Trojan horses, embedding our products and ideas in stories that people want to tell. But we need to do more than just tell a great story. We need to make virality valuable. We need to make our message so integral to the narrative that people can’t tell the story without it.

Excerpted from Contagious: Why Things Catch On, by Jonah Berger. Copyright © 2013 by Social Dynamics Group. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

on, they are more likely to tell five people [about it] than just two? They are most likely to post about it rather than just talk about it offline. Potentially, how can you create the batting average or the diffusion of your message?

In your book, you talk about the importance of triggers — stimuli that prompt people to think about related things. In terms of registering for a conference, what’s the difference between a trigger and a registration-reminder email or mar- keting piece? The best idea of a trigger is something that is in the environ- ment that is not the thing itself that reminds you to think about the conference. So you can imagine sometimes people often send swag or giveaways that sit on people’s desks that might trigger them to think about the conference. Another thing I think that is really key here is to make the private pub- lic. I talk a lot about it in the book — about if you don’t know what others are doing, it’s hard to imitate it.

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In this case, if you don’t know if your peers are going, it’s

going to make you much less likely to go as well. And so one key factor is, if people know someone is going, how can you make that more publicly visible? How can you make it easier for people to see that their friends, their colleagues have decided to attend, which will make them think it’s more worthwhile to attend as well? And it’s particularly important, right, because people also enjoy going to conferences with their friends, with people they know. So it’s not just suggest- ing the conference is better because I know people that are going, but I am actually going to enjoy it more because more of my friends are there.

That points to the importance of making public the list of people who have already registered. That is one thing, right, but that requires individuals going to look for it. The different question is, how can you give an attendee something that they’ll carry somewhere, post on

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