کلام آخر

Epilogue

Ask three people where they got their last manicure, and chances are good that at least one of them had a Vietnamese nail technician. But the story of how it got that way might surprise you. It started with twenty women and a set of long coral nails.

She’d been a high school teacher in her home country, but when Thuan Le arrived at Hope Village in 1975, she had nothing but the clothes on her back. The tent city outside Sacramento was a holding ground for Vietnamese refugees who escaped to America after the fall of Saigon. Teeming with new immigrants, the camp simultaneously brimmed with hope and despair. People had come to America with dreams of a better life for themselves and their families, but with little English knowledge, so the possibilities were limited.

Actress Tippi Hedren, who had starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, was drawn to the refugees’ plight and would visit Hope Village every few days. Hedren wanted to help, so she became a mentor to some of the women. Former business owners, teachers, and government officials in Vietnam, these industrious women were eager to get to work. Hedren was enchanted by their stories of Vietnam. They, in turn, noticed something about her: her beautiful nails.

The women admired Hedren’s glossy light pink fingernails, so she brought her manicurist in once a week to give them lessons. How to trim cuticles, wrap nails, and remove calluses. The women were quick studies and practiced on Hedren, themselves, and anyone they could get their hands on.

Soon a plan was hatched. Hedren got the women free classes at a nearby beauty school. They learned how to file, paint, and trim. Then Hedren asked around and helped Le and the other women find jobs in Santa Monica and surrounding cities.

It was tough at first. Manicures were not yet the rage and there was lots of competition. But Le and the other women passed their licensing exams and started doing business. They worked hard, labored long hours, and took the jobs no one else wanted. The women were diligent and kept at it. They made money and worked their way up.

Seeing Le’s success, a few of her friends decided to get into the business. They opened one of the first beauty salons owned by Vietnamese Americans and encouraged others to do the same.

The success stories soon spread. The thousands of Vietnamese who came to the United States looking for new possibilities heard what others were doing, and they listened. Vietnamese nail salons started opening up all around Sacramento. Then through the rest of California. Then the entire country. These twenty women started the trend, but soon it had a life of its own.

Today, 80 percent of manicurists in California are Vietnamese Americans. Nationwide the number is greater than 40 percent.

Vietnamese nail salons became contagious.

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The story of Thuan, Tippi, and the spread of Vietnamese nail salons is pretty amazing. But even more surprising is the fact that it’s not unique.

Other immigrant groups have cornered similar niches. Estimates suggest that Cambodian Americans own approximately 80 percent of the doughnut shops in Los Angeles, and that Koreans own 65 percent of the dry cleaners in New York City. In the 1850s, 60 percent of the liquor stores in Boston were run by Irishmen. In the early 1900s, Jews produced 85 percent of men’s clothes. The list goes on.

When you think about it, these stories make a lot of sense. People move to a new country and start looking for work. But while the immigrants may have had various skilled jobs previously, their options in the new country are often limited. There is a language barrier, it’s tough to transfer previous certifications or qualifications, and they don’t have as many contacts as they had back home. So immigrants look to their friends and acquaintances for help.

And as with the rest of the products and ideas we’ve talked about throughout the book, social influence and word of mouth kick in. The topic of employment is frequent among new immigrants looking for work (Triggers). So they look to see what jobs other recent immigrants have taken (Public) and talk to them about the best opportunities. These more established immigrants want to look good (Social Currency) and help others (Practical Value) so they tell exciting (Emotion) narratives (Stories) about others they know who have been successful.

Soon these new immigrants follow their peers and pursue the same line of work.

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The story of Vietnamese manicurists, and immigrants’ choice of occupations more generally, highlights a number of points we’ve discussed throughout the book.

First, any product, idea, or behavior can be contagious. We’ve talked about blenders (Will It Blend?), bars (Please Don’t Tell), and breakfast cereals (Cheerios). “Naturally” exciting products, like discount shopping (Rue La La) and high-end restaurants (Barclay Prime’s hundred-dollar cheesesteak) and less traditionally buzz-worthy goods like corn (Ken Craig’s “Clean Ears Everytime”) and online search (Google’s “Parisian Love”). Products (iPod’s white headphones) and services (Hotmail) but also nonprofits (Movember and Livestrong bands), health behaviors (“Man Drinks Fat”), and whole industries (Vietnamese nail salons). Even soap (Dove’s “Evolution”). Social influence helps all sorts of products and ideas catch on.

Second, we saw that rather than being caused by a handful of special “influential” people, social epidemics are driven by the products and ideas themselves.

Sure, every great story has a hero. Tippi Hedren helped Vietnamese women learn about manicures, and George Wright had the creative idea that started Will It Blend? But while these individuals provided the initial spark, they’re only one small part of the story. Describing why a small handful of cool or connected people (so-called influentials) are not as important to social epidemics as we might think, sociologist Duncan Watts makes a nice comparison to forest fires. Some forest fires are bigger than others, but no one would claim that the size of the fire depends on the exceptional nature of the initial spark. Big forest fires aren’t caused by big sparks. Lots of individual trees have to catch fire and carry the flames.

Contagious products and ideas are like forest fires. They can’t happen without hundreds, if not thousands, of regular Joes and Janes passing the product or message along.

So why did thousands of people transmit these products and ideas?

And that’s where we get to the third point: certain characteristics make products and ideas more likely to be talked about and shared. You might have thought it was just random why some things catch on, that certain products and ideas just got lucky. But it’s not just luck. And it’s not a mystery. The same key principles drive all sorts of social epidemics. Whether it’s about getting people to save paper, see a documentary, try a service, or vote for a candidate, there is a recipe for success. The same six principles, or STEPPS, drive things to catch on.

Social Currency

We share things that make us look good

Triggers

Top of mind, tip of tongue

Emotion

When we care, we share

Public

Built to show, built to grow

Practical Value

News you can use

Stories

Information travels under the guise of idle chatter

So if we’re trying to make a product or idea contagious, think about how to build in these key STEPPS.

Some of this can happen in the design of the product or idea itself. The hundred-dollar cheesesteak was engineered to have Social Currency. Rebecca Black’s song was frequently triggered because of its title. Susan Boyle’s performance evoked lots of Emotion. Movember raised millions for men’s cancer by taking a once private behavior and using moustaches to make it Public. Ken Craig’s “Clean Ears Everytime” video is two minutes of pure Practical Value.

But these STEPPS can also be built into messaging around a product or idea. Blendtec’s blenders had always been powerful, but by showing that power in a remarkable way, the Will It Blend? videos generated Social Currency and got people buzzing. Kit Kat didn’t change its product, but by linking it to a popular beverage (coffee), the company increased the number of Triggers to make people think (and talk) about the candy bar. People share Vanguard’s MoneyWhys because they provide Practical Value, but passing them along boosts word of mouth for the company itself. People shared Dove’s “Evolution” video because it evokes lots of Emotion, but by embedding itself in the narrative, Dove benefits from the chatter as well.

If you want to apply this framework, here’s a checklist you can use to see how well your product or idea is doing on the six different STEPPS.

Follow these six key STEPPS, or even just a few of them, and you can harness social influence and word of mouth to get any product or idea to catch on.

One last note. The best part of the STEPPS framework is that anyone can use it. It doesn’t require a huge advertising budget, marketing genius, or some sort of creativity gene. Yes, the viral videos and contagious content we’ve talked about were created by particular individuals, but not all of them were famous or could boast ten thousand followers on Twitter. They relied on one or more of the six key STEPPS and this made their products and ideas more contagious.

Social Currency

Does talking about your product or idea make people look good? Can you find the inner remarkability? Leverage game mechanics? Make people feel like insiders?

Triggers

Consider the context. What cues make people think about your product or idea? How can you grow the habitat and make it come to mind more often?

Emotion

Focus on feelings. Does talking about your product or idea generate emotion? How can you kindle the fire?

Public

Does your product or idea advertise itself? Can people see when others are using it? If not, how can you make the private public? Can you create behavioral residue that sticks around even after people use it?

Practical Value

Does talking about your product or idea help people help others? How can you highlight incredible value, packaging your knowledge and expertise into useful information others will want to disseminate?

Stories

What is your Trojan Horse? Is your product or idea embedded in a broader narrative that people want to share? Is the story not only viral, but also valuable?

Howard Wein needed a way to help a new restaurant break through the clutter, a way to raise awareness while staying true to the Barclay Prime brand. The hundred-dollar cheesesteak did just that. It not only provided a remarkable (Social Currency), surprising (Emotion) narrative (Story) but also illustrated the type of quality product that the steakhouse offered (Practical Value). And the prevalence of cheesesteaks in Philadelphia offered ready reminders for people to pass it on (Triggers). The hundred-dollar cheesesteak got people talking and helped make Barclay Prime a rousing success.

George Wright had almost no marketing budget. He needed a way to generate buzz about a product most people wouldn’t ordinarily talk about: a blender. By thinking about what made his product compelling and wrapping that idea in a broader narrative, he was able to generate hundreds of millions of views and boost sales. The Will It Blend? clips are amazing (Emotion) and remarkable (Social Currency). But by making the product’s benefits (Practical Value) integral to a broader narrative (Stories), the videos provided a perfect Trojan horse to get people talking about an everyday household appliance and make Blendtec catch on.

Regular people with regular products and ideas. But by harnessing the psychology of word of mouth, they were able to make their products and ideas succeed.

Throughout the book we’ve discussed cutting-edge science about how word of mouth and social influence work. If you follow these six key STEPPS, you can make any product or idea contagious.