معرفی

Introduction: Why Things Catch On

By the time Howard Wein moved to Philadelphia in March 2004, he already had lots of experience in the hospitality industry. He had earned an MBA in hotel management, helped Starwood Hotels launch its W brand, and managed billions of dollars in revenue as Starwood’s corporate director of food and beverage. But he was done with “big.” He yearned for a smaller, more restaurant-focused environment. So he moved to Philly to help design and launch a new luxury boutique steakhouse called Barclay Prime.

The concept was simple. Barclay Prime was going to deliver the best steakhouse experience imaginable. The restaurant is located in the toniest part of downtown Philadelphia, its dimly lit entry paved with marble. Instead of traditional dining chairs, patrons rest on plush sofas clustered around small marble tables. They feast from an extensive raw bar, including East and West Coast oysters and Russian caviar. And the menu offers delicacies like truffle-whipped potatoes and line-caught halibut FedExed overnight directly from Alaska.

But Wein knew that good food and great atmosphere wouldn’t be enough. After all, the thing restaurants are best at is going out of business. More than 25 percent fail within twelve months of opening their doors. Sixty percent are gone within the first three years.

Restaurants fail for any number of reasons. Expenses are high—everything from the food on the plates to the labor that goes into preparing and serving it. And the landscape is crowded with competitors. For every new American bistro that pops up in a major city, there are two more right around the corner.

Like most small businesses, restaurants also have a huge awareness problem. Just getting the word out that a new restaurant has opened its doors—much less that it’s worth eating at—is an uphill battle. And unlike the large hotel chains Wein had previously worked for, most restaurants don’t have the resources to spend on lots of advertising or marketing. They depend on people talking about them to be successful.

Wein knew he needed to generate buzz. Philadelphia already boasted dozens of expensive steakhouses, and Barclay Prime needed to stand out. Wein needed something to cut through the clutter and give people a sense of the uniqueness of the brand. But what? How could he get people talking?

—————

How about a hundred-dollar cheesesteak?

The standard Philly cheesesteak is available for four or five bucks at hundreds of sandwich shops, burger joints, and pizzerias throughout Philadelphia. It’s not a difficult recipe. Chop some steak on a griddle, throw it on a hoagie (hero) roll, and melt some Provolone cheese or Cheez Whiz on top. It’s delicious regional fast food, but definitely not haute cuisine.

Wein thought he could get some buzz by raising the humble cheesesteak to new culinary heights—and attaching a newsworthy price tag. So he started with a fresh, house-made brioche roll brushed with homemade mustard. He added thinly sliced Kobe beef, marbleized to perfection. Then he included caramelized onions, shaved heirloom tomatoes, and triple-cream Taleggio cheese. All this was topped off with shaved hand-harvested black truffles and butter-poached Maine lobster tail. And just to make it even more outrageous, he served it with a chilled split of Veuve Clicquot champagne.

The response was incredible.

People didn’t just try the sandwich, they rushed to tell others. One person suggested that groups get it “as a starter . . . that way you all get the absurd story-telling rights.” Another noted that the sandwich was “honestly indescribable. One does not throw all these fine ingredients together and get anything subpar. It was like eating gold.” And given the sandwich’s price, it was almost as expensive as eating gold, albeit far more delicious.

Wein didn’t create just another cheesesteak, he created a conversation piece.

—————

It worked. The story of the hundred-dollar cheesesteak was contagious. Talk to anyone who’s been to Barclay Prime. Even if people didn’t order the cheesesteak, most will likely mention it. Even people who’ve never been to the restaurant love to talk about it. It was so newsworthy that USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets published pieces on the sandwich. The Discovery channel filmed a segment for its Best Food Ever show. David Beckham had one when he was in town. David Letterman invited Barclay’s executive chef to New York to cook him one on the Late Show. All that buzz for what is still, at its heart, just a sandwich.

The buzz helped. Barclay Prime opened nearly a decade ago. Against the odds, the restaurant has not only survived but flourished. It has won various food awards and is listed among the best steakhouses in Philadelphia year after year. But more important, it built a following. Barclay Prime caught on.

WHY DO PRODUCTS, IDEAS, AND BEHAVIORS CATCH ON?

There are lots of examples of things that have caught on. Yellow Livestrong wristbands. Nonfat Greek yogurt. Six Sigma management strategy. Smoking bans. Low-fat diets. Then Atkins, South Beach, and the low-carb craze. The same dynamic happens on a smaller scale at the local level. A certain gym will be the trendy place to go. A new church or synagogue will be in vogue. Everyone will get behind a new school referendum.

These are all examples of social epidemics. Instances where products, ideas, and behaviors diffuse through a population. They start with a small set of individuals or organizations and spread, often from person to person, almost like a virus. Or in the case of the hundred-dollar cheesesteak, an over-the-top, wallet-busting virus.

But while it’s easy to find examples of social contagion, it’s much harder to actually get something to catch on. Even with all the money poured into marketing and advertising, few products become popular. Most restaurants bomb, most businesses go under, and most social movements fail to gain traction.

Why do some products, ideas, and behaviors succeed when others fail?

—————

One reason some products and ideas become popular is that they are just plain better. We tend to prefer websites that are easier to use, drugs that are more effective, and scientific theories that are true rather than false. So when something comes along that offers better functionality or does a better job, people tend to switch to it. Remember how bulky televisions or computer monitors used to be? They were so heavy and cumbersome that you had to ask a couple of friends (or risk a strained back) to carry one up a flight of stairs. One reason flat screens took off was that they were better. Not only did they offer larger screens, but they weighed less. No wonder they became popular.

Another reason products catch on is attractive pricing. Not surprisingly, most people prefer paying less rather than more. So if two very similar products are competing, the cheaper one often wins out. Or if a company cuts its prices in half, that tends to help sales.

Advertising also plays a role. Consumers need to know about something before they can buy it. So people tend to think that the more they spend on advertising, the more likely something will become popular. Want to get people to eat more vegetables? Spending more on ads should increase the number of people who hear your message and buy broccoli.

—————

But although quality, price, and advertising contribute to products and ideas being successful, they don’t explain the whole story.

Take the first names Olivia and Rosalie. Both are great names for girls. Olivia means “olive tree” in Latin and is associated with fruitfulness, beauty, and peace. Rosalie has Latin and French origins and is derived from the word for roses. Both are about the same length, end in vowels, and have handy, cute nicknames. Indeed, thousands of babies are named Olivia or Rosalie each year.

But think for a moment about how many people you know with each name. How many people you’ve met named Olivia and how many people you’ve met named Rosalie.

I’ll bet you know at least one Olivia, but you probably don’t know a Rosalie. In fact, if you do know a Rosalie, I’ll bet you know several Olivias.

How did I know that? Olivia is a much more popular name. In 2010, for example, there were almost 17,000 Olivias born in the United States but only 492 Rosalies. In fact, while the name Rosalie was somewhat popular in the 1920s, it never reached the stratospheric popularity that Olivia recently achieved.

When trying to explain why Olivia became a more popular name than Rosalie, familiar explanations like quality, price, and advertising get stuck. It’s not like one name is really “better” than the other, and both names are free, so there is no difference in price. There is also no advertising campaign to try to get everyone to name their kids Olivia, no company determined to make that name the hottest thing since Pokémon.

The same thing can be said for videos on YouTube. There’s no difference in price (all are free to watch), and few videos receive any advertising or marketing push. And although some videos have higher production values, most that go viral are blurred and out of focus, shot by an amateur on an inexpensive camera or cell phone.* So if quality, price, and advertising don’t explain why one first name becomes more popular than another, or why one You-Tube video gets more views, what does?

SOCIAL TRANSMISSION

Social influence and word of mouth. People love to share stories, news, and information with those around them. We tell our friends about great vacation destinations, chat with our neighbors about good deals, and gossip with coworkers about potential layoffs. We write online reviews about movies, share rumors on Facebook, and tweet about recipes we just tried. People share more than 16,000 words per day and every hour there are more than 100 million conversations about brands.

But word of mouth is not just frequent, it’s also important. The things others tell us, e-mail us, and text us have a significant impact on what we think, read, buy, and do. We try websites our neighbors recommend, read books our relatives praise, and vote for candidates our friends endorse. Word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20 percent to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions.

Consequently, social influence has a huge impact on whether products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. A word-of-mouth conversation by a new customer leads to an almost $200 increase in restaurant sales. A five-star review on Amazon.com leads to approximately twenty more books sold than a one-star review. Doctors are more likely to prescribe a new drug if other doctors they know have prescribed it. People are more likely to quit smoking if their friends quit and get fatter if their friends become obese. In fact, while traditional advertising is still useful, word of mouth from everyday Joes and Janes is at least ten times more effective.

Word of mouth is more effective than traditional advertising for two key reasons. First, it’s more persuasive. Advertisements usually tell us how great a product is. You’ve heard it all—how nine out of ten dentists recommend Crest or how no other detergent will get your clothes as clean as Tide.

But because ads will always argue that their products are the best, they’re not really credible. Ever seen a Crest ad say that only one out of ten dentists prefers Crest? Or that four of the other nine think Crest will rot your teeth?

Our friends, however, tend to tell it to us straight. If they thought Crest did a good job, they’ll say that. But they’d also tell us if Crest tasted bad or failed to whiten their teeth. Their objectivity, coupled with their candidness, make us much more likely to trust, listen to, and believe our friends.

Second, word of mouth is more targeted. Companies try to advertise in ways that allow them to reach the largest number of interested customers. Take a company that sells skis. Television ads during the nightly news probably wouldn’t be very efficient because many of the viewers don’t ski. So the company might advertise in a ski magazine, or on the back of lift tickets to a popular slope. But while this would ensure that most people who see the ad like skiing, the company would still end up wasting money because lots of those people don’t need new skis.

Word of mouth, on the other hand, is naturally directed toward an interested audience. We don’t share a news story or recommendation with everyone we know. Rather, we tend to select particular people who we think would find that given piece of information most relevant. We’re not going to tell a friend about a new pair of skis if we know the friend hates skiing. And we’re not going to tell a friend who doesn’t have kids about the best way to change a diaper. Word of mouth tends to reach people who are actually interested in the thing being discussed. No wonder customers referred by their friends spend more, shop faster, and are more profitable overall.

A particularly nice example of how word of mouth improves targeting came to me in the mail a few years ago. Every so often publishers will send me free books. Usually they’re related to marketing and the publisher hopes that if I’m given a free copy, I’ll be more likely to assign the book to my students (and sell them a bunch of copies in the process).

But a few years ago, one company did something slightly different. It sent me two copies of the same book.

Now, unless I’m mistaken, there’s no reason for me to read the second copy, once I’ve read the first. But these publishers had a different goal in mind. They sent a note explaining why they thought the book would be good for my students, but they also mentioned that they sent a second copy so that I could pass it along to a colleague who might be interested.

That’s how word of mouth helps with targeting. Rather than sending books to everyone, the publishers got me, and others, to do the targeting for them. Just like a searchlight, each recipient of the double mailing would look through his or her personal social network, find the person that the book would be most relevant for, and pass it along.

GENERATING WORD OF MOUTH

But want to know the best thing about word of mouth? It’s available to everyone. From Fortune 500 companies trying to increase sales to corner restaurants trying to fill tables. And from nonprofits trying to fight obesity to newbie politicians trying to get elected. Word of mouth helps things catch on. Word of mouth even helps B2B companies get new clients from existing ones. And it doesn’t require millions of dollars spent on advertising. It just requires getting people to talk.

The challenge, though, is how to do that.

From start-ups to starlets, people have embraced social media as the wave of the future. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other channels are seen as ways to cultivate a following and engage consumers. Brands post ads, aspiring musicians post videos, and small businesses post deals. Companies and organizations have fallen over themselves in their rush to jump on the buzz marketing bandwagon. The logic is straightforward. If they can get people to talk about their idea or share their content, it will spread through social networks like a virus, making their product or idea instantly popular along the way.

But there are two issues with this approach: the focus and the execution.

Help me out with a quick pop quiz. What percent of word of mouth do you think happens online? In other words, what percent of chatter happens over social media, blogs, e-mail, and chat rooms?

If you’re like most people you probably guessed something around 50 or 60 percent. Some people guess upward of 70 percent and some guess much lower, but after having asked this question of hundreds of students and executives, I find that the average is around 50 percent.

And that number makes sense. After all, social media have certainly exploded as of late. Millions of people use these sites every day, and billions of pieces of content get shared every month. These technologies have made it faster and easier to share things quickly with a broad group of people.

But 50 percent is wrong.

Not even close.

The actual number is 7 percent. Not 47 percent, not 27 percent, but 7 percent. Research by the Keller Fay Group finds that only 7 percent of word of mouth happens online.

Most people are extremely surprised when they hear that number. “But that’s way too low,” they protest. “People spend a huge amount of time online!” And that’s true. People do spend a good bit of time online. Close to two hours a day by some estimates. But we forget that people also spend a lot of time offline. More than eight times as much, in fact. And that creates a lot more time for offline conversations.

We also tend to overestimate online word of mouth because it’s easier to see. Social media sites provide a handy record of all the clips, comments, and other content we share online. So when we look at it, it seems like a lot. But we don’t think as much about all the offline conversations we had over that same time period because we can’t easily see them. There is no recording of the chat we had with Susan after lunch or the conversation we had with Tim while waiting for the kids to be done with practice. But while they may not be as easy to see, they still have an important impact on our behavior.

Further, while one might think that online word of mouth reaches more people, that’s not always the case. Sure, online conversations could reach more people. After all, while face-to-face conversations tend to be one-on-one, or among a small handful of people, the average tweet or Facebook status update is sent to more than one hundred people. But not all of these potential recipients will actually see every message. People are inundated with online content, so they don’t have the time to read every tweet, message, or update sent their way. A quick exercise among my students, for example, showed that less than 10 percent of their friends responded to a message they posted. Most Twitter posts reach even fewer. Online conversations could reach a much larger audience, but given that offline conversations may be more in-depth, it’s unclear that social media is the better way to go.

So the first issue with all the hype around social media is that people tend to ignore the importance of offline word of mouth, even though offline discussions are more prevalent, and potentially even more impactful, than online ones.

The second issue is that Facebook and Twitter are technologies, not strategies. Word-of-mouth marketing is effective only if people actually talk. Public health officials can tweet daily bulletins about safe sex, but if but no one passes them along, the campaign will fail. Just putting up a Facebook page or tweeting doesn’t mean anyone will notice or spread the word. Fifty percent of YouTube videos have fewer than five hundred views. Only one-third of 1 percent get more than 1 million.

Harnessing the power of word of mouth, online or offline, requires understanding why people talk and why some things get talked about and shared more than others. The psychology of sharing. The science of social transmission.

The next time you’re chatting at a party or grabbing a bite to eat with a coworker, imagine being a fly on the wall, eavesdropping on your conversation. You might end up chatting about a new movie or gossiping about a colleague. You might trade stories about vacation, mention someone’s new baby, or complain about the unusually warm weather.

Why? You could have talked about anything. There are millions of different topics, ideas, products, and stories you could have discussed. Why did you talk about those things in particular? Why that specific story, movie, or coworker rather than a different one?

Certain stories are more contagious, and certain rumors are more infectious. Some online content goes viral while other content never gets passed on. Some products get a good deal of word of mouth, while others go unmentioned. Why? What causes certain products, ideas, and behaviors to be talked about more?

That’s what this book is about.

—————

One common intuition is that generating word of mouth is all about finding the right people. That certain special individuals are just more influential than others. In The Tipping Point, for example, Malcolm Gladwell argues that social epidemics are driven “by the efforts of a handful of exceptional people” whom he calls mavens, connectors, and salesmen. Others suggest that “one in 10 Americans tells the other nine how to vote, where to eat, and what to buy.” Marketers spend millions of dollars trying to find these so-called opinion leaders and get them to endorse their products. Political campaigns look for the “influentials” to support their side.

The notion is that anything these special people touch will turn to gold. If they adopt or talk about a product or idea, it will become popular.

But conventional wisdom is wrong. Yes, we all know people who are really persuasive, and yes, some people have more friends than others. But in most cases that doesn’t make them any more influential in spreading information or making things go viral.

Further, by focusing so much on the messenger, we’ve neglected a much more obvious driver of sharing: the message.

To use an analogy, think about jokes. We all have friends who are better joke tellers than we are. Whenever they tell a joke the room bursts out laughing.

But jokes also vary. Some jokes are so funny that it doesn’t matter who tells them. Everyone laughs even if the person sharing the joke isn’t all that funny. Contagious content is like that—so inherently viral that it spreads regardless of who is doing the talking. Regardless of whether the messengers are really persuasive or not and regardless of whether they have ten friends or ten thousand.

—————

So what about a message makes people want to pass it on?

Not surprisingly, social media “gurus” and word-of-mouth practitioners have made lots of guesses. One prevalent theory is that virality is completely random—that it’s impossible to predict whether a given video or piece of content will be highly shared. Other people conjecture based on case studies and anecdotes. Because so many of the most popular YouTube videos are either funny or cute—involving babies or kittens—you commonly hear that humor or cuteness is a key ingredient for virality.

But these “theories” ignore the fact that many funny or cute videos never take off. Sure, some cat clips get millions of views, but those are the outliers, not the norm. Most get less than a few dozen.

You may as well observe that Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and Bill Cosby are all famous and conclude that changing your name to Bill is the route to fame and fortune. Although the initial observation is correct, the conclusion is patently ludicrous. By merely looking at a handful of viral hits, people miss the fact that many of those features also exist in content that failed to attract any audience whatsoever. To fully understand what causes people to share things, you have to look at both successes and failures. And whether, more often than not, certain characteristics are linked to success.

ARE SOME THINGS JUST BORN WORD-OF-MOUTH WORTHY?

Now at this point you might be saying to yourself, great, some things are more contagious than others. But is it possible to make anything contagious, or are some things just naturally more infectious?

Smartphones tend to be more exciting than tax returns, talking dogs are more interesting than tort reform, and Hollywood movies are cooler than toasters or blenders.

Are makers of the former just better off than the latter? Are some products and ideas just born contagious while others aren’t? Or can any product or idea be engineered to be more infectious?

—————

Tom Dickson was looking for a new job. Born in San Francisco, he was led by his Mormon faith to attend school at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City, where he graduated in 1971 with a degree in engineering. He moved home after graduation, but the job market was tough and there weren’t many opportunities. The only position he could find was at a company making birth control and intrauterine devices. These devices helped prevent pregnancy, but they could also be seen as abortives, which went against Tom’s Mormon beliefs. A Mormon helping to develop new methods of birth control? It was time to find something new.

Tom had always been interested in bread making. While practicing his hobby, he noticed that there were no good cheap home grinders with which to make flour. So Tom put his engineering skills to work. After playing around with a ten-dollar vacuum motor, he cobbled together something that milled finer flour at a cheaper price than anything currently on the market.

The grinder was so good that Tom started producing it on a larger scale. The business did reasonably well, and playing around with different methods of processing food got him interested in more general blenders. Soon he moved back to Utah to start his own blender company. In 1995 he produced his first home blender, and in 1999 Blendtec was founded.

But although the product was great, no one really knew about it. Awareness was low. So in 2006, Tom hired George Wright, another BYU alum, as his marketing director. Later, George would joke that the marketing budget at his prior company was greater than all of Blendtec’s revenues.

On one of his first days on the job, George noticed a pile of sawdust on the floor of the manufacturing plant. Given that no construction was in progress, George was puzzled. What was going on?

It turned out that Tom was in the factory doing what he did every day: trying to break blenders. To test the durability and power of Blendtec blenders, Tom would cram two-by-two boards, among other objects, into the blenders and turn them on—hence the sawdust.

George had an idea that would make Tom’s blender famous.

With a meager fifty-dollar budget (not fifty million or even fifty thousand), George went out and bought marbles, golf balls, and a rake. He also purchased a white lab coat for Tom, just like what a laboratory scientist would wear. Then he put Tom and a blender in front of a camera. George asked Tom to do exactly what he had done with the two-by-twos: see if they would blend.

Imagine taking a handful of marbles and tossing them into your home blender. Not the cheap kind of marbles made of plastic or clay, but the real ones. The half-inch orbs made out of solid glass. So strong that they could withstand a car driving over them.

That is exactly what Tom did. He dropped fifty glass marbles in one of his blenders and hit the button for slow churn. The marbles bounced furiously around the blender, making rat-tat-tat noises like a hailstorm on the roof of a car.

Tom waited fifteen seconds and then stopped the blender. He cautiously lifted the top as white smoke poured out: glass dust. All that was left of the marbles was a fine powder that looked like flour. Rather than cracking from the punishment, the blender had flexed its muscles. Golf balls were pulverized, and the rake was reduced to a pile of slivers. George posted the videos on YouTube and crossed his fingers.

His intuition was right. People were amazed. They loved the videos. They were surprised at the blender’s power and called it everything from “insanely awesome” to “the ultimate blender.” Some couldn’t even believe that what they were seeing was possible. Others wondered what else the blender could pulverize. Computer hard drives? A samurai sword?

In the first week the videos racked up 6 million views. Tom and George had hit a viral home run.

Tom went on to blend everything from Bic lighters to Nintendo Wii controllers. He’s tried glow sticks, Justin Bieber CDs, and even an iPhone. Not only did Blendtec blenders demolish all these objects, but their video series, titled Will It Blend?, received more than 300 million views. Within two years the campaign increased retail blender sales 700 percent. All from videos made for less than a few hundred dollars apiece. And for a product that seemed anything but word-of-mouth worthy. A regular, boring old blender.

—————

The Blendtec story demonstrates one of the key takeaways of contagious content. Virality isn’t born, it’s made.

And that is good news indeed.

Some people are lucky. Their ideas or initiatives happen to be things that seem to naturally generate lots of excitement and buzz.

But as the Blendtec story shows, even regular everyday products and ideas can generate lots of word-of-mouth if someone figures out the right way to do it. Regardless of how plain or boring a product or idea may seem, there are ways to make it contagious.

So how can we design products, ideas, and behaviors so that people will talk about them?

STUDYING SOCIAL INFLUENCE

My path to studying social epidemics was anything but direct. My parents didn’t believe in sweets or television for their children, and instead gave us educational rewards. One holiday season I remember being particularly excited to get a book of logic puzzles, which I explored incessantly over the next few months. These experiences fostered an interest in math and science, and after doing a research project in high school on urban hydrology (how the composition of a stream’s watershed affects its shape), I went to college thinking I would become an environmental engineer.

But something funny happened in college. While sitting in one of my “hard” science classes, I started to wonder if I could apply the same toolkit to study complex social phenomena. I had always liked people-watching, and when I did happen to watch TV, I enjoyed it more for the ads than the programs. But I realized that rather than just abstractly musing about why people did things, I could apply the scientific method to find out the answers. The same research tools used in biology and chemistry could be used to understand social influence and interpersonal communication.

So I started taking psychology and sociology courses and got involved in research on how people perceive themselves and others. A few years in, my grandmother sent me a review of a new book she thought I might find interesting. It was called The Tipping Point.

I loved the book and read everything related I could find. But I kept being frustrated by a singular issue. The ideas in that book were amazingly powerful, but they were mainly descriptive. Sure some things catch on, but why? What was the underlying human behavior that drove these outcomes? These were interesting questions that needed answers. I decided to start finding them.

—————

After completing my PhD and more than a decade of research, I’ve discovered some answers. I’ve spent the last ten years, most recently as a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, studying this and related questions. With an incredible array of collaborators I’ve examined things like • Why certain New York Times articles or YouTube videos go viral

• Why some products get more word of mouth

• Why certain political messages spread

• When and why certain baby names catch on or die out

• When negative publicity increases, versus decreases, sales

We’ve analyzed hundreds of years of baby names, thousands of New York Times articles, and millions of car purchases. We’ve spent thousands of hours collecting, coding, and analyzing everything from brands and YouTube videos to urban legends, product reviews, and face-to-face conversations. All with the goal of understanding social influence and what drives certain things to become popular.

A few years ago, I started teaching a course at Wharton called “Contagious.” The premise was simple. Whether you’re in marketing, politics, engineering, or public health, you need to understand how to make your products and ideas catch on. Brand managers want their products to get more buzz. Politicians want their ideas to diffuse throughout the population. Health officials want people to cook rather than eat fast food. Hundreds of undergraduates, MBAs, and executives have taken the class and learned about how social influence drives products, ideas, and behaviors to succeed.

Every so often I’d get e-mails from people who couldn’t take the class. They’d heard about it from a friend and liked the material but had a scheduling conflict or didn’t find out about it in time. So they asked if there was a book they could read to catch them up on what they missed.

There are certainly some great books out there. The Tipping Point is a fantastic read. But while it is filled with entertaining stories, the science has come a long way since it was released over a decade ago. Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, is another favorite of mine (full disclosure: Chip was my mentor in graduate school, so the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree). It weaves together clever stories with academic research on cognitive psychology and human memory. But although the Heaths’ book focuses on making ideas “stick”—getting people to remember them—it says less about how to make products and ideas spread, or getting people to pass them on.

So whenever people asked to read something about what drives word of mouth, I would direct them to the various academic papers I and others had published in the area. Inevitably, some people would e-mail back to say thanks but request something more “accessible.” In other words, something that was rigorous but less dry than the typical jargon-laden articles published in academic journals. A book that provided them with research-based principles for understanding what makes things catch on.

This is that book.

SIX PRINCIPLES OF CONTAGIOUSNESS

This book explains what makes content contagious. By “content,” I mean stories, news, and information. Products and ideas, messages and videos. Everything from fund-raising at the local public radio station to the safe-sex messages we’re trying to teach our kids. By “contagious,” I mean likely to spread. To diffuse from person to person via word of mouth and social influence. To be talked about, shared, or imitated by consumers, coworkers, and constituents.

In our research, my collaborators and I noticed some common themes, or attributes, across a range of contagious content. A recipe, if you will, for making products, ideas, and behaviors more likely to become popular.

Take Will It Blend? and the hundred-dollar cheesesteak at Barclay Prime. Both stories evoke emotions like surprise or amazement: Who would have thought a blender could tear through an iPhone, or that a cheesesteak would cost anywhere near a hundred dollars? Both stories are also pretty remarkable, so they make the teller look cool for passing them on. And both offer useful information: it’s always helpful to know about products that work well or restaurants that have great food.

Just as recipes often call for sugar to make something sweet, we kept finding the same ingredients in ads that went viral, news articles that were shared, or products that received lots of word of mouth.

After analyzing hundreds of contagious messages, products, and ideas, we noticed that the same six “ingredients,” or principles, 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 currency. Knowing about cool things—like a blender that can tear through an iPhone—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. We need to find our inner remarkability and make people feel like insiders. We need to leverage game mechanics to give people ways to achieve and provide visible symbols of status that they can show to others.

Principle 2: Triggers

How do we remind people to talk about our 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.” If you live in Philadelphia, seeing a cheesesteak might remind you of the hundred-dollar one at Barclay Prime. People often talk about whatever comes to mind, so the more often people think about a product or idea, the more it will be talked about. 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 environment. 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 usually evokes some sort of emotion. Blending an iPhone is surprising. A potential tax hike is infuriating. Emotional things often get shared. So rather than harping on function, we need to focus on feelings. But as we’ll discuss, some emotions increase sharing, while others actually decrease it. So we need to pick the right emotions to evoke. 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 themselves 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. Information 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.

—————

These are the six principles of contagiousness: products or ideas that contain Social Currency and are Triggered, Emotional, Public, Practically Valuable, and wrapped into Stories. Each chapter focuses on one of these principles. These chapters bring together research and examples to show the science behind each principle and how individuals, companies, and organizations have applied the principles to help their products, ideas, and behaviors catch on.

These principles can be compacted into an acronym. Taken together they spell STEPPS. Think of the principles as the six STEPPS to crafting contagious content. These ingredients lead ideas to get talked about and succeed. People talked about the hundred-dollar cheesesteak at Barclay Prime because it gave them Social Currency, was Triggered (high frequency of cheesesteaks in Philadelphia), Emotional (very surprising), Practically Valuable (useful information about high-quality steakhouse), and wrapped in a Story. Enhancing these components in messages, products, or ideas will make them more likely to spread and become popular. I hope that ordering the principles this way will make them easier to remember and use.** The book is designed with two (overlapping) audiences in mind. You may have always wondered why people gossip, why online content goes viral, why rumors spread, or why everyone always seems to talk about certain topics around the water cooler. Talking and sharing are some of our most fundamental behaviors. These actions connect us, shape us, and make us human. This book sheds light on the underlying psychological and sociological processes behind the science of social transmission.

This book is also designed for people who want their products, ideas, and behaviors to spread. Across industries, companies big and small want their products to become popular. The neighborhood coffee shop wants more customers, lawyers want more clients, movie theaters want more patrons, and bloggers want more views and shares. Nonprofits, policy makers, scientists, politicians, and many other constituencies also have “products” or ideas that they want to catch on. Museums want more visitors, dog shelters want more adoptions, and conservationists want more people to rally against deforestation.

Whether you’re a manager at a big company, a small business owner trying to boost awareness, a politician running for office, or a health official trying to get the word out, this book will help you understand how to make your products and ideas more contagious. It provides a framework and a set of specific, actionable techniques for helping information spread—for engineering stories, messages, advertisements, and information so that people will share them. Regardless of whether those people have ten friends or ten thousand. And regardless of whether they are talkative and persuasive or quiet and shy.

This book provides cutting-edge science about how word of mouth and social transmission work. And how you can leverage them to make your products and ideas succeed.