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1. Practical Value

If you had to pick someone to make a viral video, Ken Craig probably wouldn’t be your first choice. Most viral videos are made by adolescents and watched by adolescents. Crazy tricks someone did on his motorcycle or cartoon characters edited to look as if they are dancing to rap songs. Things young people love.

But Ken Craig is eighty-six years old. And the video that went viral? It’s about shucking corn.

Ken was born on a farm in Oklahoma, one of five brothers and sisters. His family’s livelihood was built around growing cotton. They also kept a garden to grow things for the family to eat. And among those things was corn. Ken’s been eating corn since the 1920s. He’s eaten everything from corn casserole and corn chowder to corn fritters and corn salad. One of his favorite ways to eat corn is straight off the cob. Nice and fresh.

But if you’ve ever eaten corn on the cob you know that there are two problems. In addition to kernels getting stuck in your teeth, there are those pesky threadlike strands (called corn silk) that always seem stuck to the corn. A couple of strong pulls and you can easily peel the husk off, but the silk seems to cling on for dear life. You can rub the corn, carefully pick at it with tweezers, or try almost anything else you like, but whatever you do there always seem to be a couple of wayward silk strands left over.

And this is where Ken comes in.

Like most eighty-six-year-olds, Ken’s not really into the Internet. He doesn’t have a blog, a channel on YouTube, or any sort of online presence. In fact, to this day he has made only one YouTube video. Ever.

A couple of years ago, Ken’s daughter-in-law was over at his house making dinner. She had almost finished cooking the main dish, and when it got close to time to eat, she told him that the corn was ready to be shucked. Okay, Ken said, but let me show you a little trick.

He took unshucked ears of corn and tossed them in a microwave. Four minutes an ear. Once they were done, he took a kitchen knife and cut a half inch or so off the bottom. Then he grabbed the husk at the top of the corn, gave it a quick couple of shakes, and out popped the ear of corn. Clean as a whistle. No silk.

His daughter-in-law was so impressed she said they’d have to make a video to send to her daughter who was teaching English in Korea. So the next day she shot a clip of Ken in his kitchen, talking through his trick for clean ears of corn. To make it easier for her daughter to see, she posted it on YouTube. And along the way she sent the clip to a couple of friends.

Well, those friends sent it to a couple of friends, who also sent it to a couple of friends. Soon Ken’s “Clean Ears Everytime” video took off. It collected more than 5 million views.

But unlike most viral videos that skew toward young people, this one skewed in the opposite direction. Topping the charts of the videos viewed most by people above the age of fifty-five. In fact, the video might have spread even faster if more senior citizens were online.

Why did people share this video?

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A couple of years ago I went hiking with my brother in the mountains of North Carolina. He was wrapping up a tough year of medical school, and I needed a break from work, so we met at Raleigh-Durham Airport and drove west. Past the Tar Heel blue of Chapel Hill, past the once tobacco-saturated city of Winston-Salem, and all the way to the Blue Ridge Mountains that hug the westernmost portion of the state. The next morning we woke up early, packed food for the day, and set out on a winding mountain ridge path that led to the top of a majestic plateau.

The main reason people go hiking is to get away from it all. To escape from the hustle and bustle of the city and to immerse themselves in nature. No billboards, no traffic, no advertising, just you and nature.

But that morning while we were hiking in the woods, we came across the most peculiar thing. As we rounded the bend on a downhill portion of the trail there was a group of hikers in front of us. We walked behind them for a couple of minutes, and being a curious guy, I happened to eavesdrop on their conversation. I thought they might be talking about the beautiful weather, or the long descent we had just covered.

But they weren’t.

They were talking about vacuum cleaners.

Whether one particular model was really worth its premium price, and whether another model would do the job just as well.

Vacuum cleaners? There were thousands of other things these hikers could have talked about. Where to stop for lunch, the rushing sixty-foot falls they had just passed, even politics. But vacuum cleaners?

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It’s not easy to explain Ken Craig’s viral corn video using the dimensions we’ve talked about so far in this book, but it’s even harder to explain the hikers chatting about vacuum cleaners. They weren’t talking about anything particularly remarkable, so Social Currency wasn’t playing much of a role. While there are lots of cues for vacuums in the home, or even in a city, there aren’t many Triggers for vacuum cleaners in the forest. Finally, while a clever campaign could figure out how to make vacuum cleaners more Emotional, the hikers were just having a basic conversation about features different vacuums offered. So what was driving them to talk?

The answer is simple. People like to pass along practical, useful information. News others can use.

In the context of Triggers or hidden bars like Please Don’t Tell, practical value may not seem like the sexiest or most exciting concept. Some might even say it’s obvious or intuitive. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not consequential. When writer and editor William F. Buckley Jr. was asked which single book he would take with him to a desert island, his reply was straightforward: “A book on shipbuilding.” Useful things are important.

Further, as the stories of Ken’s corn and the vacuum-discussing hikers illustrate, people don’t just value practical information, they share it. Offering practical value helps make things contagious.

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People share practically valuable information to help others. Whether by saving a friend time or ensuring a colleague saves a couple of bucks next time he goes to the supermarket, useful information helps.

In this way, sharing practically valuable content is like a modern-day barn raising. Barns are large and costly structures that are difficult for one family to pay for or to assemble by itself. So in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, communities would collectively build a barn for one of their members. People would get together, volunteer their time, and help their neighbor. Next time around, the barn would be built for someone else. You can think of it as an early version of the current prosocial ideal of “pay it forward.” Today, these direct opportunities to help others are fewer and farther between. Modern suburban life has distanced us from our friends and neighbors. We live at the end of long driveways or high up in apartment buildings, often barely getting to know the person next door. Many people move away from their families for work or school, reducing face-to-face contact with our strongest social ties. Hired labor has taken the place of community barn raising.

But sharing something useful with others is a quick and easy way to help them out. Even if we’re not in the same place. Parents can send their kids helpful advice even if they are hundreds of miles away. Passing along useful things also strengthens social bonds. If we know our friends are into cooking, sending them a new recipe we found brings us closer together. Our friends see we know and care about them, we feel good for being helpful, and the sharing cements our friendship.

If Social Currency is about information senders and how sharing makes them look, Practical Value is mostly about the information receiver. It’s about saving people time or money, or helping them have good experiences. Sure, sharing useful things benefits the sharer as well. Helping others feels good. It even reflects positively on the sharer, providing a bit of Social Currency. But at its core, sharing practical value is about helping others. The Emotions chapter noted that when we care, we share. But the opposite is also true. Sharing is caring.

You can think about sharing practical value as akin to advice. People talk about which retirement plan is cheapest and which politician will balance the budget. Which medicine cures a cold and which vegetable has the most beta carotene. Think about the last time you made a decision that required you to gather and sift through large amounts of information. You probably asked one or more people what you should do. And they probably either shared their opinion or sent you a link to a website that helped you out.

So what makes something seem practically valuable enough to pass along?

SAVING A COUPLE OF BUCKS

When most people think about practical value, saving money is one of the first things that comes to mind—getting something for less than its original price or getting more of something than you usually would for the same price.

Websites like Groupon and LivingSocial have built business models around offering consumers discounts on everything from pedicures to pilot lessons.

One of the biggest drivers of whether people share promotional offers is whether the offer seems like a good deal. If we see an amazing deal we can’t help but talk about it or pass it on to someone we think would find it useful. If the offer is just okay, though, we keep it to ourselves.

So what determines whether or not a promotional offer seems like a good deal?

Not surprisingly, the size of the discount influences how good a deal seems. Saving a hundred dollars, for example, tends to be more exciting than saving one dollar. Saving 50 percent is more exciting than saving 10 percent. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to realize that people like (and share) bigger discounts more than smaller ones.

But it’s actually more complicated than that. Consider what you would do in the following example:

Scenario A: Imagine you’re at a store looking to buy a new barbecue grill. You find a Weber Q 320 grill that looks pretty good, and to your delight it’s also on sale. Originally priced at $350, it is now marked down to $250.

Would you buy this barbecue grill or drive to another store to look at others? Take a second to think about your answer. Got it? Okay, let’s do the exercise again for a different retailer.

Scenario B: Imagine you’re at a store looking to buy a new barbecue grill. You find a Weber Q 320 grill that looks pretty good and to your delight it’s also on sale. Originally priced at $255, it is now marked down to $240.

What would you do in this case? Would you buy this barbecue grill or drive to another store to look at others? Wait until you have an answer and then read on.

If you’re like most people, scenario A looked pretty good. One hundred dollars off a barbecue grill and it’s a model you like? Seems like a good deal. You probably said you’d buy it rather than keep looking.

Scenario B, however, probably didn’t look so good. After all, it’s only fifteen dollars off, nowhere near as good as the first deal. You probably said you’d keep looking rather than buy that one.

I found similar results when I gave each scenario to one hundred different people. While 75 percent of the people who received scenario A said they’d buy the grill rather than keep looking, only 22 percent of people who received scenario B said they’d buy the grill.

This all makes perfect sense—until you think about the final price at each store. Both stores were selling the same grill. So if anything, people should have been more likely to say they would buy it at the store where the price was lower (scenario B). But they weren’t. In fact, the opposite happened. More people said they would purchase the grill in scenario A, even though they would have had to pay a higher price ($250 rather than $240) to get it. What gives?

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DEALS

On a cold, wintry day in December 2002, Daniel Kahneman walked onstage to address a packed lecture hall at Sweden’s Stockholm University. The audience was filled with Swedish diplomats, dignitaries, and some of the world’s most prominent academics. Kahneman was there to give a talk on bounded rationality, a new perspective on intuitive judgment and choice. He had given related talks over the years, but this one was slightly different. Kahneman was in Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize in Economics.

The Nobel Prize is one of the world’s most prestigious awards and is given to researchers who have contributed great insight to their disciplines. Albert Einstein received a Nobel Prize for his work on theoretical physics. Watson and Crick received a Nobel in medicine for their work on the structure of DNA. In economics, the Nobel Prize is awarded to a person whose research has had a large impact on advancing economic thinking.

But Kahneman isn’t an economist. He is a psychologist.

Kahneman received the Nobel for his work with Amos Tversky on what they called “prospect theory.” The theory is amazingly rich, but at its core, it’s based on a very basic idea. The way people actually make decisions often violates standard economic assumptions about how they should make decisions. Judgments and decisions are not always rational or optimal. Instead, they are based on psychological principles of how people perceive and process information. Just as perceptual processes influence whether we see a particular sweater as red or view an object on the horizon as far away, they also influence whether a price seems high or a deal seems good. Along with Richard Thaler’s work, Kahneman and Tversky’s research is some of the earliest studying what we now think of as “behavioral economics.” —————

One of the main tenets of prospect theory is that people don’t evaluate things in absolute terms. They evaluate them relative to a comparison standard, or “reference point.” Fifty cents for coffee isn’t just fifty cents for coffee. Whether that seems like a fair price or not depends on your expectations. If you live in New York City, paying fifty cents for a cup of coffee seems pretty cheap. You’d chuckle at your good luck and buy coffee from that place every day. You might even tell your friends.

If you live in rural India, though, fifty cents might seem hugely expensive. It would be way more than you would dream of paying for coffee and you’d never buy it. If you told your friends anything it would be your outrage at the price gouging.

You see the same phenomenon at work if you go to the movies or the store with people in their seventies or eighties. They often complain about the prices. “What?” they exclaim. “No way am I paying eleven dollars for a movie ticket. That’s such a rip-off!”

It might seem that old people are stingier than the rest of us. But there is a more fundamental reason that they think the prices are unfair. They have different reference points. They remember the days when a movie ticket was forty cents and steak was ninety-five cents a pound, when toothpaste was twenty-nine cents and paper towels cost a dime. Because of that, it’s hard for them to see today’s prices as fair. The prices seem so much higher than what they remember, so they balk at paying them.

Reference points help explain the barbecue grill scenarios we discussed a few pages ago. People use the price they expect to pay for something as their reference point. So the grill seemed like a better deal when it was marked down from $350 to $250 rather than when it was discounted from $255 to $240, even though it was the same grill. Setting a higher reference point made the first deal seem better even though the price was higher overall.

Infomercials often use the same approach.

The amazing Miracle Blade knives last forever! Watch them slice through a pineapple, soda can, or even a penny! You might expect to pay $100 or even $200 for a set of knives like these, but right now you can get this incredible knife set for only $39.99!

Sound familiar? It should. Most infomercials use this technique to make whatever they are offering seem like a great deal. By mentioning $100 or $200 as the price you might expect to pay, the infomercial sets a high reference point, making the final price of $39.99 seem like a steal.

This is also why retailers often list a “regular” or manufacturer’s standard retail price even when something is on sale. They want consumers to use those prices as the reference price, making the sale price look even better. Consumers are so focused on getting a good deal that, as the barbecue grill example showed, they sometimes even end up paying more to get it.

Reference points also work with quantities.

But wait, there’s more! If you call now, we’ll throw in a second set of these knives absolutely free! That’s right, an extra set for the same price. And we’ll even throw in this handy knife sharpener. No extra charge!

Here the infomercial is taking the reference quantity and augmenting it. You expected to pay $39.99 for one set of Miracle Blade knives, but now you are getting an extra set, and a knife sharpener, for the same price. In addition to the price being lower than your expectations (which was set by them in the first place), the additional goods makes the offer seem like an even better deal.

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How far will the effect of putting something on sale go? Marketing scientists Eric Anderson and Duncan Simester wanted to find out. So a few years ago they paired up with a company that sends clothing catalogs to homes across the United States. Think L.L. Bean, Spiegel, or Lands’ End. Most of the clothes in these catalogs are full price, but sometimes the catalog features certain sale items and drops its prices. Not surprisingly, this increases sales. People like to pay less, so dropping the price makes things more desirable.

But Anderson and Simester had a different question in mind. They wondered whether consumers find the idea of a discount so powerful that merely labeling something as “on sale” would increase purchase.

To test this possibility, Anderson and Simester created two different versions of the catalog and mailed each to more than fifty thousand people. In one version some of the products (let’s call them dresses) were marked with signs that said “Pre-Season SALE.” In the other version the dresses were not marked as on sale.

Sure enough, marking those items as on sale increased demand. By more than 50 percent.

The kicker?

The prices of the dresses were the same in both versions of the catalog. So using the word “sale” beside a price increased sales even though the price itself stayed the same.

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Another tenet of prospect theory is something called “diminishing sensitivity.” Imagine you are looking to buy a new clock radio. At the store where you expect to buy it, you find that the price is $35. A clerk informs you that the same item is available at another branch of the same store for only $25. The store is a twenty-minute drive away and the clerk assures you that they have what you want there.

What would you do? Would you buy the clock radio at the first store or drive to the second store?

If you’re like most people, you’re probably willing to go to the other store. After all, it’s only a short drive away and you save almost 30 percent on the radio. It seems like a no-brainer.

But consider a similar example. Imagine you are buying a new television. At the store where you expect to buy it, you find that the price is $650. A clerk informs you that the same item is available at another branch of the same store for only $640. The store is a twenty-minute drive away and the clerk assures you that they have what you want there.

What would you do in this situation? Would you be willing to drive twenty minutes to save $10 on the television?

If you’re like most people, this time around you probably said no. Why drive twenty minutes to save a few bucks on a TV? You’d probably spend more on gas than what you’d save on the product. In fact, when I gave each scenario to one hundred different people, 87 percent said they’d buy the television at the first store while only 17 percent said the same for the clock radio.

But if you think about it, these two scenarios are essentially the same. They’re both about driving twenty minutes to save $10. So people should have been equally willing to take the drive in each scenario.

Except they weren’t. While almost everyone is willing to endure the drive for the cheaper clock radio, almost no one is willing to do it when buying a TV. Why?

Diminishing sensitivity reflects the idea that the same change has a smaller impact the farther it is from the reference point. Imagine that you enter a lottery at your office or your child’s school. You’re not expecting to get much out of it, but to your surprise you win $10. Lucky you! Winning anything is great, so you’d probably be pretty happy about it.

Now imagine you won $20 instead. You’d probably feel even happier. Maybe you wouldn’t be doing backflips in either case, but winning $20 would feel significantly better than winning only $10.

Okay, now let’s take that same lottery and that same $10 increase in winnings and let’s raise the stakes a little. Imagine you won $120 rather than $110. Or even better, $1,020 rather than $1,010. Suddenly that extra $10 wouldn’t matter as much. You’d probably feel essentially the same if you won $120 rather than $110. If you won $1,020 rather than $1,010 you probably wouldn’t even notice. The same change—gaining ten more dollars—has a smaller and smaller impact the farther you move from your reference point of zero dollars or not winning anything.

Diminishing sensitivity helps explain why people are more willing to drive to save the money on the clock radio. The clock radio was much cheaper, so a discount from $35 to $25 seems like a pretty good deal. But even though the television is also $10 off, it doesn’t seem like a bargain given how much more expensive the television was in the first place.

HIGHLIGHTING INCREDIBLE VALUE

Deals seem more appealing when they highlight incredible value. As discussed in the Social Currency chapter, the more remarkable something is, the more likely it will be discussed. We’re bombarded with deals all the time. If we shared every time the grocery store knocked ten cents off a can of soup no one would be friends with us anymore. A deal needs to cut through the clutter to get shared.

As prospect theory illustrates, one key factor in highlighting incredible value is what people expect. Promotional offers that seem surprising or surpass expectations are more likely to be shared. This can be because the actual deal itself exceeds expectations (for example, the percentage off is so unbelievable) or because the way the deal is framed makes it seem that way.

Another factor that affects whether deals seem valuable is their availability. Somewhat counterintuitively, making promotions more restrictive can actually make them more effective. Just as in the examples of Please Don’t Tell and Rue La La that we discussed in the Social Currency chapter, restricting availability through scarcity and exclusivity makes things seem more valuable.

Take timing or frequency. Putting something on sale can make it seem like a good deal. But if a product is always on sale people start to adjust their expectations. Rather than the full, “regular” price being their reference point, the sale price becomes the expected price. This happens with rug stores that always offer 70 percent off. People come to realize that “sales” are the norm and no longer see them as deals. The same is true even with the word “sale.” While noting something is on sale can increase demand, if too many items in a store are listed as being on sale, it can actually reduce purchase.

But offers that are available for only a limited time seem more appealing because of the restriction. Just like making a product scarce, the fact that a deal won’t be around forever makes people feel that it must be a really good one.

Quantity limits work the same way. Retailers sometimes create limits around the number of a given discounted item a given customer can buy. “One per household” or “Limit three per customer.” You might think that by making it harder for people to get as many as they want these restrictions would hurt demand. But they actually have the opposite effect by making the promotion seem like an even better deal. “Wow, if I can only get one of these, it must mean that the deal is so good that the store is worried about running out of them. Better get one fast!” Indeed, research finds that quantity purchase limits increase sales by more than 50 percent.

Even restricting who has access can make a promotional offer seem better. Some deals are available to everyone. Anyone can walk up to the discount rack at the Gap and get money off chinos, just as any patron can take advantage of happy hour at his or her local pub. But other deals are customized, or restricted to a certain set of customers. Hotels reward loyal members with “exclusive” hotel rates and restaurants have “soft openings” for a certain clientele.

These offers seem special. This boosts sharing not only by increasing Social Currency, but also by making the deal itself seem better. Like restrictions on quantity or timing, the mere fact that not everyone can get access to this promotion makes it seem more valuable. This increases Practical Value, which in turn, boosts sharing.

The Rule of 100

Another framing factor that impacts practical value is how promotional offers are expressed. Some offers are expressed in dollars off, or absolute discounts ($5 or $50 off). Other offers are expressed in percentage off, or relative discounts (5 percent or 50 percent off). Could whether a promotion is framed as money or as a percentage off affect how big the discount seems?

Take twenty percent off a $25 shirt. The same reduction can be represented as 20 percent off or $5 off. Which seems like a better deal?

Or think about a $2,000 laptop. The same reduction on a $2,000 laptop can be represented as 10 percent off or $200 off. Does one method of framing the discount make the deal seem better than the other?

Researchers find that whether a discount seems larger as money or percentage off depends on the original price. For low-priced products, like books or groceries, price reductions seem more significant when they are framed in percentage terms. Twenty percent off that $25 shirt seems like a better deal than $5 off. For high-priced products, however, the opposite is true. For things like laptops or other big-ticket items, framing price reductions in dollar terms (rather than percentage terms) makes them seem like a better offer. The laptop seems like a better deal when it is $200 off rather than 10 percent off.

A simple way to figure out which discount frame seems larger is by using something called the Rule of 100.

If the product’s price is less than $100, the Rule of 100 says that percentage discounts will seem larger. For a $30 T-shirt or a $15 entrée, even a $3 discount is still a relatively small number. But percentagewise (10 percent or 20 percent), that same discount looks much bigger.

If the product’s price is more than $100, the opposite is true. Numerical discounts will seem larger. Take a $750 vacation package or the $2,000 laptop. While a 10 percent discount may seem like a relatively small number, it immediately seems much bigger when translated into dollars ($75 or $200).

So when deciding how good a promotional offer really is, or how to frame a promotional offer to make it better, use the Rule of 100. Think about where the price falls relative to $100 and how that shifts whether absolute or relative discounts seem more attractive.

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One last point about promotional offers is that the practical value is more effective the easier it is for people to see. Take the shopper discount cards that you get at your local grocery store or pharmacy. These cards are certainly useful. They save consumers money and sometimes even give them free gifts if they have accumulated enough purchases. But one problem is that the practical value is not very visible. The only information people get about how much they saved is hidden among a half dozen other pieces of information on a lengthy receipt. And given that most people don’t show their receipts to others, it’s unlikely that anyone but the person who used the card will see how much they saved. That makes it less likely that the information will be contagious.

But what if stores made the practical value easier to see? They could put up a sign at checkout that shows other people in line how much the person checking out saved. Or the store might ring a bell every time someone saved more than twenty-five dollars. This would make two things happen. First, people would get a better sense of how much they could save by getting the card, encouraging anyone who doesn’t have one yet to get one. Second, it would allow people to see the impressive amounts that some other shoppers were able to save, encouraging them to transmit these remarkable stories of practical value. As discussed in the Public chapter, it’s hard to talk about something you can’t see.

MORE THAN MONEY

I am terrible at investing. Too many options, too much daily volatility, and too much risk. I’d rather keep my money in a cardboard box under my bed than put it in some mutual fund that could lose money. The first time I bought stocks I barely dipped my toe in. I picked two or three that seemed like good long-term investments based on being strong brands and tried to leave it at that.

But my curiosity got the best of me. I frantically checked every day how each stock was doing. A dollar up today? Huge success! Thirty-five cents down the next day? Hopelessly despondent and considering giving up investing ever again.

Needless to say I needed help. So when it came time to put money in my 401(k) for work, I picked some safe index funds that track the stock market.

Soon after, Vanguard, the firm that manages my retirement plan, sent me a short e-mail asking if I’d like to receive its monthly newsletter, MoneyWhys. Like most people, I try to avoid signing up for new mailing lists, but this one actually seemed useful. Last-minute tax tips, responses to common questions about investing, and an answer (or at least an opinion) on that age-old question of whether money can really buy happiness. I signed up.

Now, once a month, Vanguard sends me a short e-mail with useful information about financial management. One month it was tips on what homeowner’s insurance actually covers. Another month it provided tips on using your PC to track personal finances.

To be honest, I don’t read every e-mail Vanguard sends (sorry, Vanguard), but I end up forwarding many of the ones I do read to people I know who I think will find them useful. I sent the piece about homeowner’s insurance to a colleague who just bought a home. I forwarded the piece about tracking personal finances to a friend who is trying to become more fiscally responsible. Vanguard nicely packages its expertise into a short, tight bundle of useful information, and the practical value made me pass it along. And along the way I’m spreading the word about Vanguard and its investment expertise.

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Useful information, then, is another form of practical value. Helping people do things they want to do, or encouraging them to do things they should do. Faster, better, and easier.

As we discussed in the Emotions chapter, our analysis of The New York Times Most E-Mailed list found that articles about health and education were some of the most frequently shared. Recipes and reviews of up-and-coming restaurants were also highly shared. One reason is that these types of articles all provide useful information. The health section suggests solutions for people with hearing loss and techniques for boosting mental fitness in middle age. The education section covers useful programs for teens and provides insight into the college admissions process. Sharing this type of content with others enables them to eat, live, and learn better.

Look at the content you’ve been e-mailed over the past few months and you’ll see similar patterns. Articles about sunscreen brands that Consumer Reports rated the best, tips to recover quickly from exercise, or hints for great pumpkin carving design around Halloween. All these things are useful. Practical advice is shareable advice.

In thinking about why some useful content gets shared more, a couple of points are worth noting. The first is how the information is packaged. Vanguard doesn’t send out a rambling four-page e-mail with twenty-five advice links about fifteen different topics. It sends out a short, one-page note, with a key header article and three or four main links below it. It’s easy to see what the main points are, and if you want to find out more, you can simply click on the links. Many of the most viral articles on The New York Times and other websites have a similar structure. Five ways to lose weight. Ten dating tips for the New Year. The next time you’re waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store, take a look at the magazines and you’ll see the same idea being applied. Short lists focused around a key topic.

A cosmetic manufacturer makes a helpful iPhone application for business travelers. In addition to providing local weather information, it also provides expert skin care advice that is tailored to those local conditions. Humidity, rain, and air quality affect your hair and skin, so the application tells you the right way to respond. This practically valuable information not only is useful, but also demonstrates the company’s knowledge and expertise in this domain.

The second key is the audience. Some stories or information have a broader audience than others. In the United States, at least, more people follow professional football than follow water polo. Similarly, you probably have more friends that like American restaurants than like Ethiopian restaurants.

You might think that content that has a broader audience is more likely to be shared. A piece about football should be shared more than one about water polo; a review about a new American restaurant should be passed on more than a review of a new Ethiopian place. After all, people have way more friends with whom they could share the article, so shouldn’t it end up reaching more people overall?

The problem with this assumption, though, is that just because people can share with more people doesn’t mean they will. In fact, narrower content may actually be more likely to be shared because it reminds people of a specific friend or family member and makes them feel compelled to pass it along. You might have a lot of friends who like American food or football. But because so many people are interested in that type of thing, no one person strongly comes to mind when you come across related content. In contrast, you may have only one friend who cares about Ethiopian restaurants or water polo, but if you read an article about those topics you think about your friend right away. And because it seems so uniquely perfect for her, you feel you have to share it.

So while broadly relevant content could be shared more, content that is obviously relevant to a narrow audience may actually be more viral.

A NOTE ON TRUTH

You may have heard that vaccines cause autism. If so, you’re not alone. In 1998, a paper was published in a medical journal suggesting that an immunization against measles, mumps, and rubella could cause autism in children. Health-related news spreads fast, particularly when it relates to kids, and soon lots of people were talking about the potential downsides to vaccines. As a result, childhood vaccination rates decreased.

All this would be good if the link between vaccines and autism were true. But it’s not. There is no scientific evidence that vaccines cause autism. The original paper turned out to be a fraud. The doctor who authored it had manipulated evidence, apparently owing to conflict of interest, and after being found guilty of serious professional misconduct, lost his medical license. But even though the information was false, lots of people shared it.

The reason is practical value. People weren’t trying to share false things, they just heard something they thought was useful and they wanted others’ kids to be safe. But many people didn’t hear the news that the original report had been discredited, and so they continued to share an incorrect narrative. Our desire to share helpful things is so powerful that it can make even false ideas succeed. Sometimes the drive to help takes a wrong turn.

So the next time someone tells you about a miracle cure, or warns about the health risks of a particular food or behavior, try to verify that information independently before you pass it on. False information can spread just as quickly as the truth.

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Practical value is about helping. This chapter discussed the mechanics of value and the psychology of deals, but it’s important to remember why people share that type of information in the first place. People like to help one another. We go out of our way to give advice or send others information that will make them better off. Sure, some of this may be selfish. We think we’re right and we can’t help but toss our two cents into other people’s lives. But not all of it is about us. It’s also about altruism, the inherent goodness of people. We care about others and we want to make their lives better.

Of the six principles of contagiousness that we discuss in the book, Practical Value may be the easiest to apply.

Some products and ideas already have lots of Social Currency, but to build it into a video for a blender takes some energy and creativity. Figuring out how to create Triggers also requires some effort, as does evoking emotion. But finding Practical Value isn’t hard. Almost every product or idea imaginable has something useful about it. Whether it saves people money, makes them happier, improves health, or saves them time, all of these things are news you can use. So thinking about why people gravitate to our product or idea in the first place will give us a good sense of the underlying practical value.

The harder part is cutting through the clutter. There are lots of good restaurants and helpful websites, so we need to make our product or idea stand out. We need to highlight incredible value and use the Rule of 100. Like Vanguard, we need to package our knowledge and expertise so that people learn about us while they pass it along. We need to make it clear why our product or idea is so useful that people just have to spread the word. News you can use.