Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age

Return to Book Page. Preview — Contagious by Jonah Berger. Why do certain products and ideas go viral? Dynamic young Wharton professor Jonah Berger draws on his research to explain the six steps that make products or ideas contagious. Why do some products get more word of mouth than others? Why does some online content go viral? Word of mouth makes products, ideas, and behaviors catch on.

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Can you create word of mouth for your product or idea? According to Berger, you can. Whether you operate a neighborhood restaurant, a corporation with hundreds of employees, or are running for a local office for the first time, the steps that can help your product or idea become viral are the same. You will be surprised to learn, for example, just how little word of mouth is generated online versus elsewhere.

Already praised by Dan Ariely and Dan Gilbert, and sold in nine countries, this book is a must-read for people who want their projects and ideas to succeed. Kindle Edition , pages. Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Nonfiction To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Contagious , please sign up. Provides a plausible rationale for why people think the way they do. What do you think about it? Dirk Vanbeveren I read some in "Thinking Fast and Slow" And some conclusions i got out of is that people are just more likely to go with what they're used to.

Like …more I read some in "Thinking Fast and Slow" And some conclusions i got out of is that people are just more likely to go with what they're used to. Like how Trump did it. Everyone hear of him all the time, so even if he was good or bad, people voted for him. Others were more forgotten. A variation of this technique is also used in radio stations. Where a new song is put between 2 good songs, over and over. That way people link the "good" also to the new song. I read this in a book about habits. So basically if you apply this to how people think the way they do, it is what they hear and see all the time which makes them think the way they do.

Maybe you've already heard the sayings "you are the average of the 5 people that surround you", well it explains that you become like the people around you and will be thinking like them. Now, in the recent world we also have movies and series that people look at. So this makes people also influenced by that.

Contagious

This means that people will also be thinking like everything they watch, inclusing youtube. This could be why advertisements could be so effective.. See all 13 questions about Contagious…. Lists with This Book. Contagious is a well-written book for marketers, full of interesting stories.

‘Contagious: How to build word of mouth in the digital age’ By Jonah Berger

If you are interested why people talk about certain things more than about others this book can explain it perfectly. Here is a link to the animated summary: View all 3 comments. A very useful book for anyone wishing to have an impact with ideas. You can have a pretty good overview of the book in this 4 minute video I made with a summary on it. But the phenomenon of social pandemics—ideas, products and behaviors, that catch on and spread quickly and widely—has been around presumably as long as sociality itself.

The phenomenon is interesting in its own right, for it says something meaningful about our psychology and how we interact. However, understanding how social pandemics work also holds great practical value, for when public service messages, charity campaigns or products and services go viral, the effect has a big impact on behavior and the bottom line. On the mechanical side of things, understanding why something goes viral is straightforward enough: But this just forces us to ask: We may think that our intuitions can carry us some way toward answering this.

Nevertheless, getting something to go viral is certainly no easy task as many a would-be influencer has come to find ; and therefore, we may benefit from a more methodical, scientifically-minded attempt to understand the phenomenon. It is just such a project that Wharton marketing professor and writer Jonah Berger has been engaged in for much of his career, and in his new book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Berger reports on his findings.

Practical Value; and 6. Stories When it comes to social currency, this refers to how good or important something makes us look for sharing it. We want to look bright, funny, entertaining, knowledgeable, prestigious etc. Certain talking points are naturally more interesting than others, just as certain characteristics are naturally more noteworthy; however, ideas, products and behaviors can all be presented or manipulated in certain ways to allow them to partake more of each for example, a blender may not appear so interesting, but highlighting just how powerful it is by way of having it mash-up an iPod can make it appear a whole lot more interesting—and hence more worthy of sharing.

When it comes to triggers, this refers to stimuli in the environment that are associated with other phenomena, and that remind us of them.

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Ideas, products and behaviors that are naturally associated with triggers that we encounter more often are more likely to be brought to mind than others, thus increasing the chances that they will be both talked about and influence our behavior, and hence spread. Natural associations often work best; however, associations between unrelated items can also be established through clever advertising campaigns such as the Kit-Kat bar being associated with a coffee break. When it comes to emotion, this refers to the fact that phenomena that evoke highly arousing emotions, both positive and negative such as awe, excitement, anger and anxiety , are more likely to be shared, and hence spread; while phenomena that evoke less arousing emotions such as sadness and contentment are less likely to be shared.

The share-ability of things that evoke highly arousing emotions helps explain why Susan Boyle went viral. When it comes to public, this refers to how prevalent something is in the public eye. Things that are highly public and visible are more likely to be talked about and imitated than those that are more private.

Contagious | Book by Jonah Berger | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster UK

Nevertheless, there are ways to bring private phenomena into the public sphere. For example, donating to a charity tends to be a rather private affair. Practical value refers to the fact that people like to be helpful to others, and so anything that is particularly useful is more likely to be shared than that which is less so.

When it comes to stories, this refers to the fact that people tend to enjoy telling and hearing stories. Berger says that this is why people talk about their cereal more than they talk about NASA. Cereal might be a way more boring subject than space, but we are confronted with reminders about cereal way more often, and so because it is a top-of-the-mind thought, we tend to talk about it more.

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How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age

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