“Contagious”
Why Things Catch On
Holly Cotton
In the field of public relations and advertising the biggest question that is always asked no matter what you are working on or what company you are work for is, “how can we make this catch on?” In the book Contagious by Jonah Berger this question is not only answered but broken down and walk through in detail. The book gives six steps that explain why thing become “contagious” and how we can think through using those six step in the world of public relations and adverting.
Those six steps are Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value and Stories. The majority of sharing happens through word of mouth, because of these six steps outlined within the book. Word of mouth has the allusion of just simply happening, some products have it and some don’t, however; word of mouth is actually created. Word of mouth is the best way to advertise or market, people trust their friends. Friends tell us the truth about products, so we trust what they say more over an advertisement. Things become contagious through word of mouth, so how can we generate world of mouth and create a product that is “contagious”.
In our industry if we would like our product or idea to catch on we need to make it worth talking about, social currency. What we spend our time talking about influences how the people around view us. Therefore, we have to find a way to make our products something that makes the consumer look good in some way when they talk about it. Social currency is a way for consumers to achieve desired positive impressions. We most find a way for our products to find inner remarkability, leverage game mechanics and make people feel like insiders.
The products and ideas we create should have triggers to stimulate work of mouth among the consumer. Triggers can be smells, sounds or sights that reminds the consumer of your product. Top of mind will lead to top of tongue. Next Emotion, Sharing emotion helps us connect. When connecting products or ideas with emotions, pick emotions with high-arousal, that drive people to action. Anger, Sense of Awe, Anxiety, Humor, Excitement are all emotions with high arousal for consumers. Emotions drive people to action.
Making the product or idea something that is public. When consumers can see other people using the product they are more likely to use the product themselves. High visibility creates more world of mouth. In public relations and advertising our goal show be constantly finding ways to make our products visible, transmit “social proof” during or after every use. The last two ways to make products or ideas “contagious” seem simple, however; they take work and we need to make share that we are putting in the time and effort to make these two things happen for our consumer. Practical Value and Stories. Practical Value you is jus simply make sure you show the consumer the ways that the product will save them time, money or improve their health. Our products should be achieving these things we just need to make sure we show it off. Our products should be embedded into stories. This creates a way to tie multiple things on this list together, creating word of mouth easily for the consumer.
Word of mouth is the most important thing in the field of communications. These six ways to create word of mouth and make our products “contagious” should be a standard to which we hold everything we create.
