Maximum Momentum

How to Get it, How to Keep it

Mike Berland

• Publisher: Regan Arts.
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781682451298
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Business

Do you wonder why some ideas go viral and others sink? Why one political candidate soars while another fails to gain traction? Why one product becomes an instant rage, while its competitor struggles to stay above water? What is the secret to momentum? Many people believe that momentum is driven by emotion and is unpredictable, but as Mike Berland, the internationally recognized pollster and strategic advisor, has discovered, it's actually a science, with easily analyzed metrics. In Maximum Momentum: How to Get It, How to Keep It, Berland reveals the key to momentum, beginning with the simple physics formula— mass x velocity. He then develops a Momentum Matrix—five signals that decode the science into effective measures. Maximum Momentum is a lively examination of hot trends in the current arena—from politics to society to business to sports. Using colorful graphics to underscore the stories, Berland examines the people, issues, movements and products that most captivate Americans.

PART 1 THE SCIENCE OF MOMENTUM

CHAPTER ONE THE PROPULSION FORMULA

I was sitting on the set of a TV studio in late 2015 when I started to panic. As a pollster and analyst, I was used to sharing my predictions, but in the early months of the 2016 election season, my analytics were crashing. The numbers didn’t seem to matter. The percentages were useless. Predictions were futile. A new kind of candidate, Donald Trump, had surged onto the scene, and he had defied every rule of politics I knew. He was using social media like a Kardashian. He was embracing controversy while his opponents were avoiding it like the plague. He was operating like a brand more than a politician. How the hell could I measure that?

That moment was the origin of my quest to decode momentum. Suddenly, the age of polling—of analysis by the survey numbers—was over. Instead, we were living in the age of momentum as a measure of success.

In the age of momentum, the concept of “tipping points” seems almost quaint and like watching black-and-white TV or movies. When the author Malcolm Gladwell published his hit book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference in 2000, it blew people away. Everyone was enamored of tipping points as the secret catalyst to success. Just think—one little shift, one moment, one special connection, one piece of vital information could bring a slow burn to a boil, propelling a person or company or idea into the stratosphere! It was an irresistible notion.

Unfortunately, Gladwell’s ideas may have been good at describing the past, but they are not relevant today. Gladwell claimed that one’s ability to reach a tipping point depended on two associations—with connectors, people who could make the right introductions and establish the best networks; and with mavens, information brokers who shared their knowledge. This was an old-school way of thinking. If you’re tiptoeing into a process, waiting for the “aha” moment or point of impact, you’ve already lost. With today’s social media, we live in a world when everyone is a maven and a connector. And to turn the world upside down even more, the “traditional” media has made reporting on social media a story.

Donald Trump didn’t get momentum through connections, and we know he didn’t get it through information gathering. He didn’t light a thousand candles; he set off a bomb. His momentum was explosive. Kylie Jenner is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time—all because she can go directly to her consumers. Her momentum comes because she is a connector and maven.

Momentum is not a slow burn that leads to a boil. Momentum is a force—you either take off or you’re a dud. There is no tipping point, only constant motion.

I know why you’re reading this book. You want to learn the secret of getting and keeping momentum. You might not have started as early as I did, but everybody wants momentum.

Politicians thrive on it.

Businesses and brands need it to grow.

Movements rely on it to spread their message and achieve impact.

People search for it in their personal lives.

It’s a human drive to seek momentum because we want to change and transform.

But the truth is, most people think of momentum as being kind of mysterious. They credit elusive factors, like commitment, charisma, and emotion. When we watch our favorite sports team killing it on the field, we rave that the team has momentum. But why? Is it the cheering crowds that lift a team to victory? The emotional swell that allows players to perform in exceptional ways? The drive that turns one successful play into others, like a row of dominoes falling? As the proverb goes, “Nothing succeeds like success.” That could be applied to sports, but it still doesn’t explain momentum on the field.

There is also a misconception that when people have momentum they are lucky—they’re in the right place at the right time. When you have momentum, good things happen, and your momentum gets stronger. But when you don’t have momentum, or you have lost it, it seems like things get worse. Is it a matter of luck?

In the podcast “How I Built This,” the host asks every guest the question, “How much of your success do you attribute to luck or just hard work?” Most of them say it’s both.

An interesting fact: research shows that “lucky” people possess certain qualities that are consistent with momentum, such as optimism, openness to change, and a drive to move forward. So if they’re at the right place at the right time, it’s often because they chose to put themselves there.

We marvel at the come-from-behind political candidate, or the “unknown” personality who suddenly has a million followers on Twitter, or the brand that comes out of nowhere and is killing it, or an old brand that stages a comeback. What’s the secret of their momentum? It can seem magical. And, just as gaining momentum feels mysterious, losing it provokes a deep sense of perplexity and angst. “What happened? Why me?” people rage, struggling to grasp how the wave they caught has crashed. Again, we think of it as emotional—people lost interest, got bored, moved on, found the next “shiny object.” But again, why?

As long as we think of momentum as mysterious, we can’t learn how to get it and keep it. So, let’s take the mystery away and talk about physics. Momentum is actually a physics concept. Remember Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered the Law of Gravity? Newton also formulated the Laws of Motion. The Second Law states that the movement of an object is dependent on two factors: mass (size) and force (velocity). In this physics equation, momentum is mass in motion.

Let’s decode that for real-life purposes. If we apply this simple calculation to politics or business or other activities in society, we can frame it this way:

Momentum =

Mass (awareness, reach, impressions, share of conversation, market share)

Velocity (excitement, polarization, virality, engagement)

To understand the difference between mass and velocity, imagine the following scenario. On your Instagram feed, you see that a band you love is going on tour next month. You like the post, and leave a comment that you’re so excited they’re finally coming to your city, and then head off to buy a ticket. Your engagement with their content, and excitement about seeing a band you love, contributes to their velocity. You’ve made the conversation around them a tiny bit more polarized and given a shot of energy to the next person who sees the post.

At the concert, you take a picture of you and your friends living your #bestlife and post it on Facebook. The next day, you see that your local newspaper has a brief write-up about the show in the Arts & Culture section (a tour de force). Both of these contribute to the band’s mass, the total size of the conversation about them, across all digital and real-world channels.

Here’s another example. You start seeing your friends post about a candidate they support in a local election. You’ve never seen them this excited about a politician before. You go to her website, and before long, you’ve donated to her campaign, nailed down a yard sign outside your house, and shared all of your friends’ posts. The mass of your friends’ conversation about her—the number of posts you saw in your feed—made you aware, but the velocity of their excitement was what pushed you over the edge to take action. Momentum can also be a self-reinforcing phenomenon—your yard sign is now part of her campaign’s mass, and helps her momentum continue to build on itself.

Simply put, mass describes the total volume of conversation and awareness. Some mass is readily visible; sales, news articles, hashtagged posts, clicks, and some sources of mass are more abstract.

Velocity is the energy, passion, or polarization around a product, service, candidate, or issue. It points directly at emotional relevance—the question, “Does this make me feel something?”

There’s a common misperception that mass is the key—the number of clicks or bodies in the room. If twenty thousand people “like” a post, that feels like momentum, especially if those likes turn into new followers. But as Hillary Clinton learned in the 2016 election, having mass (three million more votes than Donald Trump) didn’t make up for the absence of velocity (excitement) in the final push. Hillary’s lack of velocity gave Trump his edge.

We see this same dynamic with many brands; they leverage their initial velocity—the excitement of their new product or innovation—to grow their mass and create momentum, but then they stagnate. They don’t keep moving and changing. They’re too busy defending their mass and playing it safe, so it doesn’t shrink. Playing it safe to protect mass ultimately has the opposite effect, because sustained momentum requires both mass and velocity.

Hillary is a study of the impotence of mass without velocity. She ran for president twice. Both times she started the campaign as the favorite, with a solid base of support in terms of voters and fundraising. In 2008, phenom Barack Obama beat her. Obama’s message of hope and change had velocity. In 2016, Hillary was defeated by Donald Trump, whose Make America Great Again had velocity.

In both elections, Hillary had the mass of support to win, but her support was lackluster. No one was excited about the future with her; even the idea of the first woman president didn’t spark momentum. And she was far more interested in protecting her mass than generating velocity. She’d been defending that mass through two terms as first lady (when the Lewinsky scandal actually increased her support), two terms as New York senator, and years as secretary of state. If she’d run for president against candidates with less velocity, it might have worked for her. But she had the misfortune of running against two momentum masterminds—Obama and Trump.

In short, Hillary never gained momentum. In fact, she lost momentum in both elections. Her campaigns were always on the defense, fighting to maintain support rather than moving forward. Ironically, Hillary’s 2016 graphic featured a forward-pointing arrow. But her campaign never moved forward.

To have momentum, you have to keep moving and transforming. Momentum asks, “What are you going to do next… and can I go with you?”

In the business realm, if a lot of people buys your new product one time, you have velocity, but if they don’t buy it a second time, velocity disappears. (There’s a difference between a fad and momentum, which we’ll explore.) Momentum is never set in stone. Without constant movement and transformation or change, momentum fizzles.

Amazon has momentum. There’s no question it has mass—Amazon Prime has more than a hundred million subscribers. But it also has velocity because it is constantly changing and improvising. Jeff Bezos has said, “If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness.”

Amazon started out selling books. Then it added other products, such as household goods, clothes, and electronics. Then it added a video streaming service. Then it added original programming. Then it added grocery shopping with the purchase of Whole Foods—with an app for two-hour delivery. The next iteration might be delivery-only grocery shopping. People might rage against Amazon for its negative impact on retail stores, but the stores weren’t victims. They stagnated. They lost their momentum because they failed to innovate, and Amazon swept into the void.

I have clients that want to decode Amazon as if it could be decoded. The whole idea is that it is constantly changing. What I admire about Amazon is that it maintains its momentum by not being predictable.

Since the formula for momentum seems so obvious, why don’t all companies adopt it? Why don’t all political candidates pursue it? Why don’t all social endeavors go for it? Why don’t all brands pursue it? One answer might be a capacity for risk.

You might not think of Tide Laundry Detergent as having momentum, but the reason this brand, launched in 1946, has such staying power and remains number one is because of constant innovation, introducing stain fighters, softeners, color protection, pods, and other features—each time ahead of the market. Today it is continuing to innovate with environmentally friendly products.

Tide was able to preserve this momentum by continuous transformations, which improved its formula and benefits. Let’s face it: washing clothes is still washing clothes. The washing machines may have changed, the fabrics and fashions may have changed, but Tide stays the number one brand. Why? Because it introduces innovations long before it needs to. It stays ahead of the curve by making changes while its sales are still increasing, not waiting until they’re declining or a new competitor has come in. It keeps momentum by always being one step ahead.

Tide’s innovations weren’t easy, and they didn’t just happen. Along the way, the company took a risk with every innovation. And that’s the reason many don’t pursue momentum: they’re afraid of taking risks. Momentum doesn’t just fall into your lap. You don’t wake up one day and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Momentum
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: My Best Days Are Ahead
• Part 1: The Science of Momentum
• Part 2: The Secret of Momentum
• About the Author
• Copyright