Summary and Analysis of Contagious: Why Things Catch On

Based on the Book by Jonah Berger

Worth Books

• Publisher: Worth Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781504044738
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Advertising

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of Contagious tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Jonah Berger's book.
Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader.
 
This short summary and analysis of Contagious includes:

• Historical context
• Chapter-by-chapter overviews
• Detailed timeline of key events
• Important quotes
• Fascinating trivia
• Glossary of terms
• Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work

About Contagious by Jonah Berger:
 
Contagious: Why Things Catch On examines why certain media goes viral—videos, articles, memes—and others never get shared at all. By looking at popular culture, Wharton professor Jonah Berger analyzes what makes an idea take off.
 
Based on his own research and the insights gleaned from 15 years of studying marketing, Berger's New York Times–bestselling book teaches readers why popular content is popular, and how they can make their own ideas and products truly contagious.
 
The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.
 

Summary

Introduction: Why Things Catch On

Jonah Berger introduces his book by discussing the importance of word of mouth marketing. “Going viral” is, at its heart, people telling their friends about something interesting, useful, funny, or just plain cool. While we tend to think all such transmission happens online, research shows that in fact it’s only 7%. The vast majority of word of mouth advertising happens in our daily lives, offline. So what determines the success of certain products or ideas and the failure of others? Berger says it is the “six principles of contagiousness” detailed in Contagious.

1. Social Currency

Childhood friends and entrepreneurs Brian Shebairo and Chris Antista created a successful hotdog business in New York City. But when they decided they wanted to create a bar, they were stuck. There was fierce competition and they didn’t know how they could stand out. Finding a 1930s-era telephone booth gave them an idea—use it to create an entrance to a secret bar. To get in, customers dial a number on the phone in the booth, and if there’s space, they are let into the bar. Playing on the exclusive nature of the bar, they named it Please Don’t Tell. Ironically, the very fact the bar is unadvertised and hard to get into made it extremely popular. It’s secrecy gave the bar social currency—“people share things that make them look good.”

This isn’t just an accident; in fact, a Harvard study has shown that humans are hardwired to find pleasure in sharing their preferences—so much so that they would rather do that than be paid money to wait in silence.

People’s opinions are influenced by how others dress and act—indeed, by everything about them: from what car they drive to what they like to talk about. Since we know this, we all want to share things that make us seem cool. When a business taps into this behavior, it benefits. Please Don’t Tell did this by making their customers feel as if they were in on a secret. Snapple did it by printing interesting, shareable facts underneath the bottle caps—when people opened a bottle and found out something new, they were likely to share the fact with their friends. Inevitably, the friend would wonder where the fact came from, providing the original customer with an opportunity to talk about Snapple—perfect word of mouth advertising! Berger classifies things that need to be talked about as remarkable.

Not surprisingly, people are more likely to share remarkable videos and talk about companies that are seen to be remarkable. And, as stories are shared, they are often magnified as people exaggerate what happened, consciously or unconsciously.

Applying game mechanics to a business strategy works because winning makes people look and feel good. Frequent flier programs do this well—there is a hierarchy of benefits and a clear way to achieve them. Once customers have reached elite levels, they often want to share their status with their friends.

A Harvard study discovered that people prefer to feel like they are winning and doing better than others, even if it costs them significant amounts of money. The study asked people whether they’d rather accept $50,000 per year for a job that others made $25,000 doing, or $100,000 per year for a job that others made $200,000 doing. The majority of students chose the first option. People don’t care only about earning more, they care about earning more than other people around them.

Another key way to create social currency is to make people feel like they are insiders in a select group. Online fashion outlet Rue La La did this by offering members-only discounts. In essence, it created an exclusive club. McDonald’s did something similar with the McRib. It began launching the sandwich in specific locations for a limited time, thus creating scarcity. This made people feel like insiders if they could get their hands on a McRib. A pedestrian sandwich was transformed into an exclusive item. But businesses can only take this concept so far—it’s pointless to pay customers to tell other customers about a product, for instance. To do so would remove the illusion of having insider status and sap motivation. Incentives based on social currency are far more effective.

Need to Know: Making items scarce, rare, hard-to-access, or remarkable encourages customers to share their experience and heightens their interest in obtaining such item...

Table of contents

• Title
• Disclaimer
• Contents
• Context
• Overview
• Summary
• Cast of Characters
• Direct Quotes and Analysis
• Trivia
• What’s That Word?
• Critical Response
• About Jonah Berger
• For Your Information
• Bibliography
• Copyright