Jonah Berger Quotes

People don't think in terms of information. They think in terms of narratives. But while people focus on the story itself, information comes along for the ride.

Making things more observable makes them easier to imitate, which makes them more likely to become popular.

Virality isn’t born, it’s made.

Word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20 percent to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions.

Why does it matter if particular thoughts or ideas are top of mind? Because accessible thoughts and ideas lead to action.

Marketing is about spreading the love.

People don't need to be paid to be motivated.

When we care, we share.

Even in cases where most people are doing the right thing, talking about the minority who are doing the wrong thing can encourage people to give in to temptation.

In contrast to the notion that any publicity is good publicity, negative reviews hurt sales for some books. But for books by new or relatively unknown authors, negative reviews increased sales by 45%.... Even a bad review or negative word of mouth can increase sales if it informs or reminds people that the product or idea exists.

We need to design products and ideas that are frequently triggered by the environment and create new triggers by linking our products and ideas to prevalent cues in that environment. Top of mind leads to tip of tongue.

most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.

For the piece of gold lies 3 feet deep, but your hole is only 2 feet steep, so dig on my friend, there's no time to weep. You've only a foot to go.....

Research by the Keller Fay Group finds that only 7 percent of word of mouth happens online.

Contagious content is like that—so inherently viral that it spreads regardless of who is doing the talking.

Word of mouth is more effective than traditional advertising for two key reasons. First, it’s more persuasive.

If something is built to show, it’s built to grow.

A five-star review on Amazon.com leads to approximately twenty more books sold than a one-star review.

People search for, interpret, and favor information in a way that confirms or supports their existing beliefs.

Trying to change company culture or to get a team to go along with a tough reorganization? Rather than taking a predetermined plan and pushing it on people, catalysts do the opposite. They start by asking questions. Visiting with stakeholders, getting their perspectives, and engaging them in the planning process.

As it turns out, if something is supposed to be secret, people might well be more likely to talk about it. The reason? Social currency. People share things that make them look good to others.

But the key word here is “seeing.” If it’s hard to see what others are doing, it’s hard to imitate it. Making something more observable makes it easier to imitate. Thus a key factor in driving products to catch on is public visibility. If something is built to show, it’s built to grow.

Because rather than asking what might convince someone to change, catalysts start with a more basic question: Why hasn’t that person changed already? What is blocking them?

Nobody talks about boring companies, boring products, or boring ads,” argues one prominent word-of-mouth advocate.

Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”11

The right blend of familiarity and novelty also drives what becomes popular.

complacent.26 When it comes to hiring, raising money, or even conserving energy, people aren’t rational robots. Where they stand in relation to others affects motivation.

So to get people talking, companies and organizations need to mint social currency. Give people a way to make themselves look good while promoting their products and ideas along the way. There are three ways to do that: (1) find inner remarkability; (2) leverage game mechanics; and (3) make people feel like insiders.

It has been said that when people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate one another. We look to others for information about what is right or good to do in a given situation, and this social proof shapes everything from the products we buy to the candidates we vote for. The phrase ‘Monkey see, monkey do’ captures more than just our tendency to follow others. If people can’t see what others are doing, they can’t imitate them. So to get our products and ideas to become popular we need to make them more publicly observable

Jonah Berger, a social scientist well-known for his studies of virality, explains that publicness is one of the most crucial factors in driving something’s spread. As he writes in his book Contagious, “Making things more observable makes them easier to imitate, which makes them more likely to become popular. . . . We need to design products and initiatives that advertise themselves and create behavioral residue that sticks around even after people have bought the product or espoused the idea.

Everyone wants to be the same,” he said. “Young lawyers get a bonus and one of the first things most of them do is buy a BMW.” When I pointed out that he, too, drove a BMW, he took issue with my comment. “Sure,” he said, “but they all drive silver BMWs. I drive a blue one.

How does it make people look to talk about a product or idea? Most people would rather look smart than dumb, rich than poor, and cool than geeky. Just like the clothes we wear and the cars we drive, what we talk about influences how others see us. It’s social currency. Knowing about cool things—like a blender that can tear through an iPhone—makes people seem sharp and in the know. So to get people talking we need to craft messages that help them achieve these desired impressions. We need to find our inner remarkability and make people feel like insiders. We need to leverage game mechanics to give people ways to achieve and provide visible symbols of status that they can show to others.

Yet science articles, like Denise Grady’s piece about the cough, made the Most E-Mailed list more than politics, fashion, or business news. Why? It turns out that science articles frequently chronicle innovations and discoveries that evoke a particular emotion in readers. That emotion? Awe.

Harvard neuroscientists Jason Mitchell and Diana Tamir found that disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding. In one study, Mitchell and Tamir hooked subjects up to brain scanners and asked them to share either their own opinions and attitudes (“I like snowboarding”) or the opinions and attitudes of another person (“He likes puppies”). They found that sharing personal opinions activated the same brain circuits that respond to rewards like food and money. So talking about what you did this weekend might feel just as good as taking a delicious bite of double chocolate cake.

If word-of-mouth pundits agree on anything, it’s that being interesting is essential if you want people to talk. Most buzz marketing books will tell you that. So will social media gurus. “Nobody talks about boring companies, boring products, or boring ads,” argues one prominent word-of-mouth advocate. Unfortunately, he’s wrong.

Physiological arousal or activation drives people to talk and share. We need to get people excited or make them laugh. We need to make them angry rather than sad.

seeing others do something makes people more likely to do it themselves. But the key word here is

A word-of-mouth conversation by a new customer leads to an almost $200 increase in restaurant sales.

Why do some products, ideas, and behaviors succeed when others fail?

Advertising also plays a role. Consumers need to know about something before they can buy it. So

But although quality, price, and advertising contribute to products and ideas being successful, they don’t explain the whole story.

If something is built to show, it's build to grow.

We need to make the private public.

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.

Top of mind means tip of tongue.

Stories carry things. A lesson or moral. Information or a take-home message.

The mere fact that something isn't readily available can make people value it more and tell others to capitalize on the social currency of knowing about it or having it.

Kids make similar inferences about ice cream and vegetables. They like ice cream,

Push them too hard and they’ll snap. Tell them what to do and they’re unlikely to listen.

what’s known as linguistic concreteness. Three ways to apply it are to: (1) make people feel heard, (2) make the abstract concrete, and (3) know when it’s better to be abstract.

As one researcher noted, “If we just look at the words that were used by the officer, we can predict the race of the person that they were talking to about two-thirds of the time.

when people feel uncertain, relying on others makes sense.

Siblings encourage both imitation and differentiation.

Behavioral residue is the physical traces or remnants that most actions or behaviors leave in their wake.

In fact, the messages actually seemed to increase drug use. Kids aged twelve and a half to eighteen who saw the ads were actually more likely to smoke marijuana. Why? Because it made drug use more public. Think about observability and social proof. Before seeing the message, some kids might never have thought about taking drugs. Others might have considered it but have been wary about doing the wrong thing. But anti-drug ads often say two things simultaneously. They say that drugs are bad, but they also say that other people are doing them. And as we’ve discussed throughout this chapter, the more others seem to be doing something, the more likely people are to think that thing is right or normal and what they should be doing as well.

Great game mechanics can even create achievement out of nothing. Airlines turned loyalty into a status symbol. Foursquare made it a mark of distinction to be a fixture at the corner bar. And by encouraging players to post their achievements on Facebook, online game makers have managed to convince people to proclaim loudly—even boast—that they spend hours playing computer games every day.

Word of mouth is more effective than traditional advertising for two key reasons. First, it’s more persuasive. Second, word of mouth is more targeted. It is naturally directed towards an interested audience. But want to know the best thing about word of mouth? It’s available to everyone. And it doesn’t require millions of dollars spent on advertising. It just requires getting people to talk.

People have a need for freedom and autonomy. To feel that their lives and actions are within their personal control. That, rather than driven by randomness, or subject to the whims of others, they get to choose. Consequently, people are loath to give up agency. In fact, choice is so important that people prefer it even when it makes them worse off. Even when having choice makes them less happy.

Jonah Berger, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted a study in 2011 to find out what kind of material goes viral on the Internet. He discovered that stories that generate physiological arousal—particularly awe and anger—are much more likely to be shared. When readers experienced those two emotions they felt much more compelled to share the story with others.

The question, then, is how to reduce uncertainty by lowering the barrier to trial. Four key ways to do that are to (1) harness freemium, (2) reduce up-front costs, (3) drive discovery, and (4) make it reversible.

To avoid this issue, rather than inhabiting someone else’s shoes, deep canvassing encourages voters to find a parallel situation from their own experience. Not imagining what it’s like to be someone else, but a time the voter felt similarly.

Social Currency We share things that make us look good Triggers Top of mind, tip of tongue Emotion When we care, we share Public Built to show, built to grow Practical Value News you can use Stories Information travels under the guise of idle chatter

But doing something you love on a schedule you can’t control can feel the same as doing something you hate. There is a name for this feeling. Psychologists call it reactance. Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania, summed it up well: People like to feel like they’re in control—in the drivers’ seat. When we try to get them to do something, they feel disempowered. Rather than feeling like they made the choice, they feel like we made it for them. So they say no or do something else, even when they might have originally been happy to go along.

10. What books would you recommend to an aspiring entrepreneur? Some quick favorites: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! by Al Ries and Jack Trout The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism by Matt Mason Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years by Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices by Christopher Locke

Business author Jim Collins once said that “good is the enemy of great… We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.

Triggers explain why. Even a bad review or negative word of mouth can increase sales if it informs or reminds people that the product or idea exists. That’s why a sixty-dollar Tuscan red wine saw sales rise by 5 percent after a prominent wine website described it as “redolent of stinky socks.” It’s also one reason why the Shake Weight, a vibrating dumbbell that was widely ridiculed by the media and consumers, went on to do $50 million in sales. Even negative attention can be useful if it makes products and ideas top of mind.

Contrast that with the Budweiser beer “Wassup?” campaign. Two guys are talking on the phone while drinking Budweiser and watching a basketball game on television. A third friend arrives. He yells, “Wassup?” One of the first two guys yells “Wassup?” back. This kicks off an endless cycle of wassups between a growing number of Budweiser-drinking buddies. No, it wasn’t the cleverest of commercials. But it became a global phenomenon. And at least part of its success was due to triggers. Budweiser considered the context. “Wassup” was a popular greeting among young men at the time. Just greeting friends triggered thoughts of Budweiser in Budweiser’s prime demographic. The more the desired behavior happens after a delay, the more important being triggered becomes. Market research often focuses on consumers’ immediate

Ditch the hedges. When the goal is to convey confidence, avoid words and phrases like “may,” “could,” and “in my opinion,” which suggest that things, and the people saying them, are uncertain Use definites. Rather than hedging, use definites instead. Words like “definitely,” “clearly,” and “obviously,” which suggest whatever was said isn’t just an opinion, it’s an irrefutable truth. Don’t hesitate. Ums and uhs are natural parts of speech, but too many of them can undermine people’s confidence in us and our message. So cut the fillers. To decrease hesitations, plan what to say in advance or pause to collect your thoughts when needed. Turn pasts into presents. Using the present tense can communicate confidence and increase persuasion. So to signal certainty, rather than using past tense (e.g., “I loved that book”), use present tense (e.g., “I love that book”) instead.

Imagine standing on the very edge of the Grand Canyon. The bloodred gorge stretches as far as you can see in every direction. The canyon floor drops precipitously below your feet. You feel dizzy and step back from the edge. Hawks circle through rock crevasses so barren and stripped of vegetation you could as well be on the moon. You are amazed. You are humbled. You feel elevated. This is awe. According to psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, awe is the sense of wonder and amazement that occurs when someone is inspired by great knowledge, beauty, sublimity, or might. It’s the experience of confronting something greater than yourself. Awe expands one’s frame of reference and drives self-transcendence. It encompasses admiration and inspiration and can be evoked by everything from great works of art or music to religious transformations, from breathtaking natural landscapes to human feats of daring and discovery.

Jonah Berger, who conducted an exhaustive study of “most e-mailed” links on the New York Times website and wrote a book about the results, Contagious:

Jonah Berger, who conducted an exhaustive study of “most e-mailed” links on the New York Times website and wrote a book about the results, Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

Book Recommendation: Contagious: Why Things Catch On, by Jonah Berger.

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.

the more others seem to be doing something, the more likely people are to think that thing is right or normal and what they should be doing as well.

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.

People share more than 16,000 words per day and every hour there are more than 100 million conversations about brands.

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 discount will seem larger. For a $30 t-shirt of a $15 entree, even a $3 discount is a relatively small number. But percentagewise (10 percent or 20 percent), that same discount looks much bigger.

One way to spot barriers is to think about the past and present rather than the future. As we’ve discussed, instead of asking what would encourage change, ask why things haven’t changed already. Why hasn’t the desired shift already occurred. What’s preventing it? What existing factors have prevented it from happening by now?

Rather than pushing harder down the same blocked path, explore related directions where people aren’t so dug in. Even though someone might seem like an adversary on one dimension, there’s probably more to them than just that. Points of agreement like making sure the company continues to grow or employee retention stays high. Start with that. Start with the areas of agreement and build from there.

But beyond how many invitations people received, when they received those invitations also mattered. The closer the different invitations were in time, the bigger their collective impact.

Take two people, one who got two invitations in quick succession and one who received them a month or two apart. The person who received the two invitations one right after the other was over 50 percent more likely to join the site.

REACTANCE When pushed, people push back. So rather than telling people what to do, or trying to persuade, catalysts allow for agency and encourage people to convince themselves. ENDOWMENT People are attached to the status quo. To ease endowment, catalysts surface the costs of inaction and help people realize that doing nothing isn’t as costless as it seems. DISTANCE Too far from their backyard, people tend to disregard. Perspectives that are too far away fall in the region of rejection and get discounted, so catalysts shrink distance, asking for less and switching the field. UNCERTAINTY Seeds of doubt slow the winds of change. To get people to un-pause, catalysts alleviate uncertainty. Easier to try means more likely to buy.

CORROBORATING EVIDENCE Some things need more proof. Catalysts find corroborating evidence, using multiple sources to help overcome the translation problem.

REDUCE REACTANCE How can you allow for agency? Like the truth campaign, encouraging people to chart their path to your destination? Can you provide a menu? Like asking kids whether they want their broccoli or chicken first, can you use guided choices? Like Smoking Kid, is there a gap between attitudes and behavior, and if so, how can you highlight it? Rather than going straight for influence, have you started with understanding? Have you found the root? Like Greg Vecchi, built trust and use that to drive change?

EASE ENDOWMENT What is the status quo and what aspects make it attractive? Are there hidden costs of sticking with it that people might not realize? Like financial advisor Gloria Barrett, how can you surface the costs of inaction? Like Cortés, or Sam Michaels in IT, how can you burn the ships to make it clear that going back isn’t a feasible option? Like Dominic Cummings and Brexit, can you frame new things as regaining a loss?

SHRINK DISTANCE How can you avoid the confirmation bias by staying out of the region of rejection? Can you start by asking for less? Like the doctor who got the trucker to drink less soda, chunking the change and then asking for more? Who falls in the movable middle and how can you use them to help convince others? What would be a good unsticking point and how can you use it to switch the field? Like deep canvassing, by finding a dimension on which there is already common ground to bring people closer?

ALLEVIATE UNCERTAINTY How can you reduce uncertainty and get people to un-pause? Can you lower the barrier to trial? Like Dropbox, can you leverage freemium? Like Zappos, how can you reduce the up-front costs, using test drives, renting, sampling, or other approaches to make it easier for people to experience something themselves? Rather than waiting for people to come to you, can you drive discovery? Like the Acura experience, by encouraging people who didn’t know they might be interested to check it out? Can you reduce friction on the back end by making things reversible? Like Street Tails Animal Rescue did with a two-week trial period, or as others do with lenient return policies?

FIND CORROBORATING EVIDENCE Are you dealing with a pebble or a boulder? How expensive, risky, time-consuming, or controversial is the change you’re asking people to make? How can you provide more proof? Like interventionists, by making sure people hear from multiple sources saying similar things? What similar but independent sources can you call on to help provide more evidence? How can you concentrate them close in time? Making sure people hear from multiple others in a short period? For larger-scale change, should you use a fire hose or a sprinkler? Concentrate scarce resources or spread them out?

Jacek Nowak was struggling to get buy-in from senior management. He was working in an industry, banking, that is known for being reticent to change. And he was trying to get them to do something about customer experience that was in some senses the antithesis of what they were used to. But by lowering the barrier to trial and driving discovery, he helped management experience the value of what he was suggesting and ultimately adopt his suggestions. Chuck Wolfe was competing against one of the largest industries in the world, whose budget dwarfed his by more than a thousandfold. And getting teens to quit smoking was something that dozens of organizations had been trying to do for decades, without much success. But by laying out the truth rather than telling teens what to do, he was able to turn the tide. By letting them be active participants rather than passive bystanders, Chuck made them feel like they were in control. He reduced reactance and got teens to convince themselves. Nick Swinmurn needed a way to help a small start-up get off the ground. Shoesite.com was running out of money and they needed to change consumer behavior—fast. But rather than trying to convince people or spending funds they didn’t have on splashy ads, they removed the roadblocks. They used free shipping (and returns) to let potential customers experience the offering firsthand. By lowering the barrier to trial, Zappos reduced risk, alleviated uncertainty, and built a billion-dollar business. And along the way, helped usher in the world of online shopping we’re all so familiar with today.

Use Minimal Encouragers One way to show someone you are listening is to demonstrate through your body language and verbal responses that you are focused on what is being said. This can include nodding your head, leaning forward, or watching the person’s eyes, as well as phrases like “Yes,” “Uh-huh,” and “Okay, I see.” While such assent words or phrases may seem inconsequential, they’re actually the glue that holds conversation together. When presenters don’t get any response or feedback from their audience, they not only enjoy it less, they do a worse job overall.1

Ask Open-ended Questions Questions get discussion going and build trust. Looking at a range of situations, from getting-to-know-you conversations to speed dating, people who ask more questions are liked more.2 Questions also help collect useful information so people can better understand their conversation partners. But not all questions are equally good. Why questions (“Why didn’t you take out the trash?”), for example, can make people defensive or feel like they are being interrogated. Yes-no questions, or those that encourage one-word answers (“Do you have a gun?”), are also less effective because they fail to advance the conversation. Open-ended questions (“Can you tell me more about that?” or “Wow, how did that happen?”) not only show people you’re listening but generate details and information that can be helpful later.

Harness Effective Pauses Pauses harness the power of silence. Silence can be uncomfortable, so people tend to fill in conversational space. Hostage negotiators use pauses to get subjects to speak up and provide additional information, particularly when they think asking a question might derail things. Rather than asking a follow-up question, they’ll be quiet and let the suspect fill in the dead air. Pauses also help focus attention. Pausing just before or after saying something important breeds anticipation and encourages listeners to focus on what the communicator is saying. President Obama was famous for this. His campaign slogan “Yes, we can” was often delivered with a pause in between, as in “Yes… we can.” In his 2008 election night speech, his most stirring sentence contained ten of these pauses: “If there is anyone out there… who still doubts… that America is a place… where all things are possible,… who still wonders… if the dream of our Founders… is alive in our time,… who still questions… the power of our democracy,… tonight… is your answer.” Strategically pausing helps make points and hold attention.

Reflect What You Heard Mirroring involves repeating the last few words of what someone said to show you’re listening and engaged. Particularly if someone is feeling emotional, it encourages them to keep talking and gives them the opportunity to vent. If someone says, “I’m so annoyed that our supplier is always a day or two late,” for example, one could respond, “They’re always a day or two late?

Reflect What You Heard Mirroring involves repeating the last few words of what someone said to show you’re listening and engaged. Particularly if someone is feeling emotional, it encourages them to keep talking and gives them the opportunity to vent. If someone says, “I’m so annoyed that our supplier is always a day or two late,” for example, one could respond, “They’re always a day or two late?” Mirroring builds liking and affiliation while keeping the conversation flowing. Rather than repeating exactly what was said, paraphrasing involves restating someone’s meaning using your own words. This shows not only that you’re listening but that you truly understand what was being conveyed.

Label Emotions Changing minds is often as much about emotion as information. Facts and figures are fine, but if you don’t understand the underlying emotional issues, it’s hard to get people to move. Emotional labeling helps identify the issues and feelings that are driving someone’s behavior. Statements like “You sound angry” or “You seem frustrated” help show that you’re listening and trying to understand. Even if the emotion is misidentified, the response provides background that helps identify the root issue.

Ask for Less The movable middle is a great place to start, but sometimes we want to change minds of people who are further away. So how do we do that?

Switch the Field; Find an Unsticking Point

Sometimes change doesn’t require more horsepower. Sometimes we just need to unlock the parking brake.

This book is about finding the parking brakes. Discovering the hidden barriers preventing change. Identifying the root or core issues that are thwarting action and learning how to mitigate them.

Principle 1: Reactance When pushed, people push back.