UCB Proposed Engaging Content for Instagram for CVS Discussion

Intro:

Who do you root for? Do you have a favorite sports team? An author, chef, musician or artist whose work you follow? If you buy fan gear, attend events related to favorite celebrities or write reviews online, you are engaged in “engagement.”

Effective social media relies on engagement. If an individual, organization, or business cannot entice responses through its content then its social media becomes little more than a public document like a newsletter or bulletin board. When followers, fans, and even critics respond to a social media post what is happening is a form of communication that can contribute to a brand’s message, image and public identity.

Part of this week’s lesson is designed to explore how effective engagement is built and managed on social media platforms. Every culture has an understanding of its “public.” Arguably, the growth of internet access and the rise of global social media interactions is homogenizing what counts as an “appropriate,” “embarrassing,” or “expected” public interaction, especially in cyberspace. Yet even when ideas about public communication differ, the notion that “publicity” shapes our interaction is universal.

For communications professionals, it is not enough to simply know how to create visually impactful and engaging content. You must also begin to develop a sensibility for how your target audiences (customers, donors, fans, and so on) understand their public selves. As the readings and materials for this week highlight, what individuals decide they will and won’t “say” on social media is directly tied to how they understand (and feel about) being “public.”

You probably have an example of how the theory of publicity has shaped your own social media interactions. Do you like a brand’s Facebook page if you know they are committed to your ideals? Do you admit to eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in a 5-minute sitting? Think back to a time when you decided not to post something on social media.

You may be thinking “my social media profiles is only visible to my friends.” Remember, there can be many different types of publics. Your family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and classmates are all a kind of public. This week, we’ll focus on how thinking through the way that publics shape engagement can be of great value to social media professionals. Facebook will be the specific application for this week’s readings

Image

Publicity 链接到外部网站。

by is licensed under

CC BY-SA 3.0

Read Contagious, “Triggers” (pgs. 61-92). As you read, think about this question: what is a “trigger” for social media content? How can you design posts that “trigger” a fan, supporter or other stakeholder?

Read Christina Newberry and Katie Sehl’s (2021) article, “How to Establish Instagram for Business: A Practical Guide.链接到外部网站。” When I work with communications professionals that are well-versed in their use of Facebook and Twitter, I often find they are very nervous about moving into other platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. When I dig deeper I find that fear is grounded in worries about the “artsy-ness” of sites that focus on visuals. It is definitely possible for people who have zero artistic bones to succeed on image-based platforms (trust me – I’m one of them!). What you need is an aesthetic. This piece will introduce you to that idea, and explain how to move forward developing one for your client. It also outlines how to actually set up a business account, rather than a personal one.

Check out Carly Stec’s (2021) list of “29 Free Online Design Tools.链接到外部网站。”As always, what is available today may be gone tomorrow, but this list of tools should give you a sense of what types of products are available for you to use as you work to create content (and an aesthetic) for your social messaging.

Prompt: This week, you’ll be creating content and posting it for your classmates to review. Your task is to make an Instagram or Twitter post that you think will create engagement. Here are the guidelines:

1. Your post can be real or proposed. This means that you are welcome to create something for your own personal social feed, for an organization you work with (with their permission of course), your course client, or any organization you are interested in. If you actually post your content – your discussion board message should include a link so that we can all go and see. If you would prefer to “propose” your post, create something so that we can see what you would want your Instagram or Twitter post to look like (e.g. a .pdf, a Word document, a .jpg, etc.).
2. Use at least one of the free design tools you learned about this week (if you have access to another design tool that is paid (or a free one that wasn’t in the readings) – you can use that too – but add a few sentences about what you used, and why you think it’s a good tool!)

In your Discussion Board post, write a paragraph or two explaining why you think your post will generate engagement. Be sure to reference the course readings and materials to support your argument.

As you review your classmates’ ideas, offer thoughtful and constructive feedback. Be sure to ground your responses in the course materials as well.

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Contents
Introduction: Why Things Catch On
Why $100 is a good price for a cheesesteak . . . Why do some things become
popular? . . . Which is more important, the message or the messenger? . . . Can you
make anything contagious? . . . The case of the viral blender . . . Six key STEPPS.
1. Social Currency
When a telephone booth is a door . . . Ants can lift fifty times their own weight. . . .
Why frequent flier miles are like a video game . . . When it’s good to be hard to
get . . . Why everyone wants a mix of tripe, heart, and stomach meat . . . The
downside of getting paid . . . We share things that make us look good.
2. Triggers
Which gets more word of mouth, Disney or Cheerios? . . . Why a NASA mission
boosted candy sales . . . Could where you vote affect how you vote? . . . Consider
the context . . . Explaining Rebecca Black . . . Growing the habitat: Kit Kat and
coffee . . . Top of mind, tip of tongue.
3. Emotion
Why do some things make the Most E-Mailed list? . . . How reading science
articles is like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon . . . Why anger is like
humor . . . How breaking guitars can make you famous . . . Getting teary eyed about
online search . . . When we care, we share.
4. Public
Is the Apple logo better upside down than right side up? . . . Why dying people
turn down kidney transplants . . . Using moustaches to make the private public . . .
How to advertise without an advertising budget . . . Why anti-drug commercials
might increase drug use . . . Built to show, built to grow.
5. Practical Value
How an eighty-six-year-old made a viral video about corn . . . Why hikers talk
about vacuum cleaners . . . E-mail forwards are the new barn raising . . . Will
people pay to save money? . . . Why $100 is a magic number . . . When lies spread
faster than the truth . . . News you can use.
6. Stories
How stories are like Trojan horses . . . Why good customer service is better than
any ad . . . When a streaker crashed the Olympics . . . Why some story details are
unforgettable . . . Using a panda to make valuable virality . . . Information travels
under the guise of idle chatter.
Epilogue
Why 80 percent of manicurists in California are Vietnamese . . . Applying the
STEPPS.
Acknowledgments
Readers Group Guide
Questions for Discussion
Expand Your Book Club
A Conversation with Jonah Berger
About Jonah Berger
Notes
Index
To my mother, father, and grandmother.
For always believing in me.
Introduction: Why Things Catch On
By the time Howard Wein moved to Philadelphia in March 2004, he already had lots
of experience in the hospitality industry. He had earned an MBA in hotel management,
helped Starwood Hotels launch its W brand, and managed billions of dollars in revenue
as Starwood’s corporate director of food and beverage. But he was done with “big.”
He yearned for a smaller, more restaurant-focused environment. So he moved to Philly
to help design and launch a new luxury boutique steakhouse called Barclay Prime.
The concept was simple. Barclay Prime was going to deliver the best steakhouse
experience imaginable. The restaurant is located in the toniest part of downtown
Philadelphia, its dimly lit entry paved with marble. Instead of traditional dining chairs,
patrons rest on plush sofas clustered around small marble tables. They feast from an
extensive raw bar, including East and West Coast oysters and Russian caviar. And the
menu offers delicacies like truffle-whipped potatoes and line-caught halibut FedExed
overnight directly from Alaska.
But Wein knew that good food and great atmosphere wouldn’t be enough. After all,
the thing restaurants are best at is going out of business. More than 25 percent fail
within twelve months of opening their doors. Sixty percent are gone within the first
three years.
Restaurants fail for any number of reasons. Expenses are high—everything from the
food on the plates to the labor that goes into preparing and serving it. And the landscape
is crowded with competitors. For every new American bistro that pops up in a major
city, there are two more right around the corner.
Like most small businesses, restaurants also have a huge awareness problem. Just
getting the word out that a new restaurant has opened its doors—much less that it’s
worth eating at—is an uphill battle. And unlike the large hotel chains Wein had
previously worked for, most restaurants don’t have the resources to spend on lots of
advertising or marketing. They depend on people talking about them to be successful.
Wein knew he needed to generate buzz. Philadelphia already boasted dozens of
expensive steakhouses, and Barclay Prime needed to stand out. Wein needed something
to cut through the clutter and give people a sense of the uniqueness of the brand. But
what? How could he get people talking?
—————
How about a hundred-dollar cheesesteak?
The standard Philly cheesesteak is available for four or five bucks at hundreds of
sandwich shops, burger joints, and pizzerias throughout Philadelphia. It’s not a difficult
recipe. Chop some steak on a griddle, throw it on a hoagie (hero) roll, and melt some
Provolone cheese or Cheez Whiz on top. It’s delicious regional fast food, but definitely
not haute cuisine.
Wein thought he could get some buzz by raising the humble cheesesteak to new
culinary heights—and attaching a newsworthy price tag. So he started with a fresh,
house-made brioche roll brushed with homemade mustard. He added thinly sliced Kobe
beef, marbleized to perfection. Then he included caramelized onions, shaved heirloom
tomatoes, and triple-cream Taleggio cheese. All this was topped off with shaved handharvested black truffles and butter-poached Maine lobster tail. And just to make it even
more outrageous, he served it with a chilled split of Veuve Clicquot champagne.
The response was incredible.
People didn’t just try the sandwich, they rushed to tell others. One person suggested
that groups get it “as a starter . . . that way you all get the absurd story-telling rights.”
Another noted that the sandwich was “honestly indescribable. One does not throw all
these fine ingredients together and get anything subpar. It was like eating gold.” And
given the sandwich’s price, it was almost as expensive as eating gold, albeit far more
delicious.
Wein didn’t create just another cheesesteak, he created a conversation piece.
—————
It worked. The story of the hundred-dollar cheesesteak was contagious. Talk to
anyone who’s been to Barclay Prime. Even if people didn’t order the cheesesteak, most
will likely mention it. Even people who’ve never been to the restaurant love to talk
about it. It was so newsworthy that USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and other
media outlets published pieces on the sandwich. The Discovery channel filmed a
segment for its Best Food Ever show. David Beckham had one when he was in town.
David Letterman invited Barclay’s executive chef to New York to cook him one on the
Late Show. All that buzz for what is still, at its heart, just a sandwich.
The buzz helped. Barclay Prime opened nearly a decade ago. Against the odds, the
restaurant has not only survived but flourished. It has won various food awards and is
listed among the best steakhouses in Philadelphia year after year. But more important, it
built a following. Barclay Prime caught on.
WHY DO PRODUCTS, IDEAS, AND BEHAVIORS CATCH ON?
There are lots of examples of things that have caught on. Yellow Livestrong wristbands.
Nonfat Greek yogurt. Six Sigma management strategy. Smoking bans. Low-fat diets.
Then Atkins, South Beach, and the low-carb craze. The same dynamic happens on a
smaller scale at the local level. A certain gym will be the trendy place to go. A new
church or synagogue will be in vogue. Everyone will get behind a new school
referendum.
These are all examples of social epidemics. Instances where products, ideas, and
behaviors diffuse through a population. They start with a small set of individuals or
organizations and spread, often from person to person, almost like a virus. Or in the
case of the hundred-dollar cheesesteak, an over-the-top, wallet-busting virus.
But while it’s easy to find examples of social contagion, it’s much harder to actually
get something to catch on. Even with all the money poured into marketing and
advertising, few products become popular. Most restaurants bomb, most businesses go
under, and most social movements fail to gain traction.
Why do some products, ideas, and behaviors succeed when others fail?
—————
One reason some products and ideas become popular is that they are just plain better.
We tend to prefer websites that are easier to use, drugs that are more effective, and
scientific theories that are true rather than false. So when something comes along that
offers better functionality or does a better job, people tend to switch to it. Remember
how bulky televisions or computer monitors used to be? They were so heavy and
cumbersome that you had to ask a couple of friends (or risk a strained back) to carry
one up a flight of stairs. One reason flat screens took off was that they were better. Not
only did they offer larger screens, but they weighed less. No wonder they became
popular.
Another reason products catch on is attractive pricing. Not surprisingly, most people
prefer paying less rather than more. So if two very similar products are competing, the
cheaper one often wins out. Or if a company cuts its prices in half, that tends to help
sales.
Advertising also plays a role. Consumers need to know about something before they
can buy it. So people tend to think that the more they spend on advertising, the more
likely something will become popular. Want to get people to eat more vegetables?
Spending more on ads should increase the number of people who hear your message
and buy broccoli.
—————
But although quality, price, and advertising contribute to products and ideas being
successful, they don’t explain the whole story.
Take the first names Olivia and Rosalie. Both are great names for girls. Olivia means
“olive tree” in Latin and is associated with fruitfulness, beauty, and peace. Rosalie has
Latin and French origins and is derived from the word for roses. Both are about the
same length, end in vowels, and have handy, cute nicknames. Indeed, thousands of
babies are named Olivia or Rosalie each year.
But think for a moment about how many people you know with each name. How
many people you’ve met named Olivia and how many people you’ve met named
Rosalie.
I’ll bet you know at least one Olivia, but you probably don’t know a Rosalie. In fact,
if you do know a Rosalie, I’ll bet you know several Olivias.
How did I know that? Olivia is a much more popular name. In 2010, for example,
there were almost 17,000 Olivias born in the United States but only 492 Rosalies. In
fact, while the name Rosalie was somewhat popular in the 1920s, it never reached the
stratospheric popularity that Olivia recently achieved.
When trying to explain why Olivia became a more popular name than Rosalie,
familiar explanations like quality, price, and advertising get stuck. It’s not like one
name is really “better” than the other, and both names are free, so there is no difference
in price. There is also no advertising campaign to try to get everyone to name their kids
Olivia, no company determined to make that name the hottest thing since Pokémon.
The same thing can be said for videos on YouTube. There’s no difference in price
(all are free to watch), and few videos receive any advertising or marketing push. And
although some videos have higher production values, most that go viral are blurred and
out of focus, shot by an amateur on an inexpensive camera or cell phone.*
So if quality, price, and advertising don’t explain why one first name becomes more
popular than another, or why one You-Tube video gets more views, what does?
SOCIAL TRANSMISSION
Social influence and word of mouth. People love to share stories, news, and
information with those around them. We tell our friends about great vacation
destinations, chat with our neighbors about good deals, and gossip with coworkers
about potential layoffs. We write online reviews about movies, share rumors on
Facebook, and tweet about recipes we just tried. People share more than 16,000 words
per day and every hour there are more than 100 million conversations about brands.
But word of mouth is not just frequent, it’s also important. The things others tell us,
e-mail us, and text us have a significant impact on what we think, read, buy, and do. We
try websites our neighbors recommend, read books our relatives praise, and vote for
candidates our friends endorse. Word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20 percent
to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions.
Consequently, social influence has a huge impact on whether products, ideas, and
behaviors catch on. A word-of-mouth conversation by a new customer leads to an
almost $200 increase in restaurant sales. A five-star review on Amazon.com leads to
approximately twenty more books sold than a one-star review. Doctors are more likely
to prescribe a new drug if other doctors they know have prescribed it. People are more
likely to quit smoking if their friends quit and get fatter if their friends become obese. In
fact, while traditional advertising is still useful, word of mouth from everyday Joes and
Janes is at least ten times more effective.
Word of mouth is more effective than traditional advertising for two key reasons.
First, it’s more persuasive. Advertisements usually tell us how great a product is.
You’ve heard it all—how nine out of ten dentists recommend Crest or how no other
detergent will get your clothes as clean as Tide.
But because ads will always argue that their products are the best, they’re not really
credible. Ever seen a Crest ad say that only one out of ten dentists prefers Crest? Or
that four of the other nine think Crest will rot your teeth?
Our friends, however, tend to tell it to us straight. If they thought Crest did a good
job, they’ll say that. But they’d also tell us if Crest tasted bad or failed to whiten their
teeth. Their objectivity, coupled with their candidness, make us much more likely to
trust, listen to, and believe our friends.
Second, word of mouth is more targeted. Companies try to advertise in ways that
allow them to reach the largest number of interested customers. Take a company that
sells skis. Television ads during the nightly news probably wouldn’t be very efficient
because many of the viewers don’t ski. So the company might advertise in a ski
magazine, or on the back of lift tickets to a popular slope. But while this would ensure
that most people who see the ad like skiing, the company would still end up wasting
money because lots of those people don’t need new skis.
Word of mouth, on the other hand, is naturally directed toward an interested
audience. We don’t share a news story or recommendation with everyone we know.
Rather, we tend to select particular people who we think would find that given piece of
information most relevant. We’re not going to tell a friend about a new pair of skis if
we know the friend hates skiing. And we’re not going to tell a friend who doesn’t have
kids about the best way to change a diaper. Word of mouth tends to reach people who
are actually interested in the thing being discussed. No wonder customers referred by
their friends spend more, shop faster, and are more profitable overall.
A particularly nice example of how word of mouth improves targeting came to me in
the mail a few years ago. Every so often publishers will send me free books. Usually
they’re related to marketing and the publisher hopes that if I’m given a free copy, I’ll be
more likely to assign the book to my students (and sell them a bunch of copies in the
process).
But a few years ago, one company did something slightly different. It sent me two
copies of the same book.
Now, unless I’m mistaken, there’s no reason for me to read the second copy, once
I’ve read the first. But these publishers had a different goal in mind. They sent a note
explaining why they thought the book would be good for my students, but they also
mentioned that they sent a second copy so that I could pass it along to a colleague who
might be interested.
That’s how word of mouth helps with targeting. Rather than sending books to
everyone, the publishers got me, and others, to do the targeting for them. Just like a
searchlight, each recipient of the double mailing would look through his or her personal
social network, find the person that the book would be most relevant for, and pass it
along.
GENERATING WORD OF MOUTH
But want to know the best thing about word of mouth? It’s available to everyone. From
Fortune 500 companies trying to increase sales to corner restaurants trying to fill tables.
And from nonprofits trying to fight obesity to newbie politicians trying to get elected.
Word of mouth helps things catch on. Word of mouth even helps B2B companies get
new clients from existing ones. And it doesn’t require millions of dollars spent on
advertising. It just requires getting people to talk.
The challenge, though, is how to do that.
From start-ups to starlets, people have embraced social media as the wave of the
future. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other channels are seen as ways to cultivate a
following and engage consumers. Brands post ads, aspiring musicians post videos, and
small businesses post deals. Companies and organizations have fallen over themselves
in their rush to jump on the buzz marketing bandwagon. The logic is straightforward. If
they can get people to talk about their idea or share their content, it will spread through
social networks like a virus, making their product or idea instantly popular along the
way.
But there are two issues with this approach: the focus and the execution.
Help me out with a quick pop quiz. What percent of word of mouth do you think
happens online? In other words, what percent of chatter happens over social media,
blogs, e-mail, and chat rooms?
If you’re like most people you probably guessed something around 50 or 60 percent.
Some people guess upward of 70 percent and some guess much lower, but after having
asked this question of hundreds of students and executives, I find that the average is
around 50 percent.
And that number makes sense. After all, social media have certainly exploded as of
late. Millions of people use these sites every day, and billions of pieces of content get
shared every month. These technologies have made it faster and easier to share things
quickly with a broad group of people.
But 50 percent is wrong.
Not even close.
The actual number is 7 percent. Not 47 percent, not 27 percent, but 7 percent.
Research by the Keller Fay Group finds that only 7 percent of word of mouth happens
online.
Most people are extremely surprised when they hear that number. “But that’s way too
low,” they protest. “People spend a huge amount of time online!” And that’s true.
People do spend a good bit of time online. Close to two hours a day by some estimates.
But we forget that people also spend a lot of time offline. More than eight times as
much, in fact. And that creates a lot more time for offline conversations.
We also tend to overestimate online word of mouth because it’s easier to see. Social
media sites provide a handy record of all the clips, comments, and other content we
share online. So when we look at it, it seems like a lot. But we don’t think as much
about all the offline conversations we had over that same time period because we can’t
easily see them. There is no recording of the chat we had with Susan after lunch or the
conversation we had with Tim while waiting for the kids to be done with practice. But
while they may not be as easy to see, they still have an important impact on our
behavior.
Further, while one might think that online word of mouth reaches more people, that’s
not always the case. Sure, online conversations could reach more people. After all,
while face-to-face conversations tend to be one-on-one, or among a small handful of
people, the average tweet or Facebook status update is sent to more than one hundred
people. But not all of these potential recipients will actually see every message. People
are inundated with online content, so they don’t have the time to read every tweet,
message, or update sent their way. A quick exercise among my students, for example,
showed that less than 10 percent of their friends responded to a message they posted.
Most Twitter posts reach even fewer. Online conversations could reach a much larger
audience, but given that offline conversations may be more in-depth, it’s unclear that
social media is the better way to go.
So the first issue with all the hype around social media is that people tend to ignore
the importance of offline word of mouth, even though offline discussions are more
prevalent, and potentially even more impactful, than online ones.
The second issue is that Facebook and Twitter are technologies, not strategies.
Word-of-mouth marketing is effective only if people actually talk. Public health
officials can tweet daily bulletins about safe sex, but if but no one passes them along,
the campaign will fail. Just putting up a Facebook page or tweeting doesn’t mean
anyone will notice or spread the word. Fifty percent of YouTube videos have fewer
than five hundred views. Only one-third of 1 percent get more than 1 million.
Harnessing the power of word of mouth, online or offline, requires understanding
why people talk and why some things get talked about and shared more than others. The
psychology of sharing. The science of social transmission.
The next time you’re chatting at a party or grabbing a bite to eat with a coworker,
imagine being a fly on the wall, eavesdropping on your conversation. You might end up
chatting about a new movie or gossiping about a colleague. You might trade stories
about vacation, mention someone’s new baby, or complain about the unusually warm
weather.
Why? You could have talked about anything. There are millions of different topics,
ideas, products, and stories you could have discussed. Why did you talk about those
things in particular? Why that specific story, movie, or coworker rather than a different
one?
Certain stories are more contagious, and certain rumors are more infectious. Some
online content goes viral while other content never gets passed on. Some products get a
good deal of word of mouth, while others go unmentioned. Why? What causes certain
products, ideas, and behaviors to be talked about more?
That’s what this book is about.
—————
One common intuition is that generating word of mouth is all about finding the right
people. That certain special individuals are just more influential than others. In The
Tipping Point, for example, Malcolm Gladwell argues that social epidemics are driven
“by the efforts of a handful of exceptional people” whom he calls mavens, connectors,
and salesmen. Others suggest that “one in 10 Americans tells the other nine how to vote,
where to eat, and what to buy.” Marketers spend millions of dollars trying to find these
so-called opinion leaders and get them to endorse their products. Political campaigns
look for the “influentials” to support their side.
The notion is that anything these special people touch will turn to gold. If they adopt
or talk about a product or idea, it will become popular.
But conventional wisdom is wrong. Yes, we all know people who are really
persuasive, and yes, some people have more friends than others. But in most cases that
doesn’t make them any more influential in spreading information or making things go
viral.
Further, by focusing so much on the messenger, we’ve neglected a much more
obvious driver of sharing: the message.
To use an analogy, think about jokes. We all have friends who are better joke tellers
than we are. Whenever they tell a joke the room bursts out laughing.
But jokes also vary. Some jokes are so funny that it doesn’t matter who tells them.
Everyone laughs even if the person sharing the joke isn’t all that funny. Contagious
content is like that—so inherently viral that it spreads regardless of who is doing the
talking. Regardless of whether the messengers are really persuasive or not and
regardless of whether they have ten friends or ten thousand.
—————
So what about a message makes people want to pass it on?
Not surprisingly, social media “gurus” and word-of-mouth practitioners have made
lots of guesses. One prevalent theory is that virality is completely random—that it’s
impossible to predict whether a given video or piece of content will be highly shared.
Other people conjecture based on case studies and anecdotes. Because so many of the
most popular YouTube videos are either funny or cute—involving babies or kittens—
you commonly hear that humor or cuteness is a key ingredient for virality.
But these “theories” ignore the fact that many funny or cute videos never take off.
Sure, some cat clips get millions of views, but those are the outliers, not the norm. Most
get less than a few dozen.
You may as well observe that Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and Bill Cosby are all famous
and conclude that changing your name to Bill is the route to fame and fortune. Although
the initial observation is correct, the conclusion is patently ludicrous. By merely
looking at a handful of viral hits, people miss the fact that many of those features also
exist in content that failed to attract any audience whatsoever. To fully understand what
causes people to share things, you have to look at both successes and failures. And
whether, more often than not, certain characteristics are linked to success.
ARE SOME THINGS JUST BORN WORD-OF-MOUTH WORTHY?
Now at this point you might be saying to yourself, great, some things are more
contagious than others. But is it possible to make anything contagious, or are some
things just naturally more infectious?
Smartphones tend to be more exciting than tax returns, talking dogs are more
interesting than tort reform, and Hollywood movies are cooler than toasters or
blenders.
Are makers of the former just better off than the latter? Are some products and ideas
just born contagious while others aren’t? Or can any product or idea be engineered to
be more infectious?
—————
Tom Dickson was looking for a new job. Born in San Francisco, he was led by his
Mormon faith to attend school at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City, where he
graduated in 1971 with a degree in engineering. He moved home after graduation, but
the job market was tough and there weren’t many opportunities. The only position he
could find was at a company making birth control and intrauterine devices. These
devices helped prevent pregnancy, but they could also be seen as abortives, which went
against Tom’s Mormon beliefs. A Mormon helping to develop new methods of birth
control? It was time to find something new.
Tom had always been interested in bread making. While practicing his hobby, he
noticed that there were no good cheap home grinders with which to make flour. So Tom
put his engineering skills to work. After playing around with a ten-dollar vacuum motor,
he cobbled together something that milled finer flour at a cheaper price than anything
currently on the market.
The grinder was so good that Tom started producing it on a larger scale. The
business did reasonably well, and playing around with different methods of processing
food got him interested in more general blenders. Soon he moved back to Utah to start
his own blender company. In 1995 he produced his first home blender, and in 1999
Blendtec was founded.
But although the product was great, no one really knew about it. Awareness was low.
So in 2006, Tom hired George Wright, another BYU alum, as his marketing director.
Later, George would joke that the marketing budget at his prior company was greater
than all of Blendtec’s revenues.
On one of his first days on the job, George noticed a pile of sawdust on the floor of
the manufacturing plant. Given that no construction was in progress, George was
puzzled. What was going on?
It turned out that Tom was in the factory doing what he did every day: trying to break
blenders. To test the durability and power of Blendtec blenders, Tom would cram twoby-two boards, among other objects, into the blenders and turn them on—hence the
sawdust.
George had an idea that would make Tom’s blender famous.
With a meager fifty-dollar budget (not fifty million or even fifty thousand), George
went out and bought marbles, golf balls, and a rake. He also purchased a white lab coat
for Tom, just like what a laboratory scientist would wear. Then he put Tom and a
blender in front of a camera. George asked Tom to do exactly what he had done with
the two-by-twos: see if they would blend.
Imagine taking a handful of marbles and tossing them into your home blender. Not the
cheap kind of marbles made of plastic or clay, but the real ones. The half-inch orbs
made out of solid glass. So strong that they could withstand a car driving over them.
That is exactly what Tom did. He dropped fifty glass marbles in one of his blenders
and hit the button for slow churn. The marbles bounced furiously around the blender,
making rat-tat-tat noises like a hailstorm on the roof of a car.
Tom waited fifteen seconds and then stopped the blender. He cautiously lifted the top
as white smoke poured out: glass dust. All that was left of the marbles was a fine
powder that looked like flour. Rather than cracking from the punishment, the blender
had flexed its muscles. Golf balls were pulverized, and the rake was reduced to a pile
of slivers. George posted the videos on YouTube and crossed his fingers.
His intuition was right. People were amazed. They loved the videos. They were
surprised at the blender’s power and called it everything from “insanely awesome” to
“the ultimate blender.” Some couldn’t even believe that what they were seeing was
possible. Others wondered what else the blender could pulverize. Computer hard
drives? A samurai sword?
In the first week the videos racked up 6 million views. Tom and George had hit a
viral home run.
Tom went on to blend everything from Bic lighters to Nintendo Wii controllers. He’s
tried glow sticks, Justin Bieber CDs, and even an iPhone. Not only did Blendtec
blenders demolish all these objects, but their video series, titled Will It Blend?,
received more than 300 million views. Within two years the campaign increased retail
blender sales 700 percent. All from videos made for less than a few hundred dollars
apiece. And for a product that seemed anything but word-of-mouth worthy. A regular,
boring old blender.
—————
The Blendtec story demonstrates one of the key takeaways of contagious content.
Virality isn’t born, it’s made.
And that is good news indeed.
Some people are lucky. Their ideas or initiatives happen to be things that seem to
naturally generate lots of excitement and buzz.
But as the Blendtec story shows, even regular everyday products and ideas can
generate lots of word-of-mouth if someone figures out the right way to do it. Regardless
of how plain or boring a product or idea may seem, there are ways to make it
contagious.
So how can we design products, ideas, and behaviors so that people will talk about
them?
STUDYING SOCIAL INFLUENCE
My path to studying social epidemics was anything but direct. My parents didn’t
believe in sweets or television for their children, and instead gave us educational
rewards. One holiday season I remember being particularly excited to get a book of
logic puzzles, which I explored incessantly over the next few months. These
experiences fostered an interest in math and science, and after doing a research project
in high school on urban hydrology (how the composition of a stream’s watershed affects
its shape), I went to college thinking I would become an environmental engineer.
But something funny happened in college. While sitting in one of my “hard” science
classes, I started to wonder if I could apply the same toolkit to study complex social
phenomena. I had always liked people-watching, and when I did happen to watch TV, I
enjoyed it more for the ads than the programs. But I realized that rather than just
abstractly musing about why people did things, I could apply the scientific method to
find out the answers. The same research tools used in biology and chemistry could be
used to understand social influence and interpersonal communication.
So I started taking psychology and sociology courses and got involved in research on
how people perceive themselves and others. A few years in, my grandmother sent me a
review of a new book she thought I might find interesting. It was called The Tipping
Point.
I loved the book and read everything related I could find. But I kept being frustrated
by a singular issue. The ideas in that book were amazingly powerful, but they were
mainly descriptive. Sure some things catch on, but why? What was the underlying
human behavior that drove these outcomes? These were interesting questions that
needed answers. I decided to start finding them.
—————
After completing my PhD and more than a decade of research, I’ve discovered some
answers. I’ve spent the last ten years, most recently as a marketing professor at the
Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, studying this and related questions.
With an incredible array of collaborators I’ve examined things like
• Why certain New York Times articles or YouTube videos go viral
• Why some products get more word of mouth
• Why certain political messages spread
• When and why certain baby names catch on or die out
• When negative publicity increases, versus decreases, sales
We’ve analyzed hundreds of years of baby names, thousands of New York Times
articles, and millions of car purchases. We’ve spent thousands of hours collecting,
coding, and analyzing everything from brands and YouTube videos to urban legends,
product reviews, and face-to-face conversations. All with the goal of understanding
social influence and what drives certain things to become popular.
A few years ago, I started teaching a course at Wharton called “Contagious.” The
premise was simple. Whether you’re in marketing, politics, engineering, or public
health, you need to understand how to make your products and ideas catch on. Brand
managers want their products to get more buzz. Politicians want their ideas to diffuse
throughout the population. Health officials want people to cook rather than eat fast food.
Hundreds of undergraduates, MBAs, and executives have taken the class and learned
about how social influence drives products, ideas, and behaviors to succeed.
Every so often I’d get e-mails from people who couldn’t take the class. They’d heard
about it from a friend and liked the material but had a scheduling conflict or didn’t find
out about it in time. So they asked if there was a book they could read to catch them up
on what they missed.
There are certainly some great books out there. The Tipping Point is a fantastic read.
But while it is filled with entertaining stories, the science has come a long way since it
was released over a decade ago. Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, is another
favorite of mine (full disclosure: Chip was my mentor in graduate school, so the apple
doesn’t fall far from the tree). It weaves together clever stories with academic research
on cognitive psychology and human memory. But although the Heaths’ book focuses on
making ideas “stick”—getting people to remember them—it says less about how to
make products and ideas spread, or getting people to pass them on.
So whenever people asked to read something about what drives word of mouth, I
would direct them to the various academic papers I and others had published in the
area. Inevitably, some people would e-mail back to say thanks but request something
more “accessible.” In other words, something that was rigorous but less dry than the
typical jargon-laden articles published in academic journals. A book that provided
them with research-based principles for understanding what makes things catch on.
This is that book.
SIX PRINCIPLES OF CONTAGIOUSNESS
This book explains what makes content contagious. By “content,” I mean stories, news,
and information. Products and ideas, messages and videos. Everything from fundraising at the local public radio station to the safe-sex messages we’re trying to teach
our kids. By “contagious,” I mean likely to spread. To diffuse from person to person via
word of mouth and social influence. To be talked about, shared, or imitated by
consumers, coworkers, and constituents.
In our research, my collaborators and I noticed some common themes, or attributes,
across a range of contagious content. A recipe, if you will, for making products, ideas,
and behaviors more likely to become popular.
Take Will It Blend? and the hundred-dollar cheesesteak at Barclay Prime. Both
stories evoke emotions like surprise or amazement: Who would have thought a blender
could tear through an iPhone, or that a cheesesteak would cost anywhere near a hundred
dollars? Both stories are also pretty remarkable, so they make the teller look cool for
passing them on. And both offer useful information: it’s always helpful to know about
products that work well or restaurants that have great food.
Just as recipes often call for sugar to make something sweet, we kept finding the
same ingredients in ads that went viral, news articles that were shared, or products that
received lots of word of mouth.
After analyzing hundreds of contagious messages, products, and ideas, we noticed
that the same six “ingredients,” or principles, were often at work. Six key STEPPS, as I
call them, that cause things to be talked about, shared, and imitated.
Principle 1: Social Currency
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.
Principle 2: Triggers
How do we remind people to talk about our products and ideas? Triggers are stimuli
that prompt people to think about related things. Peanut butter reminds us of jelly and
the word “dog” reminds us of the word “cat.” If you live in Philadelphia, seeing a
cheesesteak might remind you of the hundred-dollar one at Barclay Prime. People often
talk about whatever comes to mind, so the more often people think about a product or
idea, the more it will be talked about. 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.
Principle 3: Emotion
When we care, we share. So how can we craft messages and ideas that make people
feel something? Naturally contagious content usually evokes some sort of emotion.
Blending an iPhone is surprising. A potential tax hike is infuriating. Emotional things
often get shared. So rather than harping on function, we need to focus on feelings. But as
we’ll discuss, some emotions increase sharing, while others actually decrease it. So we
need to pick the right emotions to evoke. We need to kindle the fire. Sometimes even
negative emotions may be useful.
Principle 4: Public
Can people see when others are using our product or engaging in our desired behavior?
The famous phrase “Monkey see, monkey do” captures more than just the human
tendency to imitate. It also tells us that it’s hard to copy something you can’t see.
Making things more observable makes them easier to imitate, which makes them more
likely to become popular. So we need to make our products and ideas more public. 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.
Principle 5: Practical Value
How can we craft content that seems useful? People like to help others, so if we can
show them how our products or ideas will save time, improve health, or save money,
they’ll spread the word. But given how inundated people are with information, we need
to make our message stand out. We need to understand what makes something seem like
a particularly good deal. We need to highlight the incredible value of what we offer—
monetarily and otherwise. And we need to package our knowledge and expertise so that
people can easily pass it on.
Principle 6: Stories
What broader narrative can we wrap our idea in? People don’t just share information,
they tell stories. But just like the epic tale of the Trojan Horse, stories are vessels that
carry things such as morals and lessons. Information travels under the guise of what
seems like idle chatter. So we need to build our own Trojan horses, embedding our
products and ideas in stories that people want to tell. But we need to do more than just
tell a great story. We need to make virality valuable. We need to make our message so
integral to the narrative that people can’t tell the story without it.
—————
These are the six principles of contagiousness: products or ideas that contain Social
Currency and are Triggered, Emotional, Public, Practically Valuable, and wrapped
into Stories. Each chapter focuses on one of these principles. These chapters bring
together research and examples to show the science behind each principle and how
individuals, companies, and organizations have applied the principles to help their
products, ideas, and behaviors catch on.
These principles can be compacted into an acronym. Taken together they spell
STEPPS. Think of the principles as the six STEPPS to crafting contagious content.
These ingredients lead ideas to get talked about and succeed. People talked about the
hundred-dollar cheesesteak at Barclay Prime because it gave them Social Currency,
was Triggered (high frequency of cheesesteaks in Philadelphia), Emotional (very
surprising), Practically Valuable (useful information about high-quality steakhouse),
and wrapped in a Story. Enhancing these components in messages, products, or ideas
will make them more likely to spread and become popular. I hope that ordering the
principles this way will make them easier to remember and use.**
The book is designed with two (overlapping) audiences in mind. You may have
always wondered why people gossip, why online content goes viral, why rumors
spread, or why everyone always seems to talk about certain topics around the water
cooler. Talking and sharing are some of our most fundamental behaviors. These actions
connect us, shape us, and make us human. This book sheds light on the underlying
psychological and sociological processes behind the science of social transmission.
This book is also designed for people who want their products, ideas, and behaviors
to spread. Across industries, companies big and small want their products to become
popular. The neighborhood coffee shop wants more customers, lawyers want more
clients, movie theaters want more patrons, and bloggers want more views and shares.
Nonprofits, policy makers, scientists, politicians, and many other constituencies also
have “products” or ideas that they want to catch on. Museums want more visitors, dog
shelters want more adoptions, and conservationists want more people to rally against
deforestation.
Whether you’re a manager at a big company, a small business owner trying to boost
awareness, a politician running for office, or a health official trying to get the word out,
this book will help you understand how to make your products and ideas more
contagious. It provides a framework and a set of specific, actionable techniques for
helping information spread—for engineering stories, messages, advertisements, and
information so that people will share them. Regardless of whether those people have
ten friends or ten thousand. And regardless of whether they are talkative and persuasive
or quiet and shy.
This book provides cutting-edge science about how word of mouth and social
transmission work. And how you can leverage them to make your products and ideas
succeed.
*
When I use the word “viral” in this book, I mean something that is more likely to spread from one person to another.
The analogy to diseases is a good one, but only up to a point. Diseases also spread from person to person, but one key
difference is the expected length of the transmission chain. One person can easily be the initiator of a disease that
spreads to a few people, and then from them to a few more people, and so on, until a large number of people have
been infected, solely due to that initial individual. Such long chains, however, may be less common with products and
ideas (Goel, Watts, and Goldstein 2012). People often share products and ideas with others, but the likelihood that one
person generates an extremely long chain may be small. So when I say that doing X will make an idea more viral, for
example, I mean that it will be more likely to spread from one person to another, regardless of whether it eventually
generates a long chain or “infects” an entire population.
**
Note, however, that the recipe analogy breaks down in one respect. The principles are unlike a recipe because not
all six ingredients are required to make a product or idea contagious. Sure, the more the better, but it’s not as though a
product that is Public will fail because it’s not wrapped in a Story. So think of these principles less like a recipe and
more like tasty salad toppings. Cobb salads, for example, often come with chicken, tomato, bacon, egg, avocado, and
cheese. But a salad with just cheese and bacon is still delicious. The principles are relatively independent, so you can
pick and choose whichever ones you want to apply.
Some of the principles are easier to apply to certain types of ideas or initiatives. Nonprofits usually have a good
sense of how to evoke Emotion, and it’s often easier to play up Public visibility for products or behaviors that have a
physical component. That said, contagious content often comes from applying principles that originally might have
seemed unlikely. Heavy-duty blenders already have Practical Value, but Will It Blend? went viral because it found a
way to give a blender Social Currency. The video showed how a seemingly regular product was actually quite
remarkable.
1. Social Currency
Among the brownstones and vintage shops on St. Mark’s Place near Tompkins
Square Park in New York City, you’ll notice a small eatery. It’s marked by a large red
hot-dog-shaped sign with the words “eat me” written in what looks like mustard. Walk
down a small flight of stairs and you’re in a genuine old hole-in-the-wall hot dog
restaurant. The long tables are set with all your favorite condiments, you can play any
number of arcade-style video games, and, of course, order off a menu to die for.
Seventeen varieties of hot dogs are offered. Every type of frankfurter you could
imagine. The Good Morning is a bacon-wrapped hot dog smothered with melted cheese
and topped with a fried egg. The Tsunami has teriyaki, pineapple, and green onions.
And purists can order the New Yorker, a classic grilled all-beef frankfurter.
But look beyond the gingham tablecloths and hipsters enjoying their dogs. Notice that
vintage wooden phone booth tucked into the corner? The one that looks like something
Clark Kent might have dashed into to change into Superman? Go ahead, peek inside.
You’ll notice an old-school rotary dial phone hanging on the inside of the booth, the
type that has a finger wheel with little holes for you to dial each number. Just for kicks,
place your finger in the hole under the number 2 (ABC). Dial clockwise until you reach
the finger stop, release the wheel, and hold the receiver to your ear.
To your astonishment, someone answers. “Do you have a reservation?” a voice asks.
A reservation?
Yes, a reservation. Of course you don’t have one. What would you even need a
reservation for? A phone booth in the corner of a hot dog restaurant?
But today is your lucky day, apparently: they can take you. Suddenly, the back of the
booth swings open—it’s a secret door!—and you are let into a clandestine bar called,
of all things, Please Don’t Tell.
—————
In 1999, Brian Shebairo and his childhood friend Chris Antista decided to get into
the hot dog business. The pair had grown up in New Jersey eating at famous places like
Rutt’s Hut and Johnny & Hanges and wanted to bring that same hot dog experience to
New York City. After two years of R & D, riding their motorcycles up and down the
East Coast tasting the best hot dogs, Brian and Chris were ready. On October 6, 2001,
they opened Crif Dogs in the East Village. The name coming from the sound that poured
out of Brian’s mouth one day when he tried to say Chris’s name while still munching on
a hot dog.
Crif Dogs was a big hit and won the best hot dog award from a variety of
publications. But as the years passed, Brian was looking for a new challenge. He
wanted to open a bar. Crif Dogs had always had a liquor license but had never taken
full advantage of it. He and Chris had experimented with a frozen margarita machine,
and kept a bottle of Jägermeister in the freezer every once in a while, but to do it right
they really needed more space. Next door was a struggling bubble tea lounge. Brian’s
lawyer said that if they could get the space, the liquor license would transfer. After
three years of consistent prodding, the neighbor finally gave in.
But now came the tough part. New York City is flush with bars. In a four-block
radius around Crif Dogs there are more than sixty places to grab a drink. A handful are
even on the same block. Originally, Brian had a grungy rock-and-roll bar in mind. But
that wouldn’t cut it. The concept needed be something more remarkable. Something that
would get people talking and draw them in.
One day Brian ran into a friend who had an antique business. A big outdoor flea
market selling everything from art deco dressers to glass eyes and stuffed cheetahs. The
guy said he had found a neat old 1930s phone booth that he thought would work well in
Brian’s bar.
Brian had an idea.
When Brian was a kid, his uncle worked as a carpenter. In addition to helping to
build houses and the usual things that carpenters do, the uncle built a room in the
basement that had secret doors. The doors weren’t even that concealed, just wood that
meshed into other wood, but if you pushed in the right place, you could get access to a
hidden storage space. No secret lair or loot concealed inside, but cool nonetheless.
Brian decided to turn the phone booth into the door to a secret bar.
—————
Everything about Please Don’t Tell suggests that you’ve been let into a very special
secret. You won’t find a sign posted on the street. You won’t find it advertised on
billboards or in magazines. And the only entrance is through a semihidden phone booth
inside a hot dog diner.
Of course, this makes no sense. Don’t marketers preach that blatant advertising and
easy access are the cornerstones of a successful business?
Please Don’t Tell has never advertised. Yet since opening in 2007 it has been one of
the most sought-after drink reservations in New York City. It takes bookings only the
day of, and the reservation line opens at 3:00 p.m., sharp. Spots are first-come, firstserved. Callers madly hit redial again and again in the hopes of cutting through the busy
signals. By 3:30 all spots are booked.
Please Don’t Tell doesn’t push market. It doesn’t try to hustle you in the door or sell
you with a flashy website. It’s a classic “discovery brand.” Jim Meehan, the wizard
behind Please Don’t Tell’s cocktail menu, designed the customer experience with that
goal in mind. “The most powerful marketing is personal recommendation,” he said.
“Nothing is more viral or infectious than one of your friends going to a place and giving
it his full recommendation.” And what could be more remarkable than watching two
people disappear into the back of a phone booth?
—————
In case it’s not already clear, here’s a little secret about secrets: they tend not to stay
secret very long.
Think about the last time someone shared a secret with you. Remember how
earnestly she begged you not to tell a soul? And remember what you did next?
Well, if you’re like most people, you probably went and told someone else. (Don’t
be embarrassed, your secret is safe with me.) 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.
MINTING A NEW TYPE OF CURRENCY
Kids love art projects. Whether drawing with crayons, gluing elbow macaroni to sheets
of construction paper, or building elaborate sculptures out of recyclables, they revel in
the joy of making things. But whatever the type of project, media, or venue, kids all
seem to do the same thing once they are finished.
They show someone else.
“Self-sharing” follows us throughout our lives. We tell friends about our new
clothing purchases and show family members the op-ed piece we’re sending to the
local newspaper. This desire to share our thoughts, opinions, and experiences is one
reason social media and online social networks have become so popular. People blog
about their preferences, post Facebook status updates about what they ate for lunch, and
tweet about why they hate the current government. As many observers have commented,
today’s social-network-addicted people can’t seem to stop sharing—what they think,
like, and want—with everyone, all the time.
Indeed, research finds that more than 40 percent of what people talk about is their
personal experiences or personal relationships. Similarly, around half of tweets are
“me” focused, covering what people are doing now or something that has happened to
them. Why do people talk so much about their own attitudes and experiences?
It’s more than just vanity; we’re actually wired to find it pleasurable. 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.
In fact, people like sharing their attitudes so much that they are even willing to pay
money to do it. In another study, Tamir and Mitchell asked people to complete a number
of trials of a basic choice task. Participants could choose either to hang out for a few
seconds or answer a question about themselves (such as “How much do you like
sandwiches?”) and share it with others. Respondents made hundreds of these quick
choices. But to make it even more interesting, Tamir and Mitchell varied the amount
that people got paid for choosing a particular option. In some trials people could get
paid a couple of cents more for choosing to wait for a few seconds. In others they could
get paid a couple of cents more for choosing to self-disclose.
The result? People were willing to forgo money to share their opinions. Overall, they
were willing to take a 25 percent pay cut to share their thoughts. Compared with doing
nothing for five seconds, people valued sharing their opinion at just under a cent. This
puts a new spin on an old maxim. Maybe instead of giving people a penny for their
thoughts, we should get paid a penny for listening.
—————
It’s clear that people like to talk about themselves, but what makes people talk about
some of their thoughts and experiences more than others?
Play a game with me for a minute. My colleague Carla drives a minivan. I could tell
you many other things about her, but for now, I want to see how much you can deduce
based solely on the fact that she drives a minivan. How old is Carla? Is she twentytwo? Thirty-five? Fifty-seven? I know you know very little about her, but try to make an
educated guess.
Does she have any kids? If so, do they play sports? Any idea what sports they play?
Once you’ve made a mental note of your guesses, let’s talk about my friend Todd.
He’s a really cool guy. He also happens to have a Mohawk. Any idea what he’s like?
How old he is? What type of music he likes? Where he shops?
I’ve played this game with hundreds of people and the results are always the same.
Most people think Carla is somewhere between thirty and forty-five years old. All of
them—yes, 100 percent—believe she has kids. Most are convinced those kids play
sports, and almost everyone who believes that guesses that soccer is the sport of
choice. All that from a minivan.
Now Todd. Most people agree that he’s somewhere between fifteen and thirty. The
majority guess that he’s into some sort of edgy music, whether punk, heavy metal, or
rock. And almost everyone thinks he buys vintage clothes or shops at some sort of
surf/skate store. All this from a haircut.
Let’s be clear. Todd doesn’t have to listen to edgy music or shop at Hot Topic. He
could be fifty-three years old, listen to Beethoven, and buy his clothes at any other
place he wanted. It’s not like Gap would bar the door if he tried to buy chinos.
The same thing is true of Carla. She could be a twenty-two-year-old riot grrrl who
plays drums and believes kids are for the boring bourgeoisie.
But the point is that we didn’t think those things about Carla and Todd. Rather, we all
made similar inferences because choices signal identity. Carla drives a minivan, so we
assumed she was a soccer mom. Todd has a Mohawk, so we guessed he’s a young
punk-type guy. We make educated guesses about other people based on the cars they
drive, the clothes they wear, and the music they listen to.
What people talk about also affects what others think of them. Telling a funny joke at
a party makes people think we’re witty. Knowing all the info about last night’s big game
or celebrity dance-off makes us seem cool or in the know.
So, not surprisingly, people prefer sharing things that make them seem entertaining
rather than boring, clever rather than dumb, and hip rather than dull. Consider the flip
side. Think about the last time you considered sharing something but didn’t. Chances
are you didn’t talk about it because it would have made you (or someone else) look
bad. We talk about how we got a reservation at the hottest restaurant in town and skip
the story about how the hotel we chose faced a parking lot. We talk about how the
camera we picked was a Consumer Reports Best Buy and skip the story about how the
laptop we bought ended up being cheaper at another store.
Word of mouth, then, is a prime tool for making a good impression—as potent as that
new car or Prada handbag. Think of it as a kind of currency. Social currency. Just as
people use money to buy products or services, they use social currency to achieve
desired positive impressions among their families, friends, and colleagues.
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.
INNER REMARKABILITY
Imagine it’s a sweltering day and you and a friend stop by a convenience store to buy
some drinks. You’re tired of soda but you feel like something with more flavor than just
water. Something light and refreshing. As you scan the drink case, a pink lemonade
Snapple catches your eye. Perfect. You grab it and take it up to the cash register to pay.
Once outside, you twist the top off and take a long drink. Feeling sufficiently
revitalized, you’re about to get in your friend’s car when you notice something written
on the inside of the Snapple cap.
Real Fact # 27: A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber.
Wow. Really?
You’d probably be pretty impressed (after all, who even knew glass could bounce),
but think for a moment about what you’d do next. What would you do with this
newfound tidbit of information? Would you keep it to yourself or would you tell your
friend?
—————
In 2002, Marke Rubenstein, executive VP of Snapple’s ad agency, was trying to think
of new ways to entertain Snapple customers. Snapple was already known for its quirky
TV ads featuring the Snapple Lady, a peppy, middle-aged woman with a thick New
York accent, who read and answered letters from Snapple fans. She was a real Snapple
employee, and the letter writers ranged from people asking for dating advice to people
soliciting Snapple to host a soiree at a senior citizens home. The ads were pretty funny,
and Snapple was looking for something similarly clever and eccentric.
During a marketing meeting, someone suggested that the space under the cap was
unused real estate. Snapple had tried putting jokes under the cap with little success. But
the jokes were terrible (“If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?”), so it
was hard to tell if it was the strategy or the jokes that were failing. Rubenstein and her
team wondered whether real facts might work better. Something “out of the ordinary
that [Snapple drinkers] wouldn’t know and wouldn’t even know they’d want to know.”
So Rubenstein and her team came up with a long list of clever trivia facts and began
putting them under the caps—visible only after customers have purchased and opened
the bottles.
Fact #12, for example, notes that kangaroos can’t walk backward. Fact #73 says that
the average person spends two weeks over his/her lifetime waiting for traffic lights to
change.
These facts are so surprising and entertaining that it’s hard not to want to share them
with someone else. Two weeks waiting for the light to change? That’s unbelievable!
How do they even calculate something like that? Think of what else we could do with
that time! If you’ve ever happened to drink a Snapple with a friend, you’ll find yourself
telling each other which fact you received—similar to what happens when your family
breaks open fortune cookies after a meal at a Chinese restaurant.
Snapple facts are so infectious that they’ve become embedded in popular culture.
Hundreds of websites chronicle the various facts. Comedians poke fun at them in their
routines. Some of the facts are so unbelievable that people even debate back and forth
whether they are actually correct. (Yes, the idea that kangaroos can’t walk backward
does seem pretty crazy, but it’s true.)
Did you know that frowning burns more calories than smiling? That an ant can lift
fifty times its own weight? You probably didn’t. But people share these and similar
Snapple facts because they are remarkable. And talking about remarkable things
provides social currency.
—————
Remarkable things are defined as unusual, extraordinary, or worthy of notice or
attention. Something can be remarkable because it is novel, surprising, extreme, or just
plain interesting. But the most important aspect of remarkable things is that they are
worthy of remark. Worthy of mention. Learning that a ball of glass will bounce higher
than a ball of rubber is just so noteworthy that you have to mention it.
Remarkable things provide social currency because they make the people who talk
about them seem, well, more remarkable. Some people like to be the life of the party,
but no one wants to be the death of it. We all want to be liked. The desire for social
approval is a fundamental human motivation. If we tell someone a cool Snapple fact it
makes us seem more engaging. If we tell someone about a secret bar hidden inside a hot
dog restaurant, it makes us seem cool. Sharing extraordinary, novel, or entertaining
stories or ads makes people seem more extraordinary, novel, and entertaining. It makes
them more fun to talk to, more likely to get asked to lunch, and more likely to get invited
back for a second date.
Not surprisingly, then, remarkable things get brought up more often. In one study,
Wharton professor Raghu Iyengar and I analyzed how much word of mouth different
companies, products, and brands get online. We examined a huge list of 6,500 products
and brands. Everything from big brands like Wells Fargo and Facebook to small brands
like the Village Squire Restaurants and Jack Link’s. From every industry you can
imagine. Banking and bagel shops to dish soaps and department stores. Then we asked
people to score the remarkability of each product or brand and analyzed how these
perceptions were correlated with how frequently they were discussed.
The verdict was clear: more remarkable products like Facebook or Hollywood
movies were talked about almost twice as often as less remarkable brands like Wells
Fargo and Tylenol. Other research finds similar effects. More interesting tweets are
shared more, and more interesting or surprising articles are more likely to make the
New York Times Most E-Mailed list.
Remarkability explains why people share videos of eight-year-old girls flawlessly
reciting rap lyrics and why my aunt forwarded me a story about a coyote who was hit
by a car, got stuck in the bumper for six hundred miles, and survived. It even explains
why doctors talk about some patients more than others. Every time there is a patient in
the ER with an unusual story (such as someone swallowing a weird foreign object),
everyone in the hospital hears about it. A code pink (baby abduction) makes big news
even if it’s a false alarm, while a code blue (cardiac arrest) goes largely unmentioned.
Remarkability also shapes how stories evolve over time. A group of psychologists
from the University of Illinois recruited pairs of students for what seemed like a study
of group planning and performance. Students were told they would get to cook a small
meal together and were escorted to a real working kitchen. In front of them were all the
ingredients necessary to cook a meal. Piles of leafy green vegetables, fresh chicken,
and succulent pink shrimp, all ready to be chopped and thrown into a pan.
But then things got interesting. Hidden among the vegetables and chicken, the
researchers had planted a small—but decidedly creepy—family of cockroaches. Eww!
The students shrieked and recoiled from the food.
After the bedlam subsided, the experimenter said that someone must be playing a
joke on them and quickly canceled the study. But rather than send people home early, he
suggested that they go participate in another study that was (conveniently) taking place
just next door.
They all walked over, but along the way they were quizzed about what had happened
during the aborted experiment. Half were asked by the experimenter, while the other
half were asked by what seemed like another student (who was actually covertly
helping the experimenter).
Depending on whom participants happened to tell the story to, it came out differently.
If they were talking to another student—that is, if they were trying to impress and
entertain rather than simply report the facts—the cockroaches were larger, more
numerous, and the entire experience more disgusting. The students exaggerated the
details to make the story more remarkable.
We’ve all had similar experiences. How big was the trout we caught last time we
went fishing in Colorado? How many times did the baby wake up crying during the
night?
Often we’re not even trying to exaggerate; we just can’t recall all the details of the
story. Our memories aren’t perfect records of what happened. They’re more like
dinosaur skeletons patched together by archeologists. We have the main chunks, but
some of the pieces are missing, so we fill them in as best we can. We make an educated
guess.
But in the process, stories often become more extreme or entertaining, particularly
when people tell them in front of a group. We don’t just guess randomly, we fill in
numbers or information to make us look good rather than inept. The fish doubles in size.
The baby didn’t wake just twice during the night—that wouldn’t be remarkable enough
—she woke seven times and required skillful parenting each time to soothe her back to
sleep.
It’s just like a game of telephone. As the story gets transmitted from person to person,
some details fall out and others are exaggerated. And it becomes more and more
remarkable along the way.
—————
The key to finding inner remarkability is to think about what makes something
interesting, surprising, or novel. Can the product do something no one would have
thought possible (such as blend golf balls like Blendtec)? Are the consequences of the
idea or issue more extreme than people ever could have imagined?
One way to generate surprise is by breaking a pattern people have come to expect.
Take low-cost airlines. What do you expect when you fly a low-cost carrier? Small
seats, no movies, limited snacks, and a generally no-frills experience. But people who
fly JetBlue for the first time often tell others because the experience is remarkably
different. You get a large, comfortable seat, a variety of snack choices (from Terra
Blues chips to animal crackers), and free DIRECTV programming from your own seatback television. Similarly, by using Kobe beef and lobster, and charging one hundred
dollars, Barclay Prime got buzz by breaking the pattern of what people expected from a
cheesesteak.
Mysteries and controversy are also often remarkable. The Blair Witch Project is one
of the most famous examples of this approach. Released in 1999, the film tells the story
of three student filmmakers who hiked into the mountains of Maryland to film a
documentary about a local legend called the Blair Witch. They supposedly
disappeared, however, and viewers were told that the film was pieced together from
“rediscovered” amateur footage that was shot on their hike. No one was sure if this was
true.
What do we do when confronted with a controversial mystery like this? Naturally,
we ask others to help us sort out the answer. So the film garnered a huge buzz simply
from people wondering whether it depicted real events or not. It undermined a
fundamental belief (that witches don’t exist), so people wanted the answer, and the fact
that there was disagreement led to even more discussion. The buzz drove the movie to
become a blockbuster. Shot on a handheld camera with a budget of about $35,000, the
movie grossed more than $248 million worldwide.
The best thing about remarkability, though, is that it can be applied to anything. You
might think that a product, service, or idea would have to be inherently remarkable—
that remarkability isn’t something you can impose from the outside. New high-tech
gadgets or Hollywood movies are naturally more remarkable than, say, customer
service guidelines or toasters. What could be remarkable about a toaster?
But it’s possible to find the inner remarkability in any product or idea by thinking
about what makes that thing stand out. Remember Blendtec, the blender company we
talked about in the Introduction? By finding the product’s inner remarkability, the
company was able to get millions of people to talk about a boring old blender. And they
were able to do it with no advertising and a fifty-dollar marketing budget.
Toilet paper? Hardly seems remarkable. But a few years ago I made toilet paper one
of the most talked-about conversation topics at a party. How? I put a roll of black toilet
paper in the bathroom. Black toilet paper? No one had ever seen black toilet paper
before. And that remarkability provoked discussion. Emphasize what’s remarkable
about a product or idea and people will talk.
LEVERAGE GAME MECHANICS
I was short by 222 miles.
A few years ago I was booking a round-trip flight from the East Coast to California.
It was late December, and the end of the year is always slow, so it seemed like a
perfect time to visit friends. I went online, scanned a bunch of options, and found a
direct flight that was cheaper than the connecting ones. Lucky me! I went to go find my
credit card.
But as I entered my frequent flier number, information about my status tier appeared
on the screen. I fly a decent amount, and the previous year I had flown enough on United
Airlines to achieve Premier status. Calling the perks I was receiving “Premier” seemed
like a marketing person’s idea of a sick joke, but it was slightly better treatment than
you usually get in economy class. I could check bags for free, have access to seats with
slightly more leg room, and theoretically get free upgrades to business class (though
that never actually seemed to happen). Nothing to write home about, but at least I didn’t
have to pay to check a bag.
This year had been even busier. I tend to stick with one airline if I can, and in this
case, it seemed it might just pay off. I had almost achieved the next status level: Premier
Executive.
But the key word here is “almost.” I was 222 miles short. Even with the direct flights
to California and back, I wouldn’t have enough miles to make it to Premier Executive.
The perks for being a Premier Executive were only slightly better than those for
Premier. I’d get to check a third bag for free, have access to special airline lounges if I
flew internationally, and board the plane seconds earlier than I would have before.
Nothing too exciting.
But I was so close! And I had only a few days left to fly the required extra miles.
This trip to San Francisco was my last chance.
So I did what people do who are so focused on achieving something that they lose
their common sense. I paid more money to book a connecting flight.
Rather than take a direct flight home, I flew a circuitous route, stopping in Boston for
two hours just to make sure I had enough miles to make it over the threshold.
—————
The first major frequent flier program was created in 1981 by American Airlines.
Originally conceptualized as a method to give special fares to frequent customers, the
program soon morphed into the current system of rewards. Today, more than 180
million people accumulate frequent flier miles when they travel. These programs have
motivated millions of people to pledge their loyalty to a single airline and stop over in
random cities or fly at inopportune times just to ensure that they accrue miles on their
desired carrier.
We all know that miles can be redeemed for free travel, hotel stays, and other perks.
Still, most people never cash in the miles they accumulate. In fact, less than 10 percent
of miles are redeemed every year. Experts estimate that as many as 10 trillion frequent
flier miles are sitting in accounts, unused. Enough to travel to the moon and back 19.4
million times. That’s a lot of miles.
So if they’re not actually using them, why are people so passionate about racking up
miles?
Because it’s a fun game.
—————
Think about your favorite game. It can be a board game, a sport, or even a computer
game or an app. Maybe you love solitaire, enjoy playing golf, or go crazy for Sudoku
puzzles. Ever stopped to think about why you enjoy these games so much? Why you
can’t seem to stop playing?
Game mechanics are the elements of a game, application, or program—including
rules and feedback loops—that make them fun and compelling. You get points for doing
well at solitaire, there are levels of Sudoku puzzles, and golf tournaments have
leaderboards. These elements tell players where they stand in the game and how well
they are doing. Good game mechanics keep people engaged, motivated, and always
wanting more.
One way game mechanics motivate is internally. We all enjoy achieving things.
Tangible evidence of our progress, such as solving a tough Solitaire game or advancing
to the next level of Sudoku puzzles, makes us feel good. So discrete markers motivate
us to work harder, especially when we get close to achieving them. Take the buy-tenget-one-free coffee punch cards that are sometimes offered at local cafés. By increasing
motivation, the cards actually spur people to buy coffee more frequently as they get
closer to their tenth cup and claiming their reward.
But game mechanics also motivate us on an interpersonal level by encouraging
social comparison.
A few years ago, students at Harvard University were asked to make a seemingly
straightforward choice: which would they prefer, a job where they made $50,000 a
year (option A) or one where they made $100,000 a year (option B)?
Seems like a no-brainer, right? Everyone should take option B. But there was one
catch. In option A, the students would get paid twice as much as others, who would
only get $25,000. In option B, they would get paid half as much as others, who would
get $200,000. So option B would make the students more money overall, but they
would be doing worse than others around them.
What did the majority of people choose?
Option A. They preferred to do better than others, even if it meant getting less for
themselves. They chose the option that was worse in absolute terms but better in
relative terms.
People don’t just care about how they are doing, they care about their performance in
relation to others. Getting to board a plane a few minutes early is a nice perk of
achieving Premier status. But part of what makes this a nice perk is that you get to
board before everyone else. Because levels work on two, well, levels. They tell us
where we are at any time in absolute terms. But they also make clear where we stand
relative to everyone else.
Just like many other animals, people care about hierarchy. Apes engage in status
displays and dogs try to figure out who is the alpha. Humans are no different. We like
feeling that we’re high status, top dog, or leader of the pack. But status is inherently
relational. Being leader of the pack requires a pack, doing better than others.
Game mechanics help generate social currency because doing well makes us look
good. People love boasting about the things they’ve accomplished: their golf handicaps,
how many people follow them on Twitter, or their kids’ SAT scores. A friend of mine is
a Delta Airlines Platinum Medallion member. Every time he flies he finds a way to
brag about it on Facebook. Talking about how a guy he saw in the Delta Sky Club
lounge is hitting on a waitress. Or mentioning the free upgrade he got to first class.
After all, what good is status if no one else knows you have it?
But every time he proudly shares his status, he’s also spreading the word about
Delta.
And this is how game mechanics boosts word of mouth. People are talking because
they want to show off their achievements, but along the way they talk about the brands
(Delta or Twitter) or domains (golf or the SAT) where they achieved.
Building a Good Game
Leveraging game mechanics requires quantifying performance. Some domains like golf
handicaps and SAT scores have built-in metrics. People can easily see how they are
doing and compare themselves with others without needing any help. But if a product or
idea doesn’t automatically do that, it needs to be “gamified.” Metrics need to be
created or recorded that let people see where they stand—for example, icons for how
much they have contributed to a community message board or different colored tickets
for season ticket holders.
Airlines have done this nicely. Frequent flier programs didn’t always exist. True,
people have flown commercially for more than half a century. But flying was gamified
relatively recently, with airlines recording miles flown and awarding status levels. And
because this provides social currency, people love to talk about it.
Leveraging game mechanics also involves helping people publicize their
achievements. Sure, someone can talk about how well she did, but it’s even better if
there is a tangible, visible symbol that she can display to others. Foursquare, the
location-based social networking website, lets users check in at bars, restaurants, and
other locations using their mobile devices. Checking in helps people find their friends,
but Foursquare also awards special badges to users based on their check-in history.
Check in to the same venue more than anyone else in a sixty-day period and you’ll be
crowned the mayor of that location. Check in to five different airports and get a
Jetsetter badge. Not only are these badges posted on users’ Foursquare accounts, but
because they provide social currency, users also prominently display them on their
Facebook pages.
Just like my Platinum Medallion friend, people display their badges to show off or
because they’re proud of themselves. But along the way they are also spreading the
Foursquare brand.
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.
—————
Effective status systems are easy to understand, even by people who aren’t familiar
with the domain. Being the mayor sounds good, but if you asked most people on the
street, I bet they couldn’t tell you whether that is better or worse than having a School
Night badge, a Super User badge, or any one of the more than one hundred other badges
Foursquare offers.
Credit card companies struggled with the same issue. Gold cards used to be
restricted to people who spent heavily and had a stellar credit history. But as
companies started offering them to people with all types of credit, the gold card lost its
meaning. So companies came up with new options for their truly wealthy customers: the
platinum card, the sapphire card, and the diamond card, among others. But which has
more status, a diamond or a sapphire card? Is platinum better or worse than sapphire?
This bewildering mix of colors, minerals, and exclusive words creates a chaos of
consumer confusion such that people don’t know how well they are doing—much less
how they compare with anyone else.
Contrast that with medals given out at the Olympics or your local track meet. If
entrants tell you they won silver, you know exactly how well they did. Even someone
who knows almost nothing about track can tell right away whether an entrant is a star or
just doing okay.
Many British supermarkets use a similarly intuitive labeling system. Just as with
stoplights, they use red, yellow, or green circles to denote how much sugar, fat, and salt
are in different products. Low-sodium sandwiches are marked with a green circle for
salt while salty soups get a red circle. Anyone can immediately pick up on the system
and understand how to behave as a result.
—————
Many contests also involve game mechanics. Burberry created a website called “Art
of the Trench” that is a montage of Burberry and all the people who wear it. Some
photos were taken by the world’s leading photographers, but people can also send in
photos of themselves or their friends wearing the iconic Burberry trench coat. If you’re
lucky, Burberry posts your image on its website. Your photo then becomes part of a set
of images reflecting personal style from across the globe.
Imagine if your photo was picked for the site. What would be your first impulse?
You’d tell someone else! And not just one person. Lots of people.
As apparently everyone did. The Burberry site garnered millions of views from more
than a hundred different countries. And the contest helped drive sales up 50 percent.
Recipe websites encourage people to post photos of their finished meals. Weight loss
or fitness programs encourage before-and-after photos so people can show others how
much better they look. A new bar in D.C. even named a drink, the Kentucky Irby, after
my best friend (his last name is Irby). He felt so special he told everyone he knows
about the drink and along the way helped spread the word about this new establishment.
Giving awards works on a similar principle. Recipients of awards love boasting
about them—it gives them the opportunity to tell others how great they are. But along
the way they have to mention who gave them the award.
Word of mouth can also come from the voting process itself. Deciding the winner by
popular vote encourages contestants to drum up support. But in telling people to vote
for them, contestants also spread awareness about the product, brand, or initiative
sponsoring the contest. Instead of marketing itself directly, the company uses the contest
to get people who want to win to do the marketing themselves.
And this brings us to the third way to generate social currency: making people feel
like insiders.
MAKE PEOPLE FEEL LIKE INSIDERS
In 2005, Ben Fischman became CEO of SmartBargains.com. The discount shopping
website sold everything from apparel and bedding to home decor and luggage. The
business model was straightforward: companies wanting to offload clearance items or
extra merchandise would sell them cheap to SmartBargains, and SmartBargains would
pass the deals on to the consumer. There was a broad variety of merchandise, and
prices were often up to 75 percent lower than retail.
But by 2007 the website was floundering. Margins had always been low, but
excitement about the brand had dissipated, and momentum was slowing. A number of
related websites had also sprung up, and SmartBargains was struggling to differentiate
itself from similar competitors.
A year later Fischman started a new website called Rue La La. It carried high-end
designer goods but focused on “flash sales” in which the deals were available for only
a limited time—twenty-four hours or a couple of days at most. And the site followed
the same model as sample sales in the fashion industry. Access was by invitation only.
You had to be invited by an existing member.
Sales took off, and the site did extremely well. So well, in fact, that in 2009 Ben sold
both websites for $350 million.
Rue La La’s success is particularly noteworthy, given one tiny detail.
It sold the same products as SmartBargains. The exact same dresses, skirts, and suits.
The same shoes, shirts, and slacks.
So what transformed what could have been a ho-hum website into one people were
clamoring to get access to? How come Rue La La was so much more successful?
Because it made people feel like insiders.
—————
When trying to figure out how to save SmartBargains, Fischman noticed that one part
of the business was doing incredibly well. Its Smart Shopper loyalty club allowed
people who signed up to get reduced shipping fees and access to a private shopping
area. Deals that no one else could see. It was a small part of the site, but growth was
through the roof.
At the same time, Fischman learned about a concept in France called vente privée, or
private sale. Online flash sales that were available only for a day. Fischman decided
that this was the perfect way to put a unique spin on his business.
And it was. Rue La La hit the ground running because it smartly leveraged the
urgency factor. Part of this started by accident. Every morning the site posted new deals
at 11:00 a.m. But in the first couple of months demand was so much higher than
expected that by 11:03 a.m. everything would be sold out. Gone. So customers learned
that if they didn’t get there right away, they’d miss out.
As it has grown, Rue La La has maintained this limited availability. It still sells out
40 percent to 50 percent of items in the first hour. Sales have grown, but it’s not that
revenue gets bigger across the course of the day. The traffic spikes at 11:00 a.m. have
simply reached higher and higher levels.
Going to a membership-only model also made the site’s members feel like insiders.
Just as with the velvet rope that prevents regular partygoers from just walking into an
exclusive nightclub, people assumed that if you had to be a member, the site must be
really desirable.
Rue La La’s members are its best ambassadors. They proselytize better than any ad
campaign ever could. As Fischman noted:
It’s like the concierge at a hotel. You go down to the concierge to find out about
a restaurant and he tells you a name right away. The assumption is that he is
getting paid to suggest that place and the restaurant is probably mediocre. But
if a friend recommends a place you can’t wait to get there. Well when a friend
tells you you’ve gotta try Rue La La, you believe them. And you try it.
Rue La La unleashed the power of friends telling friends.
—————
While it might not be obvious right away, Rue La La actually has a lot in common
with Please Don’t Tell, the secret bar we talked about at the beginning of the chapter.
Both used scarcity and exclusivity to make customers feel like insiders.
Scarcity is about how much of something is offered. Scarce things are less available
because of high demand, limited production, or restrictions on the time or place you can
acquire them. The secret bar Please Don’t Tell has only forty-five seats and doesn’t
allow more people than that in. Rue La La’s deals were available for only twenty-four
hours; some are even gone within thirty minutes.
Exclusivity is also about availability, but in a different way. Exclusive things are
accessible only to people who meet particular criteria. When we think of exclusivity,
we tend to think of flashy $20,000 diamond-encrusted Rolexes or hobnobbing in St.
Croix with movie stars. But exclusivity isn’t just about money or celebrity. It’s also
about knowledge. Knowing certain information or being connected to people who do.
And that is where Please Don’t Tell and Rue La La come in. You don’t have to be a
celebrity to get into Please Don’t Tell, but because it is hidden, only certain people
know it exists. Money can’t buy you access to Rue La La. Access is by invitation only,
so you have to know an existing user.
Scarcity and exclusivity help products catch on by making them seem more desirable.
If something is difficult to obtain, people assume that it must be worth the effort. If
something is unavailable or sold out, people often infer that lots of other people must
like it, and so it must be pretty good (something we’ll talk more about in the Public
chapter). People evaluate cookbooks more favorably when they are in limited supply,
find cookies tastier when they are scarce, and perceive pantyhose as higher end when
it’s less available.
Disney uses this same concept to increase demand for decades-old movies. It takes
prime animated features like Snow White and Pinocchio off the market and puts them in
the “Disney Vault” until it decides to reissue them. This limited availability makes us
feel like we have to act now. If we don’t we might miss the opportunity even if we
might not have otherwise wanted the opportunity in the first place.*
Scarcity and exclusivity boost word of mouth by making people feel like insiders. If
people get something not everyone else has, it makes them feel special, unique, high
status. And because of that they’ll not only like a product or service more, but tell
others about it. Why? Because telling others makes them look good. Having insider
knowledge is social currency. When people who waited hours in line finally get that
new tech gadget, one of the first things they do is show others. Look at me and what I
was able to get!
And lest you think that only exclusive categories like bars and clothes can benefit
from making people feel like insiders, let me tell you about how McDonald’s created
social currency around a mix that includes tripe, heart, and stomach meat.
—————
In 1979, McDonald’s introduced Chicken McNuggets. They were a huge hit and
every franchise across the country wanted them. But at the time McDonald’s didn’t have
an adequate system to meet the demand. So Executive Chef Rene Arend was tasked
with devising another new product to give to the unlucky franchises that couldn’t get
enough chicken. Something that would keep them happy despite the shortages.
Arend came up with a pork sandwich called the McRib. He had just come back from
a trip to Charleston, South Carolina, and was inspired by Southern barbecue. He loved
the rich, smoky flavor and thought it would be a perfect addition to the McDonald’s
menu.
But contrary to what the name suggests, there is actually very little rib meat on the
McRib. Instead, imagine a pork patty shaped into something that looks like a rack of
ribs. Subtract the bones (and most of the higher-quality meat), add barbecue sauce, top
it off with onions and pickles, toss it in a bun, and you pretty much have the McRib.
Lack of rib meat aside, the product test-marketed quite well. McDonald’s was
excited and soon added the product to the nationwide menu. McRibs were everywhere
from Florida to Seattle.
But then the sales numbers came in. Unfortunately, they were much lower than
expected. McDonald’s tried promotions and features, but not much worked. So after a
few years it dropped the McRib, citing Americans’ lack of interest in pork.
A decade later, however, McDonald’s figured out a clever way to increase demand
for the McRib. It didn’t spend more money on advertising. It didn’t change the price. It
didn’t even change the ingredients.
It just made the product scarce.
Sometimes it would bring the product back nationally for a limited time; in other
cases it would offer it at certain locations but not others. One month it would be offered
only at franchises in Kansas City, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. Two months later it would
be offered only in Chicago, Dallas, and Tampa.
And its strategy worked. Consumers got excited about the sandwich. Facebook
groups started popping up asking the company to “bring back the McRib!” Supporters
used Twitter to proclaim their love for the snack (“Lucky me, the McRib is back”) and
to learn where they could find one (“I only really use Twitter to find out when the
McRib is available”). Someone even created an online McRib locator so fans could
share locations that offered the sandwich with others. All for what is mostly a mix of
tripe, heart, and stomach meat.
Making people feel like insiders can benefit all types of products and ideas.
Regardless of whether the product is hip and cool, or a mix of leftover pig parts. 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.
A BRIEF NOTE ON MOTIVATION
A few years ago I went through a fundamental male rite of passage. I joined a fantasy
football league.
Fantasy football has become one of America’s most popular unofficial pastimes. For
those unfamiliar with the game, it’s essentially like being the general manager of an
imaginary team. Millions of people spend countless hours scouting players, tweaking
their rosters, and watching their performance each week.
It always seemed funny to me that people spent so much time on what is essentially a
spectator sport. But when a group of friends needed one more person and asked me if
I’d play, I said why not.
And sure enough, I got sucked in. I spent hours every week scanning through cheat
sheets, reading up on players I’d never heard of, and trying to find sleepers other
people hadn’t drafted. Once the season started I found myself watching football,
something I had never done before. And it wasn’t to see whether my local team won. I
was watching teams I knew nothing about, checking out which of my players were
doing better, and tweaking my roster each week.
But the most interesting part?
I did this all for free.
No one paid me for the hours I spent, and my friends and I didn’t even have a bet
riding on the outcome. We were just playing for fun. And, of course, bragging rights.
But since doing better than others is social currency, everyone was motivated to do
well. Even without a monetary incentive.
The moral? People don’t need to be paid to be motivated. Managers often default to
monetary incentives when trying to motivate employees. Some gift or other perk to get
people to take action. But that’s the wrong way to think about it. Lots of people will
refer a friend if you pay them a hundred dollars to do so. Offer people the chance to
win a gold Lamborghini and they’ll do almost anything. But as with many monetary
incentives, handing out gold Lamborghinis is costly.
Furthermore, as soon as you pay people for doing something, you crowd out their
intrinsic motivation. People are happy to talk about companies and products they like,
and millions of people do it for free every day, without prompting. But as soon as you
offer to pay people to refer other customers, any interest they had in doing it for free
will disappear. Customers’ decisions to share or not will no longer be based on how
much they like a product or service. Instead, the quality and quantity of buzz will be
proportional to the money they receive.
Social incentives, like social currency, are more effective in the long term.
Foursquare doesn’t pay users to check in to bars, and airlines don’t give discounts to
frequent flier members. But by harnessing people’s desire to look good to others, their
customers did these things anyway—and spread word of mouth for free.
PLEASE DON’T TELL? WELL, OKAY. MAYBE JUST ONE PERSON . . .
How do we get people talking and make our products and ideas catch on? One way is
to mint social currency. People like to make a good impression, so we need to make our
products a way to achieve that. Like Blendtec’s Will It Blend? we need to find the inner
remarkability. Like Foursquare or airlines with frequent flier tiers, we need to leverage
game mechanics. Like Rue La La, we need to use scarcity and exclusivity to make
people feel as if they’re insiders.
The drive to talk about ourselves brings us back full circle to Please Don’t Tell. The
proprietors are smart. They understand that secrets boost soci…