Contagious: Why
Things Catch On
Author: Jonah
Berger
Book Length: 244
pages
Publisher: Simon
& Schuster
Price: $26.00
(NEW HARD COVER)
Will You Catch What's Contagious?
By: Christina Wood
After reading Jonah Berger’s illustration
of a “Contagious” world, I never thought I would “catch on” to his insightful
message and be able to apply it to my professional life.
Through the numerous examples of pop culture such as Rebecca Black’s
“Friday” one hit wonder explanation of how it spread like wild fire, I truly believe that
through the understanding of this book, the world of public relations can truly
benefit from Berger’s findings.
Jonah
Berger is the James G. Campbell Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania.
According to Jonah Berger’s official website, “He has published dozens
of articles in top-tier academic journals, and popular accounts of his work
have appeared in places like The New York Times, the Wall Street
Journal, The Washington Post, Science, Harvard Business
Review, Wired, BusinessWeek, and Fast Company.” His research has also been featured in The
New York Times Magazine’s annual “Year in Ideas” issue. Berger has been
recognized with awards for both scholarship and teaching, including being named
Wharton’s “Iron Prof.”
Berger is
especially known for studying social epidemics, or how products, ideas, and
behaviors catch on and become popular. He examines how individual decision-making
and social dynamics (e.g., social influence) between people generate collective
outcomes such as social contagion and trends. Most recently, Professor Berger
has examined why certain products get more word-of-mouth than others and why
certain online content goes viral.
Berger’s perspective based on the the studies mentioned above, really gave me a visual understanding of why things do catch on in new media. His insight explains why certain things
become popular and why certain brands trend over other brands. He gives examples
from pop culture that are specific and easy to understand. I believe that all practitioners studying public
relations should read this book
considering new media is rapidly growing every day, and Berger does a phenomenal job of explaining
why.
For more information regarding Contagious check out these articles below:
Mapping Out the Path to Viral Fame
No comments:
Post a Comment