Contagious: How Things Go Viral

Contagious: How Things Go Viral

It May Be Stupid, But It's Viral

By Katie Smith

Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger is a good read if you don’t understand how things become popular. The six principles he bases his book on are social currency, triggers, emotion, public, practical value and stories. Each principle is described in great detail. They are commonly reduced to the acronym STEPPS.

Social currency – this refers to something you get when you look cool or interesting by discussing something cool or interesting.

Triggers – this refers to something you see, smell or hear that reminds you of a certain product.

Emotion – this refers to the emotion a product or brand evokes.

Public – this refers to how many people know about it.

Practical value – this refers to how easily shared it is.

Stories – this refers to a product or cause that can have a story spun around it.

There is enough information in the book to be a good read, but at times the information felt like common sense. There are some fantastic examples of viral campaigns and each is analyzed. His example about Rebecca Black’s song “Friday” and how a spike in views on YouTube was predictable. You could relate that example to a newer video that went viral in hours. Miley Cyrus’s video for “Wrecking Ball” has racked up an impressive 391,406,147 views and it only came out in September of this year. In fact, it is reportedly the most popular music video of 2013. Not to mention, it is one of the most spoofed videos and covered songs on YouTube.

If you’re planning on working in social media, the book could be informative and beneficial. As I said before though, most of the information seems like it should be common sense.

Contagious: Why things catch on

Contagious: Why Things Catch On

Author: Jonah Berger

Book Length: 244 pages

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Price: $26.00 (NEW HARD COVER)

*COUGH,COUGH* It’s Contagious

By: Donavon Kelly

Jonah Berger’s “Contagious” is a book explaining the reasoning behind why things go “viral” or catch on. Berger gives us six STEPPS – social currency, triggers, emotion, public, practical value and stories. Berger teaches us how content becomes contagious through these principles.

Berger uses a lot of research to back up is explanations for each principle. Social currency refers to how good something makes us look. Berger explains how people usually talk about things that make them look good. He uses the product Blendtec as an example. This company focused on highlighting the product’s ability to blend almost anything, including a cell phone. Focusing on this remarkable feature helped generate millions for the company. Having such a powerful blender made customers look good when they talk about this product.

We often base our purchases on the testimonials we hear from other consumers. I refused to get the iPhone for many years because I didn’t want to hop on the bandwagon. My older brother, however, was #teamiPhone all the way. Talking about the iPhone made him look good. He would constantly rub the emoji feature in my face and show off the phone’s sleek appearance. This content was contagious and I now own an iPhone. I often find myself teasing people, mainly my mom, who don’t have iPhones.

This book was very informative, but in all honesty it was way too long. Berger could have accomplished his task with fewer pages. Once I understood the purpose of the book, I didn’t see a need for so much research to be included. Perhaps he was trying to satisfy a personal craving. 

An Infectious Epidemic

Book Title: Contagious: Why Things Catch on

Photo produced by microexplosion.com 

Author: Jonah Berger

Length: 256 pages

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Price: $18.89

An Infectious Epidemic by Allie Bauman

 Remember making art projects as a little kid? What was the first thing you wanted to do after it was done? You wanted to show someone, right? As human beings, we desire to express our opinions, thoughts, and ideas with those around us.  Furthermore, we are constantly aware of how we appear to others, and what we talk about tends to influence that perception. The concepts of self- sharing and public visibility are just two of the contributing factors to word of mouth contagion discussed in Jonah Berger’s book, Contagious.

Photo Produced by blog.clarity.fm

           

Jonah Berger, an Associate Professor of Marketing at Wharton, has devoted his research to the study of social epidemics and teaches a course called “Contagious” at the University of Pennsylvania. His research has appeared in popular newspapers such as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal as well as some of the top academic journals.

To read his article, Hurricanes and Hot Baby Names, click here. 

            

The six principles of contagiousness contained in this book are relevant to almost any field of study. It is important to know how get your “ideas to catch on” whether you are a pharmacist for the latest medical discovery or the creative director for an advertising agency.

Overall, I found this book to be interesting and very informative. Berger broke down each principle by using current examples that are pertinent in our society today. These insightful examples helped emphasize the key points in his research. 

I recommend this book to anyone interested in advertising, marketing, or public relations.

 

Contagious: New Terms with Old Ideas?

Book Title: Contagious

Author: Jonah Berger

Length: 256 pages

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Price: $18.89

Picture is produced by www.topmba.com

Contagious: New Terms with Old Ideas?

Rahnuma Ahmed

What makes products, ideas, and behaviors viral? Jonah Berger knows the answer best! Berger is the James G. Campbell Associate Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. His book titled Contagious is mainly about  social epidemics, which have always been his areas of interest.

In this book, Berger introduces an interesting model called STEPPS for explaining what makes content contagious and popular. The concept of contagious was positively linked with products, ideas and behavior. The model talks about six key principles to make content contagious:

•      Develop Social Currency by crafting messages (with inner remarkability) in a way that will help them to achieve desired impressions.
•      Link Triggers or the stimuli with products and ideas to make people think about desired things.
•      Evoke right Emotions with the content.
•      Make products and ideas more Public or visible.
•      Show the Practical value of the product and idea.
•      Tell Stories with values to deliver message

Berger also included some real-life examples of every principles of the STEPPS model.

Jonah Berger, the writer of the book
Picture is produced by jonahberger.com

Although Berger wrote and introduced the model in an interesting way, the elements of the model and the strategies are not quite new for the marketing, public relations, communication and advertising field. These fields have been practicing these strategies for a long time, may be with different terms. 

Still, it was interesting to read how the author utilized the term contagious and build a motivating concept around it. His way of explaining the terms was charming, new and, indeed, practical. I think, readers can take it as an interesting book to read.