Marie: Hey it's Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to
be to create a business and life you love.
I got a question for you.
Have you ever wondered why some pieces of content go viral and others not so much?
If you thought it was about massive creativity or just dumb luck?
Think again because my guest today is going to show you a scientific formula for making
your ideas and your products spread like wildfire.
Jonah Berger is the NY Times Bestselling Author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On.
He's received awards for both scholarship and teaching, including being named Wharton's
Iron Professor in Recognition of Awesome Faculty Research.
He received his Ph.D. from the Stanford graduate school of business.
Jonah's published dozens of articles and top tier academic journals and popular counts
of his work have appeared in the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post,
Science, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Business Week and Fast Company.
Jonah, thank you so much for being on MarieTV.
Jonah: Thank you so much for having me.
Marie: I got to ask, before we get into all the good stuff of Contagious,
what does being the Iron Prof really mean?
Do you have big guns?
Jonah: Everyday.
At the gym, morning 'til night.
Iron Prof is basically you give a 5 minute lecture, 15 slides, 20 seconds of slides;
they auto advance, you don't get to control it and at the end the students vote.
It's like 600-700 students and I squeaked by just two votes ahead of the other person,
so I was the Iron Prof. Very exciting title.
Marie: I was thinking is he like the Iron Chef, but I like this.
Very good.
Jonah: I'm good at cooking, but not that good.
Marie: Alright, so now, let's get to the real deal.
In Contagious, you talk about six principles that help make our ideas spread like wildfire,
and one of the most interesting ones to me was social currency.
What does that mean and how can we use it?
Jonah: The idea of social currency is just like the car we drive or the clothes
we wear; what we say affects how other people see us.
You want to say things that make us look smart and in the know rather than not so smart and
behind the times.
For example, a few months ago, you might have gotten an e-mail in your inbox from LinkedIn
saying "Hey - you are one of the top influencers on the site, one of the top 5% or 10% of profiles."
Lots of people got this email, they felt really good, they patted themselves on the back,
but they didn't just feel good; they shared it with others.
They brag to other people "look at me, I'm special on LinkedIn, I have this honor, look
at how great I am."
Notice that in talking about themselves, they also talked about LinkedIn.
LinkedIn got to come along for the ride, by making them feel special, smart, and in the
know; they shared it with other people and LinkedIn got to be part of the conversation.
The idea of social currency is so you can make people feel like insiders; they have
something that not everyone else has, or give them something remarkable.
Lots of online videos you see, the more remarkable it is, the more likely to share it; people
share it because it makes them look good.
Marie: We have to think about in our businesses or for whatever idea we
want to spread how can we help our customers or prospects feel like insiders, and how can
we help them feel cool amongst their peers and amongst the world at large.
Jonah: I think actually for a small business, it's pretty easy because
you start to know your customers really well.
That's your advantage over a large business; you see your customers.
If you're a coffee shop, you know who comes in on Wednesdays or who always orders a triple
macchiato something or other, and so by making them feel special, you can get them to talk.
Make them say hi by name rather than just greeting them as an anonymous customer.
Have their drink ready to go.
Know what they like and dislike.
Making them feel special like they're an insider like they have something not everyone else
has will make them want to talk.
Marie: I have to share.
I just came back from a trip from Italy and I was thinking about the last hotel I stayed
at.
They knew our names and actually it was this tiny little town called Pienza and we made
a reservation for a place outside of the hotel for dinner and one of the women that worked
there was so concerned that I wouldn't get to the right place, she just wanted to make
sure that she actually ran to the restaurant to make sure that we arrived okay, and then
the people I was having dinner with, we all talked about it, and again, I'm talking about
it right here; it's this little town house called La Bandita, but I felt so taken care
of and so like a VIP that I wanted to tell everyone of all the hotels I stayed at in
Italy, it was like they made me feel the most special.
Jonah: Yeah, or even giving people something for free, same thing.
If you feel like "I'm different from everybody else," you want to tell others it makes you
feel good about yourself, but the brand gets to come along as part of that conversation.
Marie: Love it.
Love it.
Let's move on to another principle that you teach, which is called triggers; top of mind,
tip of tongue, which could be a tongue twister in it of itself.
What are we talking about when we talk about triggers?
Jonah: The idea of triggers is simple, but it's often one we don't really
get.
I think we sort of understand social currency, "make people feel good, they'll talk about
us."
Triggers is a little more nuance and a great way to explain it; remember the video that
was popular a couple years ago, Rebecca Black had this song 'Friday'?
Marie: Oh my God - 'Friday' was all over the place.
Jonah: It was one of the most viral videos of 2011.
300 million people viewed that video; why?
People hate that song.
No one likes it.
They say it's terrible.
It's about a 16-year-old girl.
Why would anyone share this?
But why did it do so well?
If you look at the data, if you look at the number of people searching from Rebecca Black
over time, it's actually quite neat.
You see a spike and then it goes down, and then you see another spike and then it goes
down, and then you see another spike and then it goes down.
If you look closer the spikes aren't random; they're every seven days.
If you look even closer, you'll notice that they're every Friday.
The song is equally bad every day of the week; it's bad on Monday, bad on Tuesday, and bad
on Wednesday, but Friday's a ready reminder because that is the same name as the song
what psychologists would call a trigger to make people think about it and talk about
it.
Again, if something in the environment reminds us of something, we're much more likely to
share it.
If I said peanut butter and, for example, you might say-
Marie: Peanut butter jelly.
Someone made a peanut butter jelly video for us so they made a song.
Jonah: Yeah, but it made you think of jelly and then it made you think
of the song, but peanut butter's like a little advertisement almost for jelly.
Even though I never said the word "jelly," the fact that I said peanut butter made you
think about jelly, and the fact that I said those two things together made you think about
the song.
That's what a trigger is; if you see something in the environment, maybe you see a friend
of yours and it reminds you of a story you meant to tell them or you smell something
and it reminds you of your grandma's fresh baked cookies; these are triggers that make
us think about things but also make us talk and share.
Marie: It's interesting.
When I was reading about triggers in Contagious, and even listening to you now, I think that
we've built in, even to MarieTV, our own trigger because outside of interviews, what we often
do is called up Q&A Tuesday.
Every single Tuesday is when we publish our new MarieTV episode and so people have now,
and they tweet at us, and they Facebook us and they say "oh my God, Tuesdays are the
day that we get to see MarieTV," so we've created our own little trigger with Tuesdays.
Jonah: It's really important to think, what are you going to link yourself
to in the environment?
You've done a great job of linking yourself to Tuesday.
If I'm a hair salon or I'm an accountant or I'm a coach, what can I link myself to so
that every time people see that thing, they think about me?
It doesn't have to be the biggest thing in the world.
It doesn't have to be a day of the week.
It could be something in their environment.
If I'm a fitness coach, what at the gym are they going to see to remind them "I got to
sign up for an appointment."
If I'm a real estate agent or I'm a dog walking, what's the thing they're going to see that
goes "I have to call this person and set up an appointment."
Making sure you're linked to something in your environment, even if we like something,
we don't always buy it if we're not thinking about it.
It's really important to make sure we're connected or triggered by something in that environment.
Another great example of triggers you might've seen recently, GEICO has these fantastic ads
out whereas you're "happier than."
There's one happier than Dracula at a blood drive, or you're happier than a Pillsbury
doughboy on his way to a baking convention, but there's also one recent with a camel.
There's a camel walking around the office going "guess what day it is guys, hey guess
what day it is" and everyone's trying to ignore him, and then finally someone goes "it's hump
day," and he goes "Yay, it's hump day"; happier than a camel on hump day.
It's very funny - you should go watch it, it's great.
If you look at the search traffic for GEICO, you see a big spike now every Wednesday.
They were getting beaten by Progressive before, but now every Wednesday they're doing better
than Progressive because people are thinking about them every Wednesday because they say
hump day reminds them of the camel ad, reminds them of GEICO, and reminds them to go check
it out.
That's triggers at work, thinking about what's in the environment, what's in your context,
you can link yourself to it and make sure consumers are thinking about you.
Marie: Awesome.
Next thing I want to talk about Jonah, one of the questions I get asked so much, it's
such a hot topic, is around pricing.
Should we discount?
Shouldn't we discount?
So, Professof Berger, can you school us on the rule of 100?
Jonah: The rule of 100 is very simple but it's really important.
It's in the chapter on practical value and I think many people often have the same issue
you mention with discounts; do I want to discount my thing, I don't want to seem like I'm cheap.
JcPenney were doing discounts all the time and then no one shopped there anymore because
they got rid of their discounts but they were saying we have too many discounts.
The key with discounts is making people feel like they're getting something special.
If this is an opportunity, I have to take.
It's not going to be around forever.
I really want this discount.
The rule of 100 is very simple.
Let's say a $20 t-shirt, simple example; you can have 25% off, which would be $15 for the
t-shirt, or you could have $5 off.
Everyone agrees that the same amount of money, but does it seem the same from the consumer?
It doesn't.
Even though those are identical in terms of monetary value, to the consumer they seem
different.
To the consumer, 25% off seems like a better deal, whereas actually if it's over $100,
it flips.
If we're selling like a $2,000 laptop let's say, or coaching session, if it's 25% off,
that would be $500 off; same amount of money but there the $500 seems bigger than the 25%.
The rule of 100 says if I'm going to discount, let me use a certain type of discount, either
money off or percentage off to make that same discount seem bigger based on whether it's
larger or smaller than $100.
You can do the same thing with any numerical information.
Maybe you're talking about how many customers you've gained this year, how much revenue
has grown, how you've changed something; you want to represent it in a way that seems larger
rather than smaller.
Using that rule of 100 will help you frame the discount to make it seem like a better
deal.
Marie: I think that's one of the most genius things because positioning
really is everything and how you frame just what you're talking about, and also, I think
you just made some really great points in the book, which you'll have to just go out
and get to read, but there is another story you told, we don't have to get into details
here, but just about how pricing things and putting things next to each other.
If there's something really expensive and then all of a sudden, something right next
to it doesn't look quite as bad; like "I'm getting a great deal."
However, if it was existing on its own, not next to the more expensive thing, people are
like "no way it's too much."
Jonah: There's a great story about, I don't think I told it in the book,
but I think it's Williams-Sonoma with a bread maker, and so they had this bread maker and
it was a few hundred dollars and it wasn't selling very well, but then they introduced
this new bread maker that was twice as expensive, and nobody bought the really expensive bread
maker, but actually increased the sales of the cheaper bread maker.
You would say "why does introducing another option increase your sales?"
If anything it should split people.
Less people should buy the cheaper one, but it changed the way people saw the cheaper
one.
Suddenly it made the cheaper one seem like a really good, whereas before it wasn't.
That's the key with deals.
No one knows how much something should cost.
How much should a haircut cost?
I don't know, maybe $30, $40, $20, $80; I don't have a reference point, and so by giving
people a reference point, by using your set of options or other information to help them
figure out whether something's a good deal or not, you convey that information and help
them decide.
Marie: Awesome.
Alright, so moving on.
I'm curious.
Since you've written this book, and there are tons of great stories in there, but have
you heard reports from either readers or companies that have consciously used your six principles
to help their ideas become more shareable, more spreadable and more viral?
Jonah: Definitely.
One thing I've done a lot since the book has come is actually do workshops for companies.
A couple weeks ago, I was over at Purina in St. Louis, I did something for Vanguard, I
did some work with Google, and all these companies are interested "we've got these steps but
how do we apply them, how do we put them into work, it's great that there's science, it's
great they spent 10 years studying this stuff, but I don't really care about that, I want
to use it."
That's the key for your listeners also; the science is good but how can I apply it.
I spent a lot of time thinking about how to apply the science, bake some of it into the
book, but also have helped lots of companies do this.
I got an e-mail actually just late last week saying "thanks for this framework, we used
it and we increased the number of people talking about us on Facebook by 400%."
A company called PhotoBucket, they were doing things before, they were doing posts, using
social media, but it just wasn't really working for them.
Now they've engineered their posts based on the framework.
The E for emotion; they've dialed up the emotion they're figuring the right emotions rather
than the wrong ones.
Discounts; they're framing those discounts, using the rule of 100.
Social currency; they make some people feel special.
With Vanguard, they call their customers "clients"; "you're my client," that seems sort of special
but if I called you a member, suddenly it seems much more special than just being a
client.
A client is you're over there and I'm over here; if I'm a member, we're part of the same
team, I feel much more special.
Even using the language that they use to communicate ideas can be really key.
It's been amazing to see companies using these ideas and really helping their products and
ideas take off.
Marie: I love that.
The final thing I want to ask you today, because we have so many aspiring authors and authors
in our audience, you have this incredible class which your book is based on and you've
taken over a decade of research and put it into a book, and I also have read that you
use one of my favorite techniques; reverse engineering that helped you take all of these
ideas and figure out how to formulate it in a book.
Any lessons from the trenches, it's a NY Times Bestseller, anything that you'd want to share
with someone who's thinking about writing a book or writing their next book?
Jonah: I think it's really important to have a kernel, a short version
of a message that's easy to communicate.
One of my favorite examples actually didn't make it in the book, but it's a new one.
There's a bar near my house that's a high end cocktail bar and they have lots of no
Red Bull, no vodka, but egg white this and chrysanthemum flavor that, and all sorts of
high end cocktails.
There are dozens of similar bars, so how do they cut through the clutter?
How do they make sure they stick out?
They did something really clever.
They have three types of ice and as soon as you hear that, you go "three types of ice,
I didn't even know there were types of ices, the ice in my freezer looks very similar to
the ice in your freezer, what are they?"
You want to know more.
What are those three types of ice?
It turns out one is this cube block of ice that's stirred from the bottom up and it has
no bubbles, another is these small chips that form together and melt in a certain way, but
they have different types of ice for different types of drinks because depending on the drink
you're drinking, you want different sorts of melting; faster melting or slower melting.
That's a great story.
It's remarkable.
You want to learn more about it, but it does something else interesting.
If you know there's a bar that has three types of ice, you know they must care about drinks.
That's a story that proves their point.
It's like a Trojan horse story like I talk about in the book.
I think the same thing as an author, you want to have a message that's remarkable, that
cuts through the clutter, that opens up that curiosity gap and it's a story that carries
your message for the ride.
There are thousands of books out there.
It's been amazing for me trying to market this book.
There's lots of other books there on word of mouth or social media, but cutting through
the clutter's tough and we've done well; we sold 50,000 copies so far, we're on the Time's
Bestseller list, but in terms of how to do that, we had to figure out what's the key
message and how to sharpen that message in a way that everyone would remember.
What I would say to your audience is what are your three types of ice?
What's your memorable message that everyone's going to remember, they're going to want to
know more about, they're going to want to hear the rest of that story and will carry
you for the ride.
The book industry is really tough.
A lot of it is about getting a good advance, but your publisher not only has to like the
story, they have to be able to sell that story internally and they have to be able to sell
it to Barnes and Noble and to sell it to everybody else, so they have to have something they
can remember and share.
Three types of ice is a great way to do that, so figuring out those three types of ice is
really key.
Marie: Jonah, thank you so much for being here.
Hang out one second before I let you go.
Jonah is amazing, but he's got so much more to offer you, especially a free workbook that
is at his site JonahBerger.com.
We're going to put a link below this; you got to make sure and get that because it's
going to help you take all the incredible ideas from Contagious and put them to use
and put them to action into your business right now.
One of the things we like to do on MarieTV is we like to help our viewers turn their
insight into action.
Here's our challenge for you today: what's the single biggest insight that you're taking
away from this interview, and more importantly, what's the action step that you're going to
take in your business?
I want to hear about it in the comments below.
Jonah, thanks for being here, buddy.
Jonah: Thanks for having me.
Marie: As always, the best discussions happen after the episode over
at MarieForleo.com so go there and leave a comment now.
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