What makes something contagious? The answers vary depending on how you define and measure its impact. Contagious is any viral phenomenon or any item or pattern that is able to persuade people to use, reproduce, and distribute it. Critical to the description of contagiousness or “virality†is the presence of something that has the power and the gift to quickly develop, multiply and be popular on its own given any communications platform.
What has been contagious of late? There’s Gangnam style, Korean pop star Psy’s wacky horse-dance video, which managed to score more than 1.3 billion views on YouTube. Or the 30-minute video produced by a small nonprofit group calling for the capture of the Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony. It became the most viral political cause of all time, gaining 50 million YouTube views in just three days. Or the gang rape of a Swiss woman in India that earned furious takes from millions of viewers around the world. Or The New York Times’ write-ups about health and education, which were the most e-mailed and highly shared articles because of their usefulness: advice on how to live longer and be happier, tips for getting the best education for your kids and science articles tended to go viral because they “frequently chronicle innovations and discoveries†that evoked a feeling of awe in readers.
Social media have definitely accelerated the pace of information diffusion. The old mode of sharing with one person who shares it with someone else has now been overturned by the button: with one click you can share with a thousand, 5,000, 10,000, or even more people. You tend to focus a lot on online behavior, in part because it’s easy to see. Jonah Berger, author of the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, reminds us that a lot of social transmission actually happens offline as well. You have weekend outings with your family. You see your colleagues at work. You go out to lunch with college buddies. You have meetings. You’re not talking online. You’re conversing offline person-to-person. While there may be no permanent record of these conversations, they still make up a big part of daily life and have a big impact on your behavior.
Berger engages his readers with specific case studies, foremost of which is an anecdote about Steve Jobs. He wrote, “Jobs debated whether the Apple logo on the cover of an open laptop should be right side up for the user of the computer or right side up to onlookers, and eventually decided that ‘observability’ to the world was more important and flipped the logo.†He also cited that distinctiveness makes for products or individuals that advertise themselves — whether it’s apparel trademarks like Nike’s swoosh, the tubular Pringles can, Christian Louboutin’s nail-polish-bright red-soled shoes, Justin Bieber and his new album or a senator wannabe and his platform.
Contagious identified six principles that are associated with messages, products, people or ideas that go viral. For easy understanding and recall, Berger encapsulated the concepts in an acronym called STEPPS, which cover social currency, triggers, emotions, public, practical value, and stories. Given the coming midterm election in the country, Commonness skewed the discussion to the applicability of the principles to political brands or to those running after the people’s votes.
• You share things that make you look good. That’s social currency in action. It’s making people feel that they are cool insiders because you got them talking about you and the ideas and positions attached to your name. The challenge is how to make them develop a good impression about you and what you stand for consistently. One way to do this is to find your “inner remarkability†— something worthy of mention, noble, novel, surprising, extreme or just plain interesting. Remarkable things provide social currency because they make the people who talk about you seem, well, more remarkable.
As a political candidate you, of course, would want to be liked. And this desire for social approval is a fundamental human motivation because you want to win. Being scarce and special can boost word of mouth about you. They make people feel they belong, and that they’re getting something not everyone else has. They make them experience being unique and exclusive. They give them bragging rights in your social circle. And because of all these, they not only like you but tell others about you as well.
• Being top of mind and tip of the tongue. That’s what conveniently memorable information brings. It serves as triggers, or everyday reminders of an item or idea. It’s looked at as the foundation of word of mouth and contagiousness. To further elucidate the concept, Berger offered this analogy: “Think of rock bands. Social currency is the front man or woman. It’s exciting, fun, and gets lots of attention. Triggers could be the drummer or bassist. It’s not as sexy a concept as social currency, but they are critical workhorses that get the job done.†People may not pay as much attention to triggers, but they lay the groundwork that drives success. The more something is triggered, the more it will be top of mind, and the more successful it will become. Like Nike’s “Just Do It†or Jollibee’s “Langhap Sarap,†your political persona and your selling propositions need to take advantage of existing and future triggers. This will lead people to talk, choose and put your name in their ballots. Social currency gets people talking, but triggers keep them talking.
• When you care, you share. This is a typical action if you are closely in touch with your emotions. As such, you have the capacity to make your constituencies laugh, shout and cry. You can make them talk, share and support your political race. So, rather than quote statistics or provide information, consider focusing more on feelings when you interact with them. As Anthony Cafaro opined, “Whether it’s a digital product like Google, or a physical product, like a pair of athletic shoes, you should create something that will move people.†By and large, people want to be entertained and enthused. Some emotions kindle the fire more than others. Activation drives people to talk and share. Thus, you need to get people excited. You need to make them angry rather than sad. When people are active, they are more likely to pass things on to others.
The story of Susan Boyle, a British Got Talent grand winner, is a great example of high-arousal emotion. As Berger discussed, “Her video (as shared on YouTube) is extremely inspiring. It is not only remarkable that she’s such a good singer, it’s surprising and awe-inspiring.†What the video showed was that high-arousal emotions increase sharing and low-arousal emotions decrease sharing. When you’re excited, you are fired up and activated. When you’re content, you feel relaxed but don’t want to do very much.
• If something is built to show, it’s built to grow. The phrase “Monkey see, monkey do†captures people’s tendency to follow others. If people can’t see what others are doing, they can’t imitate them. So to get yourself to attain popularity, you need to make yourself more publicly observable. “You need to be like Hotmail and Apple and design products that advertise themselves,†Berger enthused. You need to be like a sports hero or a movie star and create behavioral residue, or discernible evidence that sticks around even after people have heard you speak and sing, seen you dance or gotten engaged with your ideas. In other words, you need to make the private public.
Berger cites the Gangnam-style phenomenon to illustrate the point. He said, “One thing that really helped make that video popular was there was a public dance to go along with it. Thinking about public signals of private behavior, how does someone know if you like a particular song? It’s hard to tell unless they see you listening to it. But what this dance did is it made it more public that people liked that particular music and it was a public signal people adopted even if they weren’t listening to the song.†Doing that move was a way to communicate they’re in the know, but along the way, they’re sharing information about the song. They’re acting as an ad push for the song.
• News people can use about you is a practical value. It is helping others, and as an aspirant in a public service office, you generally like to help people. The expected action is for you go out of your way to articulate your programs, deliver advice or share information that will make their conditions better. Finding practical value isn’t hard. Just like a product or idea, you have something useful about you. Call it a differentiating element, if you will. Whether you save people money, make them happier, improve their lives, all these things are going to work in your favor.
Thinking about why people gravitate to you in the first place will give you a good sense of the underlying practical value. The harder part is cutting through the clutter. There are other candidates you are competing with so you need to stand out. You need to highlight your individual worth, package your knowledge and expertise and make people determine the positive attributes about you they can pass on to others. You need to make it clear why you are so needed that people just have to spread the word.
• People are inherent storytellers. And as a candidate learning to tell stories is a must. Stories are the original forms of entertainment. In the past, there was no TV, radio, newspapers or the Internet. So if you wanted amusement, telling or listening to stories was the way to get it. Narratives are inherently more engrossing than basic facts. They have a beginning, middle and end. If people get sucked in early in your storytelling, they’ll stay for the conclusion. If you’re a political brand that tells good stories, people will hang on to your every word. Once you have them started down a path, they will want to follow you to know how it ends. Until it does, you’ve captured their attention.
If you want to craft contagious stories, try to build content that will resonate with voters. But make sure you bring in the element of “virality†as the information you want people to remember and share with others is kept intact. Sure, you can make your narrative funny, surprising or entertaining, but if people don’t connect back to you, it’s not going to help you very much, even if it goes viral.
If you are able to vividly characterize what and who you are, it will determine how others will see you in their mind’s eye, feel you in their hearts, and move with you with great interest. And if you are able to dream your constituencies’ dreams, their support will not be far behind. As such you are an opportunity-maker. You go beyond charisma, you make things happen. Contagious branding does three things for the stressed-out electorate: it saves time, projects the right message and provides a distinctive identity. Remember that you are your own brand. It’s your name. Guard and protect it. You should make it part of all your decisions. It takes time and care to build a contagious name and reputation, but it can be destroyed in an instant when scandal hits, and it goes contagious.
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