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,