Contagious: Why Things Catch On

How many blenders can one blender and a $50 video sell?

In 2006, the new marketing director at Blendtec noticed the CEO testing the machines every day by shoving boards into them. So he spent $50 on marbles, golf balls and a rake, put the boss in a lab coat, and filmed him dropping it all in. Fifty glass marbles turned into a puff of white dust in seconds. The Will It Blend? series went on to blend an iPhone, racked up over 300 million views, and multiplied retail sales within two years.

Jonah Berger is a marketing professor at Wharton, and this book came out in 2013. His question: why do some things get talked about everywhere while others go nowhere? His answer is a framework called STEPPS.

Social currency: people share what makes them look good. There's a bar in New York hidden behind a phone booth inside a hot dog shop. No advertising, and everyone wants to bring their friends, because knowing about it is cool in itself.

Triggers: what's top of mind is tip of tongue. Honey Nut Cheerios gets mentioned online more than Disneyland, because people see it every single morning.

Emotion: content that gets your heart rate up spreads. Awe, excitement, anger and anxiety drive sharing; sadness and contentment make people go quiet. In one study, people who jogged in place for a minute were more than twice as likely to forward an article as people who sat still.

Public: if it's visible, it can be copied. Apple flipped the logo on its laptops so that when you open one, it's right side up for everyone around you.

Practical value and stories: people love passing on useful information, and a good story is a Trojan horse that carries your message inside it. The catch is that the brand has to be part of the story you can't remove.

Reading it, I kept thinking of an idea I believe: anything that spreads widely on social media has been oversimplified. Take "Life is an open field, not a track," a slogan that went viral on Chinese social media. Almost zero barrier to entry. You hear it, you get it, you want to share it. That gave me a healthy suspicion of virality. What spreads isn't always what's true.

When I hit the part about making practical value visible, I immediately thought of Taobao's premium membership, which keeps a running tally of how much it has "saved you." That number isn't just for me. It's waiting for me to screenshot it.

Read it if you make content or products, or you've ever wondered why you can't stop forwarding certain things.

Virality isn't born, it's made.