CM 017: Jonah Berger on Why Things Catch On

Why do certain products, services, or stories go viral? How can we make our own work contagious? These are questions Wharton Professor, Jonah Berger, answers in his bestselling book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On. In this fascinating interview, he explains his six-part framework and discusses the behaviors that drive us to make certain ideas, products, and services contagious. In this episode you will learn: how to apply these techniques to your own work what made the video for a seemingly humdrum product - a blender - go viral which emotions drive us to share and which ones do not what makes us spread the word for free why you might suffer from the curse of knowledge and how you can avoid it the critical difference between social media and word of mouth Jonah also gives us a peek into his upcoming book on all the ways social influence drives our behavior. Fascinating stuff! Episode Links Beta testing Social psychology STEPPS Framework Hooked: How to Build Habit-forming Products  Geico ad for Hump Day Curse of knowledge Trojan Horse Social influence If you enjoyed the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. Thanks for listening!