Books: Why some marketing appeals succeed and others fail

The Message Is the Message

Laura Vanderkam

Contagious: Why Things Catch On, 

by Jonah Berger (Simon & Schuster, 256 pp., $26)

If you’ve got an e-mail address, chances are you’ve been the recipient of a “you-have-got-to-read-this” message in the past few weeks. A link takes you to an article that your friend or colleague felt compelled to share. You wander over to Facebook and find the same article clogging your feed. Clearly, you’ve got a hot topic on your hands. But what makes some material buzz-worthy, and other material not?

That’s the question behind Jonah Berger’s new book, Contagious. Berger, a star marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has spent years studying why some content spreads from person to person across social networks and other media. In his research, he writes, “we kept finding the same ingredients in ads that went viral, news articles that were shared, or products that received lots of word of mouth.” The factors include, among other things, social currency (making the sharer look good), emotion (we share things that inspire awe or anger), practical value, and a good story. Add several of those ingredients, and you’ve got a good chance of making something catch on.

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