Contagious: Why Things Catch On (15 page)

McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the maker of painkiller Motrin, saw this swell of interest as a perfect opportunity. Motrin’s motto at the time was “We feel your pain.” So in an attempt to show solidarity with mothers,
the company created an ad centered on the aches and pains mothers can suffer from carrying
their babies in slings. The ad noted that while babywearing can be great for the baby, it can put a ton of strain on the back, neck, and shoulders of the mom.

The company was trying to be supportive. It wanted to show that it understood mom’s pain and Motrin was there to help. But a number of so-called mommy bloggers saw things differently. The mom’s voice-over in the ad said babywearing “totally makes me look like an official mom. And so if I look tired and crazy, people will understand why.”

Deeply offended on two fronts—by the implication that they wore their babies as fashion statements and that they looked crazy—mothers took to their blogs and Twitter accounts. The anger spread.

Soon thousands of people were involved. “A baby will never be a fashion statement. How outrageous is that thinking!” one cried. The posts multiplied. Many of the writers said they would boycott the company. The topic started to trend on Twitter, and the movement got picked up by
The New York Times, Ad Age
, and a host of other media outlets. Soon seven out of the top ten searches for “Motrin” and “headache” on Google referred to
the marketing debacle.

Finally, after too long a delay, Motrin took the advertisement down from its website and issued a lengthy apology.

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Technology has made it easier for people to organize behind a common interest or goal. By allowing people to connect quickly and easily, social media enable like-minded individuals to find one another, share information, and coordinate plans of action.

These technologies are particularly useful when people either live far apart or are dealing with an issue that has delicate
political or social meaning. Many people point to social media as the catalyst behind the Arab Spring, the wave of antigovernment protests that broke out across the Arab world, eventually toppling the governments of Tunisia and Egypt, among others.

Some of these burgeoning social movements are positive. Enabling citizens to rise up against dictatorships or helping teens facing harassment to realize that life gets better.

But in other cases the comments and movements are negative in nature. False rumors may start to gain traction. Vicious gossip may circulate and build. Is it possible to predict which flare-ups will remain isolated comments and which will snowball?

Part of the answer comes back to physiological arousal. Certain types of negativity may be more likely to escalate because they evoke arousal and are thus more likely to go viral. Angry tirades about bad customer service, or anxious rumors about how a new health plan may take away benefits, should be more likely to circulate than expressions of sadness or disappointment.

So teachers and principals should be particularly wary of hurtful rumors that carry an arousing punch because they are more likely to get passed around. Similarly, Motrin’s maker could have stemmed the boycott before it started by monitoring online chatter. By looking for words like “pissed off,” “angry,” or “mad” in people’s posts, tweets, or status updates the company could have addressed unsatisfied customers before the anger built. Fixing these high-arousal emotions early can mitigate the negativity before it snowballs.

EXERCISE MAKES PEOPLE SHARE

Our emotional odyssey has one last stop.

At Wharton, we have a behavioral lab where people are paid
to do various psychology and marketing experiments. These tasks often involve clicking boxes in an online survey or circling items on a sheet of paper.

But when people came in for an experiment of mine one November a few years ago, the instructions were a bit more unusual.

Half the participants were asked to sit still in their chairs for sixty seconds and relax. Easy enough.

The other half, however, were asked to jog lightly in place for a minute. Regardless of whether they were wearing sneakers or pumps, jeans or slacks, they were asked to run in place for sixty seconds in the middle of the laboratory.

Okay. Sure. I guess. Some participants gave us a puzzled look when we made the request, but all complied.

After they were done, they participated in what seemed like a second, unrelated experiment. They were told the experimenters were interested in what people share with others and were given a recent article from the school newspaper. Then, after reading it, they were given the option of e-mailing it to anyone they liked.

In actuality, this “unrelated study” was part of my initial experiment. I wanted to test a simple but intriguing hypothesis. At this point we knew that emotionally arousing content or experiences would be more likely to be shared. But I wondered whether the effects of arousal might be even broader than that. If arousal induces sharing, then might any physiologically arousing experience drive people to share stories and information with others?

Running in place provided the perfect test. Running doesn’t evoke emotion, but it is just as physiologically arousing. It gets your heart rate up, increases blood pressure, etc. So if arousal of any sort boosts sharing, then running in place should lead people to share things with others. Even if the things people are talking
about or sharing have nothing to do with the reason they are experiencing arousal.

And it did. Among students who had been instructed to jog, 75 percent shared the article—more than twice as many as the students who had been in the “relaxed” group. Thus any sort of arousal, whether from emotional or physical sources, and even arousal due to the situation itself (rather than content), can boost transmission.

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Understanding that arousing situations can drive people to pass things on helps shed light on so-called oversharing, when people disclose more than they should. Ever been stuck next to someone on a plane who won’t stop sharing what seem like extremely personal details? Or find yourself in a conversation where later on you realize that you may have shared way more than you meant to? Why does this happen?

Sure, we may feel more comfortable with someone than we thought we would or we may have had one too many margaritas. But there is also a third reason. If situational factors end up making us physiologically aroused, we may end up sharing more than we planned.

So be careful the next time you step off the treadmill, barely avoid a car accident, or experience a turbulent plane ride. Because you’ve been aroused by these experiences, you may overshare information with others in the aftermath.

These ideas also suggest that one way to generate word of mouth is to find people when they are already fired up. Exciting game shows like
Deal or No Deal
or anxiety-inducing crime dramas like
CSI
are more likely to get people aroused than documentaries about historical figures. These shows should get
more chatter themselves, sure, but the boosted heart rate they induce should also spill over and make people more likely to talk about the commercials that appear during the break. Ads at the gym may provoke lots of discussion simply because people are already so amped. Work groups may benefit from taking walks together because it will encourage people to share their ideas and opinions.

The same idea holds for online content. Certain websites, news articles, or YouTube videos evoke more arousal than others. Blogs about financial markets, articles about political cronyism, and hilarious videos are all likely to boost activation, which, in turn, should increase the transmission of ads or other content that appears on those pages.

Ad timing also matters. Although a show may be generally arousing, a specific scene in that show may be more activating than others. In crime shows, for example, the anxiety often peaks somewhere in the middle. When the crime is solved at the end, all tension dissipates. In game shows, excitement—and therefore arousal—is highest when contestants are about to find out how much they’ve won. We may end up talking more about ads that show up close to these exciting moments.

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Emotions drive people to action. They make us laugh, shout, and cry, and they make us talk, share, and buy. So rather than quoting statistics or providing information, we need to focus on feelings. As Anthony Cafaro, the designer who helped develop the “Parisian Love” video at Google, noted:

Whether it’s a digital product, like Google, or a physical product, like sneakers, you should make something that will move people. People
don’t want to feel like they’re being told something—they want to be entertained, they want to be moved.

Some emotions kindle the fire more than others. As we discussed, activating emotion is the key to transmission. Physiological arousal or activation drives people to talk and share. We need to get people excited or make them laugh. We need to make them angry rather than sad. Even situations where people are active can make them more likely to pass things on to others.

Fluid dynamics and online search seem like two of the least moving topics out there. But by relating these abstract topics to people’s own lives and evoking underlying emotion, Denise Grady and Anthony Cafaro got us to care, and share.

4.
Public

Ken Segall was Steve Jobs’s right hand man. For twelve years, Ken worked as creative director at Jobs’s ad agency. He started with Apple’s account in the early 1980s. When Jobs was fired and started NeXT Computer, Ken moved to be part of the project. And when Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, Ken came along as well. Ken worked on the “Think Different” campaign, was on the team that developed the “Crazy Ones” ad, and started the iCraze by naming Apple’s bulbous all-in-one egg-looking desktop the iMac.

During those later years, Ken’s team would sit down with Jobs every two weeks. It was a status meeting of sorts. Ken’s team would share everything they were working on advertisingwise: promising ideas, new copy, and potential layouts. Jobs would do the same. He would update Ken’s team on how Apple was doing, which products were selling, and whether anything new was coming down the pipeline that they might need a campaign for.

One week, Jobs approached Ken’s team with a conundrum. Jobs was obsessed with the absolute best possible user experience. He always put the customer first. Customers shelled out
all that money; they should be treated right. So Apple carried this mantra into all aspects of product design. From opening the box to calling for tech support. Ever notice the slow delay when you first pull the cover off the box of your new iPhone? That’s because Apple has been hard at work designing that experience to provide the perfect feeling of luxury and heft.

The conundrum concerned the design of the new PowerBook G4. The laptop was going to be a marvel of technology and design. Its titanium body was revolutionary—stronger than steel yet lighter than aluminum. And, at less than one inch thick, it would be one of the thinnest laptops ever.

But Jobs wasn’t concerned about the laptop’s strength or weight. He was concerned about the direction of the logo.

The cover of PowerBook laptops always had a small apple with a bite taken out of the side. Consistent with their user focus, Apple wanted the logo to look right to the owner of the computer. This was particularly important given the frequency with which laptops are opened and closed. People stuff the laptops in their backpacks or bags only to pull them out later and start working. And when you pull the laptop out it’s hard to know which way is up. Which side has the latch and so should face toward you when you set the laptop down on a desk or table?

Jobs wanted this experience to be as fluid as possible, so he used the logo as a compass. It faced the user when the computer was closed so that the user could easily orient the laptop when he set it down.

But the problem came when a person opened the laptop. Once the users had found a seat at the coffee shop and sat down with their macchiato, they would open their computer to start working. And once they opened the laptop the logo would flip. To everyone around them the logo would be upside down.

Jobs was a big believer in branding, and seeing all those upside-down logos wasn’t a great feeling. He was even worried it might be hurting the brand.

So Jobs asked Ken’s team a question. Which is more important—to have the logo look right to the customers before they opened their PowerBook, or to make it look right to the rest of the world when the laptop was in use?

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As you can see the next time you glance at an Apple laptop, Ken and Jobs reversed their long-held beliefs and flipped the logo. The reason? Observability. Jobs realized that seeing others do something makes people more likely to do it themselves.

But the key word here is “seeing.” If it’s hard to see what others are doing, it’s hard to imitate it. Making something more observable makes it easier to imitate. Thus a key factor in driving products to catch on is
public visibility.
If something is built to show, it’s built to grow.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMITATION

Imagine you’re in an unfamiliar city. You’re out of town on a business trip or vacationing with a friend and by the time you finally land, check into the hotel, and take a quick shower you’re famished. It’s time for dinner.

You want to go somewhere good, but you don’t know the city that well. The concierge is busy and you don’t want to spend a lot of time reading reviews on the Internet, so you decide to just find a place nearby.

But when you step out onto the bustling street you’re struck by dozens of options. A cute Thai place with a purple
awning. A hip-looking tapas bar. An Italian bistro. How do you choose?

If you’re like most people you’d probably follow a time-tested rule of thumb: look for a restaurant full of people.
If lots of people are eating there, it’s probably good. If a place is empty, you should probably keep on walking.