Valuetainment - How Marketers Create Billion Dollar Trends

00:00:00.000 Technology has changed things, but people have been sharing things for thousands of years.

00:00:04.500 Why do we talk about one product versus another?

00:00:06.500 Can we get people to talk about our stuff, our products, and our ideas?

00:00:10.000 Why do we share content online or products that we use?

00:00:13.000 Videos that go viral on the web and we say,

00:00:15.000 oh, you know, they got lightning in a bottle.

00:00:17.000 I think we have this notion that it's random, that it's luck, but it's not.

00:00:21.000 There's really a science behind why people talk.

00:00:23.000 We see the same six factors, social currency, triggers, emotion, public,

00:00:28.000 practical value, and stories.

00:00:30.000 Each of those is a psychological driver of why we talk, why we share,

00:00:34.000 and leads all sorts of stuff to catch on.

00:00:36.000 Do these six currencies apply to every aspect of life?

00:00:39.000 We've come across some of these ideas in some of our life,

00:00:42.000 but rarely do we make the connection across different domains of life.

00:00:46.000 The internet has changed something.

00:00:48.000 The psychology doesn't necessarily change.

00:00:50.000 There are lots of great products and services that we've never heard of.

00:00:53.000 So how does one go about changing anyone's mind?

00:00:56.000 Rather than pushing people, really thinking about change a different way

00:01:00.000 and changing the strategy we use to change minds.

00:01:03.000 Does it also apply to politics?

00:01:05.000 Does it apply to religions, why some religions do better than others?

00:01:08.000 Obama ran on hope, inspiration.

00:01:10.000 Trump ran on anger and anxiety.

00:01:12.000 Both of them used high arousal emotions and used that to drive action.

00:01:16.000 We don't have to be the best communicator to win.

00:01:19.000 Good story is a powerful thing.

00:01:21.000 My guest today is Jonah Berger, who's written multiple books.

00:01:28.000 One called Contagious that I read in 2013 when it came out.

00:01:31.000 I think I had our entire salespeople read it and write about it.

00:01:34.000 Then he wrote a second book called The Invisible Influence

00:01:37.000 and his latest one that came out.

00:01:38.000 You see it in the back of the screen where he's sitting at the catalyst yellow.

00:01:41.000 And we'll talk about that as well.

00:01:43.000 Now, he is a professor at Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania,

00:01:48.000 which is where our president went.

00:01:50.000 And he got his degree at Stanford.

00:01:52.000 And the major is in human judgment and decision making in 2002,

00:01:57.000 which is fascinating to get a degree in that,

00:02:00.000 because you can use that in every aspect of your life.

00:02:02.000 We're going to talk about marketing, viral marketing,

00:02:04.000 how you can be more influential.

00:02:05.000 And hopefully, he'll have some tips that you can implement right away to your life

00:02:10.000 and to your business.

00:02:11.000 Having said that, Jonah, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment.

00:02:14.000 Thanks so much for having me.

00:02:15.000 So, at what point did you say, I want to get a degree in human judgment?

00:02:19.000 Like, how does that even take place?

00:02:20.000 You know, originally, I thought I would become an environmental engineer.

00:02:24.000 I wanted to bridge sort of science and society.

00:02:27.000 I went to college, taking classes in that space,

00:02:30.000 sort of thinking about, you know, technology, hard sciences, research, experimentation, statistics.

00:02:36.000 I came across the social sciences, fell in love with them,

00:02:39.000 and have spent a career sort of applying the tools of hard science,

00:02:43.000 experimentation, data analysis, statistics to social science problems

00:02:47.000 and to better understand human behavior.

00:02:49.000 Now, it's pretty cool because that part, I mean,

00:02:51.000 pretty much what a business person does is that.

00:02:54.000 Human judgment, decision making.

00:02:57.000 And I know you've been advised, you've advised a number of startup, early state startups.

00:03:02.000 You've consulted for Google, Apple, Vanguard, General Mills, Gates Foundation,

00:03:07.000 a number of different places, which is pretty impressive to have that kind of a background.

00:03:11.000 But my question for you would be, your first book came out in 2013.

00:03:15.000 From you leaving college to 2013, what did you do professionally?

00:03:19.000 Yeah, so I've had some work experience, but I spent a good amount of time getting a PhD.

00:03:24.000 So I also got a PhD in marketing, actually, from the Stanford Graduate School of Business,

00:03:29.000 and then started at Wharton in 2007.

00:03:32.000 So had a first six years at Wharton doing research and other things before the first book came out.

00:03:37.000 And, you know, it changed my life, that book, a little bit.

00:03:40.000 I'm an academic at heart, love academic research, always have.

00:03:44.000 But, you know, that book is out in, God, 35 languages, half a million copies around the world.

00:03:49.000 And since then, I've gotten a chance to talk to all sorts of companies and organizations about marketing,

00:03:54.000 about the challenges they're wrestling with, about getting products and services and ideas to catch on.

00:03:59.000 I've learned a lot about different businesses and the way that business is done in today's day and age.

00:04:04.000 And it's been great to share some of those learnings, both with students in the classroom as well as through the books.

00:04:10.000 So from 2002 to 2013, I think it's fair to say a lot of things changed in marketing.

00:04:17.000 In 2002, Facebook wasn't out, YouTube wasn't out.

00:04:20.000 I think that's 2004, 2006.

00:04:22.000 I mean, not a lot was out yet in 2002.

00:04:25.000 2002 is still a MySpace Friendster era, I believe.

00:04:28.000 Yes, it is.

00:04:29.000 So from your involvement as you're going through this and you're learning,

00:04:33.000 I'm curious, as a college student going to get your PhD, how were professors adjusting their teaching of marketing, advertising with all these new social media platforms that are coming out?

00:04:45.000 Yeah.

00:04:46.000 So, you know, first in college, I read a book that many people read around that time called The Tipping Point.

00:04:52.000 And it's probably actually somewhere in the shelf behind me, right there, still one of my favorite books.

00:04:57.000 And that book really catalyzed my own journey.

00:04:59.000 You know, I said, wow, this is really interesting.

00:05:01.000 It's not sociology.

00:05:02.000 It's not psychology.

00:05:03.000 It's a mix of all these different things.

00:05:05.000 And really kind of encouraged me to start studying why things catch on.

00:05:09.000 There was a guy at Stanford at the time named Chip Heath who wrote Made to Stick and Deceptive and a number of other books.

00:05:15.000 I started doing research with him actually on why people share urban legends.

00:05:19.000 So why rumors and urban legends get shared.

00:05:21.000 Let me tell you, no one's less fun to have at a party than someone who studies rumors and urban legends.

00:05:26.000 You know, someone will say, oh, this thing happened to my cousin.

00:05:28.000 I'm like, no, no, it's not your cousin.

00:05:30.000 It's a rumor that's been online forever.

00:05:32.000 But it's really about the psychology of why we share things.

00:05:35.000 Less about sort of, you know, online versus off.

00:05:38.000 Online does matter.

00:05:39.000 And technology has changed things.

00:05:41.000 But people have been sharing things for thousands of years, right?

00:05:44.000 It's not like people waited for Facebook to share word of mouth.

00:05:47.000 Even now, only about 10% of all word of mouth is online.

00:05:51.000 Most of it's offline.

00:05:52.000 And so, you know, really what I've studied is why people share.

00:05:56.000 Not, you know, online versus offline or why they use Facebook versus Instagram versus MySpace, which no one uses anymore.

00:06:03.000 But really more sort of the psychological drivers of why we share.

00:06:06.000 Why do we talk about one product versus another?

00:06:08.000 Why do we talk about, you know, one thing we did this weekend rather than something else?

00:06:12.000 Whether online or off, what drives us to share and how by understanding those drivers can we get people to talk about our stuff, our products and our ideas?

00:06:20.000 So why do we share?

00:06:22.000 I mean, for the simplest question, why do we share content online or products that we use?

00:06:26.000 Yeah.

00:06:27.000 You know, I think we have this notion that it's random, that it's luck, that it's chance.

00:06:31.000 You know, we look at videos that go viral on the web and we say, oh, you know, they got lightning in a bottle.

00:06:35.000 They just must have must have gotten lucky.

00:06:37.000 But it's not.

00:06:38.000 There's really a science behind why people talk and why they share.

00:06:42.000 You know, we've looked at thousands of pieces of online content, tens of thousands of brands, millions of purchases across the United States and around the world.

00:06:50.000 Again and again, we see the same six factors come up.

00:06:54.000 In Contagious, I put those factors in a framework called the STEPS framework.

00:06:58.000 It stands for social currency, triggers, emotion, public, practical value and stories.

00:07:04.000 Each of those is a psychological driver of why we talk, why we share and leads all sorts of stuff to catch on.

00:07:11.000 You mind unpacking each one of those for some people who maybe haven't read the book Contagious?

00:07:15.000 Sure. Yeah. And so I'm happy to go into depth one or two of them.

00:07:18.000 But a quick overview, you know, social currency, the better something makes us look, the more likely we are to share it.

00:07:24.000 Right. So we share. I met a celebrity. I got promoted.

00:07:27.000 We don't share. I got fired. And, you know, something bad happened.

00:07:30.000 We share stuff that makes us look good rather than stuff that makes us look bad.

00:07:33.000 And so there the intuition is, well, how can we make people look good by talking about us as as individuals?

00:07:39.000 We think a lot about, well, how do we look?

00:07:41.000 We think a lot less about how does that person look when they talk about us.

00:07:44.000 And so making others look good triggers, top of mind, tip of tongue.

00:07:48.000 Right. Just like peanut butter reminds us of jelly.

00:07:51.000 A lot of what we talk about is based on what we're thinking about.

00:07:54.000 And so triggers in the environment can remind us to think of things and cause us to talk about and share them.

00:07:59.000 Emotion. When we care, we share.

00:08:01.000 We don't just share functional things. We share things that make us feel.

00:08:05.000 And certain emotions increase sharing and some actually decrease it.

00:08:08.000 Public, easy to see, easy to imitate.

00:08:10.000 You know, I can see you wearing a nice sort of shirt.

00:08:13.000 I can buy something similar because I saw you wear it, but I can't imitate your socks because it's a lot harder to see you wearing them.

00:08:19.000 We imitate what we can see, not what we can't see.

00:08:21.000 Practical values, useful information.

00:08:23.000 You know, news you can use.

00:08:25.000 Tips, tricks, ways to be better off.

00:08:28.000 And then last but not least is stories.

00:08:30.000 Right. Often we don't just pass on information.

00:08:32.000 We share information as part of a broader narrative.

00:08:35.000 And so using something called Trojan horse stories to carry our ideas along for the ride.

00:08:41.000 Jonah, how much of this applies to is it evergreen to every industry or is it specific to just business?

00:08:47.000 Meaning, does this apply to years ago?

00:08:51.000 We're not playing magic cards.

00:08:52.000 All of a sudden, magic cards.

00:08:53.000 Every kid is playing.

00:08:54.000 Or years ago, people weren't using.

00:08:56.000 What was those?

00:08:57.000 Pokey.

00:08:58.000 Pokemon.

00:08:59.000 Not Pokemon.

00:09:00.000 What was those?

00:09:01.000 The round things that you would hit them.

00:09:03.000 And the other ones would jump up in the air.

00:09:05.000 I don't know what that was.

00:09:06.000 But all of a sudden, everybody had them.

00:09:08.000 You know, you just kind of have to have one.

00:09:10.000 And, you know, is it also applied to politics?

00:09:13.000 Does it apply to religions?

00:09:14.000 Why some religions do better than others?

00:09:16.000 How much do these six currencies apply to every aspect of life?

00:09:20.000 You know, what's interesting is the Internet has changed some things.

00:09:23.000 Right.

00:09:24.000 It's allowed information to move faster and easier than than ever before.

00:09:27.000 But let's take the principle of social currency.

00:09:29.000 We like looking good to others.

00:09:31.000 We share things that make us look good rather than things that make us look bad.

00:09:35.000 Yeah.

00:09:36.000 Well, that didn't start because the Internet started.

00:09:38.000 Right.

00:09:39.000 I mean, think about a caveman.

00:09:40.000 Right.

00:09:41.000 You know, cavemen would talk to one another being don't don't eat that. 0.98

00:09:44.000 It's poisonous.

00:09:45.000 You know, look at this thing I caught.

00:09:46.000 We've been sharing things that make us look good forever.

00:09:49.000 Right.

00:09:50.000 In the 1950s, people shared what made them look good in the 60s.

00:09:52.000 The same thing.

00:09:53.000 And so what I love about studying psychology, behavioral science rather than a specific domain

00:09:57.000 or vertical is the psychology doesn't necessarily change the way we're built.

00:10:02.000 It may have a little bit and flow a little bit based on technology and other things.

00:10:06.000 That underlying driver of why we do what we do is true across domains.

00:10:10.000 You know, you mentioned some of the organizations I've worked with.

00:10:12.000 I've certainly worked with big consumer packaged goods companies and technologies, but I've also worked with B2B companies.

00:10:18.000 I've also worked with political campaigns.

00:10:20.000 I've also worked with, you know, people that want to change their kids behavior, the way the education system works.

00:10:25.000 And so the principles are very much the same.

00:10:28.000 How we apply the principles differ.

00:10:30.000 We have to understand how to apply them in a given context.

00:10:33.000 You know, what what makes a 50 year old business executive look good is different than what makes a 15 year old girl look good. 0.99

00:10:38.000 Right. They they care about how they look.

00:10:41.000 Different things make them look good.

00:10:43.000 But that principle of caring how they look and sharing things that make them look good is true across domains.

00:10:48.000 Based on the amount of research you've done.

00:10:51.000 I mean, you got it now.

00:10:52.000 What two decades of research in this space?

00:10:54.000 Maybe even more than that, because more than two decades of research in the space.

00:10:58.000 Your your experience.

00:11:00.000 I'm curious.

00:11:01.000 What wins a great product?

00:11:04.000 Okay.

00:11:05.000 A great marketing idea.

00:11:06.000 A great sales team.

00:11:08.000 A great culture or great storytelling. 0.99

00:11:10.000 So you got a great product, but you suck at the rest.

00:11:13.000 Does that do better than a great marketing idea?

00:11:15.000 Great sales team.

00:11:16.000 Great culture.

00:11:17.000 Great storytelling.

00:11:18.000 I'm curious to know what you're going to say based on all the different case studies you've read and experienced personally yourself.

00:11:23.000 Yeah.

00:11:24.000 So that's a that's a tough one to answer.

00:11:25.000 I'll start by ruling out what I don't think is the winner.

00:11:28.000 Right.

00:11:29.000 So we'll go, you know, having a great product is certainly important.

00:11:32.000 It's hard to win with a terrible product, but there are lots of great products and services that we've never heard of.

00:11:38.000 It's crazy.

00:11:39.000 Right.

00:11:40.000 So many, you know, early stage technology companies would say something along the lines of we've built this thing that no one has ever built before.

00:11:46.000 And I say, well, that's interesting, but who needs it?

00:11:48.000 And they go, no, no, you don't understand.

00:11:50.000 No one's ever done this before.

00:11:51.000 And I say, okay, but who wants this?

00:11:53.000 What need does it fill?

00:11:54.000 What customer is going to going to want to change their behavior to do this?

00:11:57.000 And it's not just about the product being good.

00:12:00.000 Right.

00:12:01.000 It's about everything else that we build around it.

00:12:04.000 It's certainly important to have a good sales team.

00:12:06.000 It's certainly important to have good culture and good organization.

00:12:08.000 But I would say a good story.

00:12:10.000 I would say a good story.

00:12:11.000 I've had to pick one of those.

00:12:12.000 Trump's all of them.

00:12:13.000 Right.

00:12:14.000 A good story is a powerful thing.

00:12:16.000 A good story helps change minds, helps drive action, helps propagate your message because a good story can be memorable and told again.

00:12:24.000 And so that can really be much more important than any of those other things.

00:12:29.000 You have a great sales team.

00:12:31.000 What's wonderful about word of mouth is it turns your customers into the largest sales team you've ever had.

00:12:36.000 Right.

00:12:37.000 Rather than having, you know, five people that are great salesmen, if you can turn all your customers into advocates, suddenly now they're all doing the work for you.

00:12:44.000 Rather than you having to try to convince someone, oh, it's great.

00:12:47.000 Let me tell you why.

00:12:48.000 And I know we'll talk about the catalyst in a few minutes and the challenge of changing minds.

00:12:52.000 You know, it's really hard to change someone's mind if you're self-interested.

00:12:55.000 People know that you as a salesperson are trying to change their mind.

00:12:58.000 But if their friend says, hey, I bought that product.

00:13:00.000 It was great.

00:13:01.000 If their colleague says, you know, I listened to that podcast.

00:13:03.000 It was wonderful.

00:13:04.000 They're going to be much more likely to change.

00:13:06.000 So word of mouth is much more powerful than traditional advertising and much more powerful than great salespeople.

00:13:11.000 Yeah.

00:13:12.000 You know, I don't do what you do professionally.

00:13:14.000 We created a video back in October of 2015 called Life of an Entrepreneur in 90 Seconds.

00:13:21.000 Okay.

00:13:22.000 And this video originally, we uploaded it on YouTube on October 30th.

00:13:27.000 And we were so excited.

00:13:29.000 Oh, my gosh, this thing's going to at that point, you know, my YouTube channel probably has thousand subscribers, 500 subscribers.

00:13:34.000 Nothing's really going on.

00:13:35.000 And Facebook, I may have two or three thousand Facebook fans.

00:13:39.000 So the video goes out on YouTube titled Best Motivational Video of 2015.

00:13:44.000 Okay.

00:13:45.000 And, you know, obviously, it's a very unique title.

00:13:49.000 We gave it right.

00:13:50.000 No one's ever come up with that title before.

00:13:52.000 And in 24 hours, that thing gets 2,500 views.

00:13:55.000 Total flop.

00:13:56.000 Right.

00:13:57.000 Nothing crazy.

00:13:58.000 So then it's October 31st.

00:14:00.000 It's Friday.

00:14:01.000 It's Halloween.

00:14:02.000 I'm about to take my kids to the mall.

00:14:03.000 I decide to upload it on Facebook with the title Life of an Entrepreneur 90 Seconds.

00:14:08.000 Okay.

00:14:09.000 And I said on the below tag an entrepreneur.

00:14:11.000 We went.

00:14:12.000 I didn't even think about it.

00:14:13.000 Came back two and a half hours later.

00:14:15.000 Look at it.

00:14:16.000 It says 300,000 views.

00:14:17.000 I'm like, what?

00:14:18.000 It's gotta be a mistake.

00:14:19.000 I go to sleep.

00:14:20.000 I wake up in the morning.

00:14:21.000 It's got 10 million views in 12 hours.

00:14:24.000 Every single one of my company websites are down.

00:14:27.000 I have thousands of emails and messages coming in all over the place saying this video resonated with me.

00:14:33.000 It connected with me, et cetera, et cetera.

00:14:35.000 I cannot believe what it says.

00:14:36.000 But you're right.

00:14:37.000 It is a form of storytelling that it connected with the audience when they see a story and they say, you know what?

00:14:42.000 And then from there, it did change the way where customers started wanting to tell the story.

00:14:47.000 And next thing you know, 30, 40, 50 million views later in the first 30 days, it's a complete different story.

00:14:52.000 How does one who's sitting there for yourself, when you watch people online, because I bet you're probably looking at a lot of influencers and you're looking at different marketing and brand, but specifically in this area of an influencer.

00:15:03.000 So think about, I'm a person that runs a business.

00:15:07.000 I run a decent business.

00:15:08.000 I do five, 10 million a year, but I'm really trying to crack this, you know, influencer marketing thing for myself.

00:15:16.000 I want to be an influencer.

00:15:17.000 People don't know me.

00:15:18.000 People don't know me.

00:15:19.000 I may have a few hundred people that follow me or a few thousand people that follow me, but I haven't had it yet.

00:15:24.000 What direction?

00:15:25.000 What are my first five moves that I need to make?

00:15:27.000 I know the six steps you just gave me here right now, what the triggers are, but what are the first five steps I take to say, okay, here's how I go out and create a name for myself.

00:15:37.000 And I become a voice in my space as an influencer.

00:15:40.000 How does one go about doing that?

00:15:41.000 Yeah.

00:15:42.000 I mean, I would start by focusing less on the technology and more on the psychology, right?

00:15:47.000 More on why people talk and share.

00:15:50.000 Who are my existing customers?

00:15:52.000 You know, what do they like about me?

00:15:54.000 What are the stories that they may or may not be telling about me already?

00:15:58.000 And how can I build from there, right?

00:16:00.000 If we don't understand the people that we're trying to reach, if we don't understand why people find our business or ideas attractive, it's going to be very hard to become successful.

00:16:10.000 And just to be clear, you know, lots of people do some things by luck, right?

00:16:13.000 You know, once in a while, sure, you know, something that they do, one out of a thousand things will hit.

00:16:19.000 But if we understand why that hit, why it was successful, we can engineer it to be more successful.

00:16:25.000 We did a study a few years ago where we analyzed thousands of articles from one of the largest newspapers in the United States.

00:16:30.000 We did text analysis, natural language processing to understand what emotions those articles evoked.

00:16:35.000 And we can say, look, you know, you add more emotion to an appeal, for example, an online video, an article.

00:16:41.000 You're 20 to 30 percent more likely to make something like the most emailed list, right?

00:16:45.000 It's not just saying here's an example of a hit and here's an example of a failure.

00:16:49.000 But let's codify by looking at the underlying data and mechanisms of how these things work, essentially a recipe for success, right?

00:16:57.000 Just like you, you know, you understand how to cook cakes, you know what to add into the mix so that it tastes better.

00:17:02.000 We can say, look, use this recipe and we can make whether it's our content online or our messages offline go viral.

00:17:10.000 And I know there's a tendency to want to focus online, right?

00:17:13.000 A lot of attention a day online.

00:17:15.000 But I would say don't just think about online.

00:17:17.000 Also think about offline, right?

00:17:18.000 It's great if a video goes viral, but you don't just want that video to go viral.

00:17:22.000 You want the emails and the calls and those other things that you got to happen.

00:17:26.000 That's what you care about.

00:17:27.000 You don't care if a million people clicked on something.

00:17:29.000 You care, well, do they watch that thing?

00:17:31.000 Does that thing change their behavior?

00:17:33.000 Does it lead them to become a customer or client or interested in what I'm doing?

00:17:38.000 So I think at the end of the day, too many people focus on the number of views their content gets online and not whether it's actually moving the needle in terms of action.

00:17:48.000 People share a number of things online that they don't even watch.

00:17:51.000 And many things online, even someone has a lot of followers, don't necessarily get attention.

00:17:56.000 And so that's why I love offline.

00:17:58.000 What's wonderful about a one-to-one conversation is that person is listening, right?

00:18:02.000 When you have a one-to-one conversation, that person is listening to you.

00:18:05.000 When you post something online, sometimes the people are listening, but sometimes they may be doing two or three other things while they're watching your content.

00:18:12.000 And so you want to make sure, yes, it's a great way to spread messages, but don't only think online, think offline as well.

00:18:19.000 And make sure to be customer focused, right?

00:18:21.000 Make sure to be focused on the consumer, the customer you're hoping to reach, and understanding what drives them.

00:18:26.000 Can you tell me what you mean by face-to-face one-on-one instead of online?

00:18:30.000 Oh, just offline word of mouth, right?

00:18:33.000 I mean, I think, you know, sometimes we think about word of mouth, we think, well, you must be talking about social media.

00:18:37.000 Ninety percent of word of mouth is face-to-face.

00:18:40.000 You know, spouses talking to one another over the dinner table, at least pre-COVID times, going out and grabbing a drink with friends.

00:18:46.000 Regular, everyday interactions, not as exciting, not as, you know, doesn't have a million views, but equally important for actually driving action at the end of the day.

00:18:56.000 Yeah, I know in your book you talk a lot about the videos, examples you give, and how many views they got.

00:19:01.000 You gave the example of that one girl who Friday, Friday, Friday gets 145 million views, and the parents spent $4,000 to put this video together, and it ends up being one of the most hated videos of the year.

00:19:15.000 You talk about that.

00:19:16.000 You talk about the other video where this guy's selling his blender, and he puts the phone in there, and it turns black.

00:19:22.000 And, hey, this is my blender.

00:19:24.000 I still have another iPhone.

00:19:25.000 These videos made a lot of, you said 700%, I think is the number you said, where that one company went up simply because the video that came up.

00:19:33.000 And the reason why I'm sharing this part with you, a lot of entrepreneurs, they'll message me and they'll say, Pat, you know the Dollar Shave Club company that sold $4 billion?

00:19:42.000 You know which ad I'm talking about, where he's walking through with the blow dryer and all this other stuff.

00:19:47.000 And you know what? Screw it.

00:19:48.000 I'm going to buy a Dollar Shave.

00:19:49.000 I'm going to join the Dollar Shave Club.

00:19:50.000 I'm going to buy the membership here, and I'm going to go out there and do XYZ.

00:19:54.000 For somebody, Jonah, who is not great at creating these types of storytelling, like you'll sit there and tell somebody, hey, let's come up with a story.

00:20:04.000 Who needs to be in the room to come up with these stories?

00:20:08.000 Meaning, is your strategy, like if somebody hires you, do you go in a room with five people and you ask a series of questions that leads to answers?

00:20:16.000 And then eventually you say, well, if this is the motive you want, if this is a call to action you want, where do we want them to end up and why should they buy this and why are people liking this?

00:20:24.000 What is the step-by-step process and who's in the room that can help bring out these ideas?

00:20:29.000 And what are some of the questions that's being asked?

00:20:31.000 I know it's a pretty loaded question, three questions within one, but I'm curious to know the actual action steps of how Sampong can go about doing this.

00:20:39.000 Yeah, and so it's tough to do this in five minutes, but I'll give you a sense of it.

00:20:43.000 And I'm, you know, this is the type of thing I do with all sorts of clients, but I think I start always, we start always by saying, well, imagine you could script a conversation between an existing customer or a potential customer.

00:20:54.000 What would that person say, right?

00:20:56.000 Very often come and say, I want more word of mouth.

00:20:58.000 I want people to talk about me.

00:20:59.000 Rarely do they think about, well, actually, what am I hoping someone says, right?

00:21:03.000 And in particular, they're not going to talk about 10 different things.

00:21:06.000 If they could talk about one thing about me, what would that thing be?

00:21:09.000 I call that a kernel, right?

00:21:10.000 That's often what a story is built around.

00:21:12.000 What is the kernel, the attribute, the value proposition, the differentiator?

00:21:17.000 What would you want them to talk about?

00:21:18.000 You have great service.

00:21:19.000 You know, for that blender, for example, that video shows how powerful the blender is.

00:21:24.000 It doesn't talk about how much the blender costs.

00:21:25.000 It doesn't talk about where you can find it.

00:21:27.000 All it does, it shows one thing, how powerful it is, and it does it really well.

00:21:31.000 And so, before you can build a really good story, you have to think, essentially, what's the moral that I want that story to tell?

00:21:38.000 You know, think back to a story like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, right?

00:21:41.000 That's a great story.

00:21:42.000 It's a highly engaging story.

00:21:43.000 At the end of that story, you learn that lying is a bad idea.

00:21:46.000 That's the moral of that story.

00:21:48.000 Now, if I'm a brand, I can say, well, let me tell a really engaging story.

00:21:52.000 But if I pick the wrong story, and it gets across the wrong moral, no one's learning what I want them to learn, right?

00:21:58.000 If they remember the story, but they don't remember me, if they remember me, but they don't remember why they should work with me, it's not going to be a beneficial story.

00:22:06.000 There are lots of ads and videos that go viral that don't necessarily move the needle for brands, because the key is not just, hey, I like this story, or even I remember this story, but the story teaches me something, just like a moral of a parable teaches me something that's then going to drive me to action.

00:22:23.000 And so, I start with that moral or that kernel.

00:22:25.000 What is that thing that you want someone to communicate?

00:22:29.000 And then, right, if you're not a great storyteller, no problem.

00:22:32.000 Talk to your existing customers.

00:22:33.000 What are the stories that they're already telling?

00:22:36.000 Talk to your salespeople.

00:22:37.000 What are the stories that they're already telling?

00:22:39.000 Often, you don't have to generate your own stories.

00:22:41.000 All you have to do is surface some of the stories that are out there already, right?

00:22:45.000 Even if you have a five-person sales organization, you have 100 customers, you know, there's at least 20, 30, maybe even 40 stories that are out there already.

00:22:52.000 Some of them are better than others.

00:22:54.000 If you just capture some of those stories, you figure out which of them seem to be working already, then you can almost act like a hub of a hub and spoke and push it out to the rest of the network.

00:23:04.000 But you don't have to come up with it yourself.

00:23:05.000 You don't have to be creative.

00:23:06.000 You have to be strategic and identify the really good stories.

00:23:10.000 And I do lots of workshops, both in executive education at Wharton and with clients, where people always want to jump to the end, right?

00:23:17.000 They want to go to the punchline of the story and everybody's going to laugh and it's going to be great.

00:23:21.000 But I often ask them to step back and say, okay, what did someone learn from that story?

00:23:25.000 And they go, I don't know.

00:23:26.000 It's a funny story.

00:23:27.000 If you don't learn anything from the story, right, your job is not the entertainment business.

00:23:31.000 We're not necessarily as a company, right?

00:23:34.000 If I'm selling something, I'm not in the entertainment business.

00:23:36.000 I'm in the business of selling that thing.

00:23:38.000 If at the end of the day, they don't buy that thing, maybe they enjoyed my story, but it's not going to move the needle.

00:23:43.000 And so we have to make sure the story, the moral of that story, the kernel of the story gets across what we want it to.

00:23:49.000 Very, very big point.

00:23:50.000 By the way, let's talk about your latest book, The Catalyst.

00:23:52.000 Yeah.

00:23:53.000 So how does one go about changing anyone's mind?

00:23:56.000 You know, so I'll tell you a quick story.

00:23:58.000 So Contagious comes out, and as I mentioned, sort of changed my life a little bit.

00:24:01.000 Before that, I was an academic, spent 90% of my time doing research and teaching, 10% of the time doing, you know, consulting and speaking here and there.

00:24:09.000 Contagious comes out, I thought it would do okay.

00:24:11.000 It ends up doing much better than I ever imagined.

00:24:14.000 So, you know, half a million copies, 35 languages around the world.

00:24:17.000 And suddenly, you know, everyone from the Googles and the Facebooks and the Nikes to small startups are calling for help.

00:24:23.000 And so I got to learn a lot about how business is done in today's day and age.

00:24:28.000 And I realized that a lot of people had the same problem, which is they all had something that they wanted to change.

00:24:34.000 Right?

00:24:35.000 So salespeople wanted to change the client's mind and marketers wanted to change consumer behavior. 0.82

00:24:40.000 Leaders wanted to transform organizational culture and employees wanted to change their boss's mind.

00:24:44.000 You know, startups wanted to change industries and nonprofits wanted to change the world.

00:24:49.000 But change is really hard.

00:24:51.000 Often we push and we pressure and we cajole, we give more reasons, we add more facts and figures.

00:24:56.000 We think if I just make one more phone call, if I just make one more PowerPoint presentation, people will change.

00:25:02.000 But often they don't, right?

00:25:03.000 Often it's like nothing at all happened.

00:25:05.000 And so the question I started asking myself is, could there be a better way?

00:25:08.000 And I started doing some interviews.

00:25:10.000 I started interviewing, you know, great business leaders, startup founders, great salespeople.

00:25:14.000 I started interviewing hostage negotiators and substance abuse counselors.

00:25:18.000 I started interviewing parenting experts, anyone who was trying to change minds in one situation or another.

00:25:24.000 And I started to realize that there was a very different approach out there rather than pushing people really thinking about change a different way and changing the strategy we use to change minds.

00:25:34.000 And so what did you find?

00:25:36.000 So instead of pushing people, what was it?

00:25:38.000 Yeah.

00:25:39.000 So, you know, think for a moment, imagine you're in a room and there's a chair in the middle of the room and you want to move that chair.

00:25:43.000 What do we often do?

00:25:44.000 We push that chair, right?

00:25:45.000 We push it in the right direction.

00:25:46.000 We think it will go.

00:25:47.000 And that works really well for physical objects.

00:25:49.000 And so we think the same thing is true of people.

00:25:51.000 I push someone, they'll go in the right direction.

00:25:53.000 The problem is when you push people, as we all know, anyone who has a three-year-old or anyone who's tried to sell anything knows, they push back.

00:26:00.000 Rather than just going along, sliding across the floor, they think about all the reasons why they don't want you to do, why they don't want to do what you're doing.

00:26:07.000 And so rather than thinking about what could I get someone to change, what you find great catalysts do is they ask a slightly but importantly different question.

00:26:14.000 Why hasn't that person changed already?

00:26:17.000 What are the barriers or obstacles that are in their way that are preventing them from changing?

00:26:22.000 And how can I mitigate those barriers?

00:26:24.000 It's almost like if you've ever been parked on an incline, right?

00:26:26.000 You get in your car, you turn your key in the ignition, you stick your foot on the gas.

00:26:31.000 If the car doesn't go, you just think you need more gas.

00:26:33.000 More pushing will get it to go.

00:26:35.000 But we rarely go, wait, there's that parking brake that's depressed, right?

00:26:38.000 That's getting in the way.

00:26:39.000 And so what the book is all about is, well, what are the five common parking brakes that come up again and again, those five common obstacles that get in the way?

00:26:47.000 And how by mitigating those obstacles, removing those barriers, can we change anything?

00:26:52.000 So what are those five?

00:26:53.000 Yeah.

00:26:54.000 So similar to contagious, I put them in a framework.

00:26:57.000 The first is reactance.

00:26:59.000 The second is endowment.

00:27:00.000 The third is distance.

00:27:01.000 The fourth is uncertainty.

00:27:02.000 And the fifth is corroborating evidence.

00:27:04.000 Uh, together they spell the word reduce, uh, which is exactly what great catalysts do.

00:27:08.000 They don't push harder.

00:27:09.000 They don't provide more facts and more reasons and more information.

00:27:12.000 Instead, they reduce, uh, the barriers to change.

00:27:15.000 They identify those parking brakes or those obstacles and they mitigate them.

00:27:19.000 So react in, in, uh, what's the second one?

00:27:24.000 Uh, reactance, endowment, endowment, distance, uncertainty, uh, and corroborating evidence.

00:27:30.000 Corroborating evidence.

00:27:33.000 So is it, is it almost like you're gathering Intel?

00:27:37.000 Is that, is that a form of gathering Intel?

00:27:39.000 Is that what you would say?

00:27:40.000 A little bit.

00:27:41.000 You know, what I found is when you often ask people why a change didn't happen, they don't

00:27:46.000 know.

00:27:47.000 So you talk to a salesperson, you say, well, why didn't the customer or client buy something?

00:27:50.000 I don't know.

00:27:51.000 You know, I, I, I gave my pitch.

00:27:53.000 I gave them all the reasons why they should do something and they didn't change.

00:27:56.000 We're so focused on the outcome that we want to achieve.

00:27:59.000 Um, the thing we want to get to, we rarely stop to go, well, why hasn't that person changed?

00:28:04.000 What's the barrier that's getting in their way?

00:28:06.000 You know, when we go to the doctor's office, imagine you went to the doctor's office and

00:28:09.000 the doctor, the first thing they said was, let me put a cast on your leg.

00:28:12.000 You go, wait a second.

00:28:13.000 You don't even know what the problem is.

00:28:15.000 We do the same thing all the time, right?

00:28:17.000 Anytime we're trying to change someone, we focus on why they should change rather than

00:28:21.000 starting by going, well, hold on.

00:28:22.000 Hold on.

00:28:23.000 Let me understand you well enough.

00:28:25.000 So I understand why you haven't changed already.

00:28:27.000 So I can figure out what those barriers are and mitigate them.

00:28:30.000 Got it.

00:28:31.000 So you might take in a moment and breaking down these five things individually, even if

00:28:35.000 it's 20 seconds a piece.

00:28:37.000 Sure.

00:28:38.000 Yeah.

00:28:39.000 So, uh, I have a three year old at home.

00:28:40.000 Uh, so I'm very familiar with the idea of reactance.

00:28:42.000 Uh, but the simple idea of reactance is when we push people, they push back, right?

00:28:46.000 When we tell someone what they should do, whether it's, uh, go to bed, eat your vegetables,

00:28:51.000 uh, buy this product, or, you know, wear a mask.

00:28:54.000 Whenever we tell people to do something, they often push back.

00:28:57.000 They often don't want to do it.

00:28:59.000 And so it's all about how we can give people their freedom and their autonomy back and encourage

00:29:03.000 them to feel like they have choice.

00:29:05.000 Uh, endowment, uh, is the simple fact that we have the status quo bias.

00:29:09.000 We're attached to whatever we're doing already.

00:29:11.000 We buy the same products, use the same services, go to the same place for vacation.

00:29:16.000 Uh, you know, shop at the same grocery store.

00:29:18.000 When we were driving to work, save the tame drive to work, uh, every day.

00:29:21.000 We do what we've done in the past because it's easier.

00:29:23.000 And so we have to figure out how to people get people to let go of what they're doing

00:29:27.000 already, make them realize that what they've been doing isn't as safe as we think.

00:29:30.000 We think doing nothing is costless.

00:29:32.000 Doing nothing is often actually very expensive.

00:29:34.000 We need to make people realize that a distance simply often when we ask for too much, people

00:29:39.000 say, well, no way, right?

00:29:40.000 When you ask for something that's too far from where they are in the moment, they're unwilling

00:29:44.000 to listen.

00:29:45.000 And so we have to shrink the size of our asks and, uh, manage distance, uh, a little

00:29:49.000 bit, a little bit better.

00:29:50.000 Uh, uncertainty, uh, anytime there's something new, uh, there's uncertainty involved.

00:29:54.000 There are switching costs, uh, to buy a new product, to use a new service.

00:29:58.000 It costs us something to do it.

00:30:00.000 And even if the old thing isn't perfect, at least we know what the problems are.

00:30:04.000 With new things, we don't know what the problems are.

00:30:06.000 And that uncertainty, that fear of the unknown often stems action.

00:30:09.000 And so we have to alleviate uncertainty by lowering the barriers to change.

00:30:13.000 Uh, and then last but not least is corroborating evidence.

00:30:16.000 A simple idea there is, you know, sometimes when one person tells us something, it's not

00:30:19.000 enough to tip the scales.

00:30:20.000 Sometimes we need multiple sources.

00:30:22.000 Uh, we need more proof.

00:30:23.000 Uh, you know, if someone says that you have a tail, there's an old adage.

00:30:26.000 If someone says you have a tail, you laugh.

00:30:28.000 If five people say you have a tail, you turn around to take a look.

00:30:31.000 Simple idea, right?

00:30:32.000 Providing more proof from multiple others can often tip the scales to drive action.

00:30:37.000 So essentially as testimonials as the last one.

00:30:40.000 A little bit, but I'd even say more thinking about what are the right sources of evidence

00:30:44.000 and how can we concentrate that evidence to make people more likely to, to take action.

00:30:48.000 Meaning credibility, like a, a, a, a source with a lot of credibility, credibility behind

00:30:53.000 it.

00:30:54.000 Is that what you're saying?

00:30:55.000 I'd even say the following.

00:30:56.000 Even if someone's very credible, tells you they like something.

00:30:58.000 Yeah.

00:30:59.000 That's one piece of evidence.

00:31:00.000 They can tell you they like it till they're blue in the face.

00:31:02.000 That's still one person's opinion.

00:31:04.000 What you're still trying to do is go, okay, and I know you like it and you may be a very

00:31:07.000 credible source, but will I like it, right?

00:31:09.000 What does the fact that you like it mean for, for me, right?

00:31:12.000 There's a sort of a translation going on, a translation problem.

00:31:15.000 And if there's always one person, I can always say, well, it's you, you like things,

00:31:19.000 you're a certain person, but if there's five people, it's much harder to go, wait,

00:31:23.000 if five people like it, I'm probably going to like it as well.

00:31:26.000 Particularly the more similar they are to me and the more that evidence is concentrated,

00:31:30.000 the more it's going to drive action.

00:31:31.000 Jonah, what, what brands do you see that do a great job at this?

00:31:35.000 And what brands do you see that have made a mistake with this?

00:31:38.000 Are there examples you can share with us?

00:31:40.000 You know, I don't think of just brands.

00:31:42.000 I think even of organizations as a whole, right?

00:31:44.000 So think about the situation we're in at the moment with, with COVID, right?

00:31:48.000 And the coronavirus, you know, the government and public health organizations did the same thing

00:31:53.000 they've done for decades.

00:31:54.000 If they want people to do something, tell them to do it, wear a mask.

00:31:57.000 You know, if they want people not to do something, you know, don't go grocery shopping,

00:32:00.000 stay at home.

00:32:01.000 They told them not to do it.

00:32:02.000 And the problem, what that does is that often induces reactance, right?

00:32:05.000 If someone tells you not to do something, even if you might be willing to do it in the first place,

00:32:09.000 the fact that they told you to do it makes you less interested in doing it.

00:32:12.000 Don't, don't tell me what to do, right?

00:32:14.000 We essentially have an anti-persuasion radar where we want to feel like we're making our own choices.

00:32:20.000 If we feel like someone's selling us, if we feel like someone's trying to persuade us, our defenses go up, right?

00:32:25.000 That brick wall goes up.

00:32:26.000 We ignore the message.

00:32:27.000 We avoid it.

00:32:28.000 Or even worse, we counter-argue.

00:32:30.000 We sit there and think about all the reasons why what that person is suggesting is a bad idea.

00:32:35.000 Why it won't work, right?

00:32:36.000 Why it's not going to be effective.

00:32:38.000 And so instead, we have to figure out how to reduce reactance by allowing people to make those choices for themselves.

00:32:44.000 Right?

00:32:45.000 So, you know, think about in the health case, right?

00:32:47.000 Rather than telling people, well, wear a mask or don't do this, you know, instead, ask a question.

00:32:52.000 You could say something like, hey, you know, imagine your child was around or your elderly grandparent.

00:32:58.000 Would you want everyone else to wear a mask?

00:33:00.000 Well, that person says yes, right?

00:33:02.000 Then you can say something, well, why aren't you wearing a mask at the moment, right?

00:33:05.000 Highlighting a gap between their attitudes and their action, right?

00:33:09.000 Not telling them what to do, but encouraging them to go, wait a second, if I would want other people to do something, why aren't I doing that thing?

00:33:17.000 Or other things, you know, I talk about providing a menu.

00:33:19.000 Essentially, basically giving people choice.

00:33:21.000 You know, if you're in a meeting, a sales meeting, for example, and you're telling everybody, hey, this is what you should do, this is the course of action you should take, everyone's sitting there.

00:33:29.000 And they seem like they're listening, but really what they're doing is thinking about all the reasons why what you're suggesting is not going to work.

00:33:35.000 It's going to be too expensive.

00:33:36.000 Of course, you would say it's good.

00:33:38.000 You're the salesperson.

00:33:39.000 How are we going to integrate this with our existing solutions?

00:33:41.000 You know, they're basically doing counter-arguing.

00:33:44.000 If instead, what great salespeople do, great consultants do, is they give people a choice.

00:33:48.000 They don't just give them one option.

00:33:49.000 They give them multiple.

00:33:50.000 A or B.

00:33:51.000 A, B, or C.

00:33:52.000 Because what it does is it shifts the role of the listener.

00:33:56.000 Now, rather than sitting there thinking about all the reasons why they don't like what you're suggesting, instead they're sitting there going, huh, which of these do I like better?

00:34:03.000 Which makes them much more likely to pick one at the end of the meeting.

00:34:07.000 Because what you've done is you've provided a menu.

00:34:09.000 You've given them that freedom of choice.

00:34:11.000 And because they feel like they're free to choose, they're much more likely to pick something.

00:34:15.000 Who in your life was very good at doing this to you?

00:34:19.000 You know, I've been asked this question before.

00:34:22.000 And what I think is very funny is I don't think my friends, my colleagues, or my spouse would say I'm particularly persuasive, right?

00:34:29.000 They wouldn't go, oh, Jonah, you know, he's really great at changing everyone's mind.

00:34:34.000 So hopefully this book has helped me by learning these techniques, become better at it.

00:34:39.000 Because I think, you know, often we see these things in a particular domain, but we don't apply it as widely as we could.

00:34:46.000 Like reactants, for example, right?

00:34:48.000 You know, maybe we've tried that with our kids where we say, oh, you know, telling them to put their pajamas on isn't working.

00:34:53.000 Telling them to eat their vegetables isn't working.

00:34:55.000 But saying, do you want to put your pajama top or your bottom on first?

00:34:58.000 Do you want to eat your broccoli or your chicken first?

00:35:00.000 And that does, right?

00:35:01.000 We've come across some of these ideas in some of our life, but rarely do we make the connection across different domains of life.

00:35:08.000 And so what I think has been needed about this book is to see these tools in action in so many different places and to start using them more in my own life as well.

00:35:17.000 I guess what I was asking was who is good at doing this to you, like a parent, father, mother, who was good at getting you to believe that you're making the choice on the decision you're making?

00:35:26.000 You know, I think I think people do this often in my life, at least in one way or another, they reduce uncertainty.

00:35:38.000 So, you know, think about companies that have given free shipping away to encourage people to take action like the Zappos of the world or think about companies use freemium like Dropbox or like Pandora that lower that upfront cost that get us to try things.

00:35:53.000 They haven't focused on reactants per se, but they've certainly alleviated uncertainty is one thing they've they've done quite well.

00:36:00.000 You know, my brother, in some ways, has done a good job with ass of his of shrinking distance.

00:36:05.000 And so I think different people have used different tools and it's been great to bring them all together.

00:36:10.000 Very cool. So let's talk about a couple of different things and then we'll wrap up.

00:36:14.000 So are you following any of the presidential campaign?

00:36:17.000 I have a little bit. Yes, not not heavily, but a little.

00:36:21.000 What do you think is doing a better job getting their message out there?

00:36:25.000 And are you seeing patterns that they're using that have to do with both Contagious and Catalyst?

00:36:31.000 Yeah, I mean, I'll say a couple of things.

00:36:33.000 You know, Contagious came out before the 2016 election.

00:36:38.000 So obviously I couldn't talk about the 2016 election in that book.

00:36:41.000 If you look at both what Obama ran on and what Trump ran on, they ran on something very similar, though different in some ways.

00:36:49.000 Obama ran on hope, inspiration.

00:36:51.000 Trump ran on anger and anxiety.

00:36:53.000 Both of them used high arousal emotions to drive people to share their message and use that to drive action.

00:36:59.000 And that's something I talked a lot about in Contagious, right?

00:37:02.000 Often we think it's about functional reasons.

00:37:04.000 In politics, for example, it's all about the bills and the policy details and all those things.

00:37:09.000 But I think if the last few elections have taught us anything, it's stories, emotional stories, whether positive or negative, as long as they're high arousal emotions.

00:37:18.000 So anger and anxiety are not the same as hope and inspiration.

00:37:21.000 But both of them fire us up to take action.

00:37:24.000 Right. You know, think about seeing a snake.

00:37:26.000 Right. We get scared.

00:37:27.000 That fear motivates us to take action, run away.

00:37:30.000 Hope and inspiration excites us and motivates us to take action.

00:37:33.000 And so both candidates leverage that in different but interesting ways to motivate action.

00:37:39.000 I think you've seen the same thing more recently, right, where, you know, Biden, who used to be a very sort of policy person,

00:37:46.000 is still talking about policy but talking much more in a stories and emotional way.

00:37:50.000 Trump has always tended to talk in stories in terms of stories and emotion and really use that to rally his base.

00:37:56.000 And so I think you're seeing both candidates realize, particularly in today's day and age,

00:38:01.000 it's not information or policy proposals necessarily that drive action, whether fortunately or unfortunately, and I think often unfortunately.

00:38:09.000 It's often stories and sound bites that are packaged and understand the fact that high arousal motion drive sharing that ultimately drive action.

00:38:18.000 What are your thoughts with media on the direction media is taking on how to either change people's minds and influence them to, you know, think one way or another?

00:38:29.000 What role is media playing by using some of these strategies that you're talking about to get their message out there?

00:38:35.000 Are you seeing that taking place?

00:38:37.000 What I think is interesting is the media is much more fragmented than it used to be, right?

00:38:41.000 So it used to be if you wanted to change people's minds, you know, the best thing you could do would be to buy an ad on one of the major networks because everybody would see it.

00:38:49.000 The problem now, first of all, nobody watches television.

00:38:51.000 Very few people watch television.

00:38:53.000 Many fewer people watch television.

00:38:55.000 And even if they do, there are now so many different channels that people are watching that the audience is much more fragmented.

00:39:00.000 And even if they're theoretically watching a television channel, they're probably also on their computer.

00:39:05.000 They're probably also looking at Twitter or something else while they're doing it.

00:39:08.000 And so the attention is not there that it might have been in the past.

00:39:12.000 What I think is so neat about social media, and if you really think about the term of social media, what it is at the core is everyone has their own media channel.

00:39:20.000 Each of us has a set of followers who probably don't see everything that we post, but in some sense are tuning into to our channel.

00:39:28.000 And so this fragmentation makes it a lot harder for one message to hit everyone at the same time.

00:39:34.000 That said, sharing becomes even more important, right?

00:39:38.000 Because people are turning to social, because people are turning to their peers for their news and information, sharing becomes a much more important way than traditional advertising to get a message out there.

00:39:49.000 Not only is traditional advertising much more expensive than word of mouth, which is free, but it's much less persuasive.

00:39:55.000 And so I think we have to understand how word of mouth works, and we have to understand how to change minds.

00:40:00.000 Otherwise, it's really hard to get our ideas, get them out there.

00:40:03.000 It goes back to you talking about the power of one-on-one and word of mouth marketing, which is, you know, more important because if you can win one-on-one, if you can win through word of mouth, you're going to potentially be able to compete with these guys that have the bigger budgets to advertise on TV and spend the tens of millions of dollars they're doing.

00:40:20.000 It's almost like the great equalizer with what's going on today, if those that can learn on the one-on-one side.

00:40:25.000 So here's another question for you. Going back to, I asked it from you earlier, and we kind of went through process of both your books.

00:40:33.000 Now the audience kind of has an idea of what was discussed in Contagious and what was discussed in the Catalyst.

00:40:38.000 And my recommendation, if you're watching this, it's 1-100 of what he talks about in the book.

00:40:43.000 So we're going to put the links below for you to buy. I'll be very transparent with you guys.

00:40:47.000 I've not read the Catalyst, but I've read Contagious, I don't know how many times.

00:40:52.000 Every marketer needs to read Contagious. And based on some of the other five markers, I need to go buy myself the latest book, which is the Catalyst.

00:41:00.000 But, you know, when you watch folks out there who are storytelling, okay, you'll see the rock who gets out there and a crisis has taken place.

00:41:10.000 And he has a method of telling the story that resonates with an audience, okay?

00:41:15.000 You see Ben Shapiro, different style. You see Candace Owens, different style.

00:41:21.000 You see AOC, complete different style. You see AJ Lo, different style.

00:41:26.000 You see these musicians, these artists, these politicians, these pundits that are going out there telling their stories.

00:41:33.000 How do you see it where somebody else can say, I mean, I guess the question I'm trying to ask is, does somebody watch and say, you know, I can't be like that person's style.

00:41:43.000 It just doesn't fit my personality. I resonate with this person's style.

00:41:47.000 What does one do to match to the other person's style?

00:41:51.000 Because sometimes you see people are acting, like you said earlier, when you said, I think in one of the videos, you said how you saw one commercial where Joe Montana was wearing Skechers shoes.

00:42:03.000 And you said, I just don't believe you. Is Joe Montana broke? Does he need to make money?

00:42:07.000 Like, it just didn't make any sense. And I agree with you when I saw that.

00:42:11.000 I went to the state when I first time watched that commercial of Joe Montana. I said, I just don't see Joe as Skechers. 0.63

00:42:17.000 It doesn't make any sense to me. Right. Yeah. So money. Right.

00:42:21.000 How does one align their personality and style to the messaging to be able to still make impact and change people's minds?

00:42:29.000 Yeah, I think this builds on something you very nicely said before, which is, you know, we don't have to be the best communicator to win.

00:42:37.000 I think some of us think, you know, oh, I have to be really persuasive person. I have to be, you know, very charismatic.

00:42:43.000 I have to be all of those things. And to be a movie star, you probably do.

00:42:47.000 You know, to be an elected official, you probably do. To be a successful business person, you don't have to be those things. Right.

00:42:54.000 You have to understand what your audience is interested in, the ideas that they care about, how they process information, how their minds works, because you can tell a story.

00:43:04.000 Let's say you're a great storyteller. You tell one person that story. That person may go, oh, my God, you're an amazing storyteller.

00:43:10.000 But if the story itself isn't amazing, they're not going to pass it on. They'll listen to you. But to have the impact you want to have, to have the multiplier you want to have, you've got to get other people to tell your story.

00:43:21.000 And so think about a joke teller, for example. Some of us are great joke tellers, right? You go to a party, someone tells a joke, everybody laughs.

00:43:27.000 But some jokes are so powerful that regardless of who tells them, the joke propagates, right? Because it's just a funny joke. And so it's not the messenger, it's the message.

00:43:36.760 And that's really, I think, one of the main things I would take away from the stuff that I've written and the work that I've done, right, is not just being a great communicator.

00:43:44.500 Sure, it's great if you're really persuasive and confident and charismatic. That's great. But even if you're not, if you're shy, if you're timid, you can still engineer great ideas by building great messages, right?

00:43:55.180 Great messages share themselves. When you get an audience excited about an idea because that idea is so great, they'll go tell other people even when you're not in the room.

00:44:04.220 And so if we're charismatic, sure, the people in the room will go, oh my God, that was great. But they'll do a terrible job of telling other people about it because you're no longer in the room.

00:44:11.200 If the message itself is powerful, it leaves the room with those people and shares itself generation upon generation.

00:44:18.140 Yeah, I like that. Great messages share themselves. That's a very powerful statement.

00:44:22.580 You've got to have a story for a person who wants to share your story rather than you constantly telling your story. It's got to be shareable.

00:44:28.500 Final thoughts here before we wrap up. You know, pandemic is looking like it's coming to an end here.

00:44:34.660 The cases are lower. That's our lore. I'm in Texas. You know, restaurants are going back to 100 percent.

00:44:40.320 A lot of them people are still wearing masks to wear masks.

00:44:42.520 But how much of an opportunity is there for a small business owner or an entrepreneur to use this as a way to tell a story, to get the customers to want to come back to them or even get new customers to come and want to do business with them?

00:44:56.940 Is there a big opportunity today with storytelling on regaining trust or gaining the trust of new customers?

00:45:02.600 Certainly. I mean, I think, you know, as we've discussed a bit, you know, now is a time of huge uncertainty.

00:45:09.280 People hate uncertainty. They want to do the same thing again and again.

00:45:11.740 They've been forced to change in almost every area of their life.

00:45:14.920 And while that's certainly difficult for people and has been quite difficult, it's also an opportunity.

00:45:19.640 Because people have been forced to change, they're looking for new products and services and brands.

00:45:24.400 You know, if you read some of the articles, the trends and what people are buying have been amazing to see.

00:45:29.000 Right. You know, people are buying home gym equipment.

00:45:30.880 Then they're buying teaching equipment for their kids.

00:45:33.200 You know, the next thing is supposed to be, I don't know, outdoor fire pits as it gets colder for winter.

00:45:37.760 And so people are saying, I'm in an unusual situation.

00:45:40.780 How do I deal with the situation?

00:45:42.400 And they're looking to their peers and others to figure out what to do.

00:45:46.120 But what that means is, look, if you're a smaller brand, if you're a smaller company or organization, people haven't used you in the past.

00:45:53.200 Now is a great opportunity to get some more traction.

00:45:56.020 They're willing to open up to challenger brands and organizations they haven't worked with before because it's a time of uncertainty.

00:46:02.460 But I think we can turn that uncertainty into opportunity.

00:46:05.380 Right. I've seen lots of organizations use this to say, hey, free trial.

00:46:08.620 Right. I know stuff. Your life's tough at the moment.

00:46:11.260 Money's a little tough. Free trial.

00:46:13.240 Free trial is great because it's going to give people the experience to figure out whether they like what you're doing.

00:46:17.500 And then they'll stick with you. Right.

00:46:19.300 And so I think great brands or great corporates, great organizations are using this time, not as one of uncertainty, but by turning that uncertainty to opportunity, by knowing what people need, understanding those needs and working to meet them.

00:46:31.140 I'm certain anybody that's in business, a C-suite executive, founder, entrepreneur, salesperson took away a lot from today's meeting with you.

00:46:42.120 Jonah, I appreciate your time.

00:46:43.480 Congrats on your success with your books and spending nearly 20 years going to school, studying everything that has to do with human behavior and marketing.

00:46:50.960 I wish you nothing but the best.

00:46:52.400 And I'm looking forward to reading many more books of you to come in the future.

00:46:55.620 Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.

00:46:56.840 I really appreciate it.

00:46:57.520 Take care. Bye bye.

00:46:58.020 So first of all, if you've never read the book Contagious, I highly recommend it.

00:47:01.680 We'll also put the link to both of his books below for you to go out there in order.

00:47:04.340 But I'm curious to know how you took away from the message on what you can do to have your message become more contagious based on the strategies that he shared with you.

00:47:12.280 Comment below.

00:47:12.840 And if you've never watched a video I did a couple years ago explaining the difference between marketing and sales, click over here to watch that video.

00:47:19.940 And if you're not subscribed to the channel, please do so.

00:47:22.060 Thanks for watching, everybody.

00:47:23.000 Take care. Bye bye.

00:47:28.020 Bye bye.

Valuetainment - September 25, 2020

How Marketers Create Billion Dollar Trends

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