00:04:29.000So from your involvement as you're going through this and you're learning,
00:04:33.000I'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?
00:05:52.000And so, you know, really what I've studied is why people share.
00:05:56.000Not, you know, online versus offline or why they use Facebook versus Instagram versus MySpace, which no one uses anymore.
00:06:03.000But really more sort of the psychological drivers of why we share.
00:06:06.000Why do we talk about one product versus another?
00:06:08.000Why do we talk about, you know, one thing we did this weekend rather than something else?
00:06:12.000Whether 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?
00:06:38.000There's really a science behind why people talk and why they share.
00:06:42.000You 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.
00:06:50.000Again and again, we see the same six factors come up.
00:06:54.000In Contagious, I put those factors in a framework called the STEPS framework.
00:06:58.000It stands for social currency, triggers, emotion, public, practical value and stories.
00:07:04.000Each of those is a psychological driver of why we talk, why we share and leads all sorts of stuff to catch on.
00:07:11.000You mind unpacking each one of those for some people who maybe haven't read the book Contagious?
00:07:15.000Sure. Yeah. And so I'm happy to go into depth one or two of them.
00:07:18.000But a quick overview, you know, social currency, the better something makes us look, the more likely we are to share it.
00:07:24.000Right. So we share. I met a celebrity. I got promoted.
00:07:27.000We don't share. I got fired. And, you know, something bad happened.
00:07:30.000We share stuff that makes us look good rather than stuff that makes us look bad.
00:07:33.000And so there the intuition is, well, how can we make people look good by talking about us as as individuals?
00:07:39.000We think a lot about, well, how do we look?
00:07:41.000We think a lot less about how does that person look when they talk about us.
00:07:44.000And so making others look good triggers, top of mind, tip of tongue.
00:07:48.000Right. Just like peanut butter reminds us of jelly.
00:07:51.000A lot of what we talk about is based on what we're thinking about.
00:07:54.000And so triggers in the environment can remind us to think of things and cause us to talk about and share them.
00:11:40.000So 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.
00:11:46.000And I say, well, that's interesting, but who needs it?
00:11:48.000And they go, no, no, you don't understand.
00:12:37.000Rather 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.
00:12:44.000Rather than you having to try to convince someone, oh, it's great.
00:14:37.000It is a form of storytelling that it connected with the audience when they see a story and they say, you know what?
00:14:42.000And then from there, it did change the way where customers started wanting to tell the story.
00:14:47.000And next thing you know, 30, 40, 50 million views later in the first 30 days, it's a complete different story.
00:14:52.000How 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.
00:15:03.000So think about, I'm a person that runs a business.
00:15:25.000What are my first five moves that I need to make?
00:15:27.000I 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.
00:15:37.000And I become a voice in my space as an influencer.
00:15:54.000What are the stories that they may or may not be telling about me already?
00:15:58.000And how can I build from there, right?
00:16:00.000If 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.
00:16:10.000And just to be clear, you know, lots of people do some things by luck, right?
00:16:13.000You know, once in a while, sure, you know, something that they do, one out of a thousand things will hit.
00:16:19.000But if we understand why that hit, why it was successful, we can engineer it to be more successful.
00:16:25.000We did a study a few years ago where we analyzed thousands of articles from one of the largest newspapers in the United States.
00:16:30.000We did text analysis, natural language processing to understand what emotions those articles evoked.
00:16:35.000And we can say, look, you know, you add more emotion to an appeal, for example, an online video, an article.
00:16:41.000You're 20 to 30 percent more likely to make something like the most emailed list, right?
00:16:45.000It's not just saying here's an example of a hit and here's an example of a failure.
00:16:49.000But let's codify by looking at the underlying data and mechanisms of how these things work, essentially a recipe for success, right?
00:16:57.000Just like you, you know, you understand how to cook cakes, you know what to add into the mix so that it tastes better.
00:17:02.000We can say, look, use this recipe and we can make whether it's our content online or our messages offline go viral.
00:17:10.000And I know there's a tendency to want to focus online, right?
00:17:27.000You don't care if a million people clicked on something.
00:17:29.000You care, well, do they watch that thing?
00:17:31.000Does that thing change their behavior?
00:17:33.000Does it lead them to become a customer or client or interested in what I'm doing?
00:17:38.000So 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.
00:17:48.000People share a number of things online that they don't even watch.
00:17:51.000And many things online, even someone has a lot of followers, don't necessarily get attention.
00:17:58.000What's wonderful about a one-to-one conversation is that person is listening, right?
00:18:02.000When you have a one-to-one conversation, that person is listening to you.
00:18:05.000When 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.
00:18:12.000And 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.
00:18:19.000And make sure to be customer focused, right?
00:18:21.000Make sure to be focused on the consumer, the customer you're hoping to reach, and understanding what drives them.
00:18:26.000Can you tell me what you mean by face-to-face one-on-one instead of online?
00:18:30.000Oh, just offline word of mouth, right?
00:18:33.000I mean, I think, you know, sometimes we think about word of mouth, we think, well, you must be talking about social media.
00:18:37.000Ninety percent of word of mouth is face-to-face.
00:18:40.000You know, spouses talking to one another over the dinner table, at least pre-COVID times, going out and grabbing a drink with friends.
00:18:46.000Regular, 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.
00:18:56.000Yeah, I know in your book you talk a lot about the videos, examples you give, and how many views they got.
00:19:01.000You 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.
00:19:25.000These 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.
00:19:33.000And 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?
00:19:42.000You know which ad I'm talking about, where he's walking through with the blow dryer and all this other stuff.
00:19:49.000I'm going to join the Dollar Shave Club.
00:19:50.000I'm going to buy the membership here, and I'm going to go out there and do XYZ.
00:19:54.000For 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.
00:20:04.000Who needs to be in the room to come up with these stories?
00:20:08.000Meaning, 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?
00:20:16.000And 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?
00:20:24.000What is the step-by-step process and who's in the room that can help bring out these ideas?
00:20:29.000And what are some of the questions that's being asked?
00:20:31.000I 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.
00:20:39.000Yeah, and so it's tough to do this in five minutes, but I'll give you a sense of it.
00:20:43.000And 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.
00:21:48.000Now, if I'm a brand, I can say, well, let me tell a really engaging story.
00:21:52.000But if I pick the wrong story, and it gets across the wrong moral, no one's learning what I want them to learn, right?
00:21:58.000If 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.
00:22:06.000There 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.
00:22:23.000And so, I start with that moral or that kernel.
00:22:25.000What is that thing that you want someone to communicate?
00:22:29.000And then, right, if you're not a great storyteller, no problem.
00:22:37.000What are the stories that they're already telling?
00:22:39.000Often, you don't have to generate your own stories.
00:22:41.000All you have to do is surface some of the stories that are out there already, right?
00:22:45.000Even 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.
00:22:54.000If 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.
00:23:04.000But you don't have to come up with it yourself.
00:23:53.000So how does one go about changing anyone's mind?
00:23:56.000You know, so I'll tell you a quick story.
00:23:58.000So Contagious comes out, and as I mentioned, sort of changed my life a little bit.
00:24:01.000Before 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.
00:24:09.000Contagious comes out, I thought it would do okay.
00:24:11.000It ends up doing much better than I ever imagined.
00:24:14.000So, you know, half a million copies, 35 languages around the world.
00:24:17.000And suddenly, you know, everyone from the Googles and the Facebooks and the Nikes to small startups are calling for help.
00:24:23.000And so I got to learn a lot about how business is done in today's day and age.
00:24:28.000And I realized that a lot of people had the same problem, which is they all had something that they wanted to change.
00:25:10.000I started interviewing, you know, great business leaders, startup founders, great salespeople.
00:25:14.000I started interviewing hostage negotiators and substance abuse counselors.
00:25:18.000I started interviewing parenting experts, anyone who was trying to change minds in one situation or another.
00:25:24.000And 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.
00:25:47.000And that works really well for physical objects.
00:25:49.000And so we think the same thing is true of people.
00:25:51.000I push someone, they'll go in the right direction.
00:25:53.000The 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.
00:26:00.000Rather 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.
00:26:07.000And 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.
00:26:14.000Why hasn't that person changed already?
00:26:17.000What are the barriers or obstacles that are in their way that are preventing them from changing?
00:26:22.000And how can I mitigate those barriers?
00:26:24.000It's almost like if you've ever been parked on an incline, right?
00:26:26.000You get in your car, you turn your key in the ignition, you stick your foot on the gas.
00:26:31.000If the car doesn't go, you just think you need more gas.
00:26:39.000And 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?
00:26:47.000And how by mitigating those obstacles, removing those barriers, can we change anything?
00:33:02.000Then you can say something, well, why aren't you wearing a mask at the moment, right?
00:33:05.000Highlighting a gap between their attitudes and their action, right?
00:33:09.000Not 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?
00:33:17.000Or other things, you know, I talk about providing a menu.
00:33:19.000Essentially, basically giving people choice.
00:33:21.000You 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.
00:33:29.000And 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.
00:33:52.000Because what it does is it shifts the role of the listener.
00:33:56.000Now, 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?
00:34:03.000Which makes them much more likely to pick one at the end of the meeting.
00:34:07.000Because what you've done is you've provided a menu.
00:34:09.000You've given them that freedom of choice.
00:34:11.000And because they feel like they're free to choose, they're much more likely to pick something.
00:34:15.000Who in your life was very good at doing this to you?
00:34:19.000You know, I've been asked this question before.
00:34:22.000And 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?
00:34:29.000They wouldn't go, oh, Jonah, you know, he's really great at changing everyone's mind.
00:34:34.000So hopefully this book has helped me by learning these techniques, become better at it.
00:34:39.000Because I think, you know, often we see these things in a particular domain, but we don't apply it as widely as we could.
00:35:01.000We've come across some of these ideas in some of our life, but rarely do we make the connection across different domains of life.
00:35:08.000And 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.
00:35:17.000I 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?
00:35:26.000You know, I think I think people do this often in my life, at least in one way or another, they reduce uncertainty.
00:35:38.000So, 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.
00:35:53.000They haven't focused on reactants per se, but they've certainly alleviated uncertainty is one thing they've they've done quite well.
00:36:00.000You know, my brother, in some ways, has done a good job with ass of his of shrinking distance.
00:36:05.000And so I think different people have used different tools and it's been great to bring them all together.
00:36:10.000Very cool. So let's talk about a couple of different things and then we'll wrap up.
00:36:14.000So are you following any of the presidential campaign?
00:36:17.000I have a little bit. Yes, not not heavily, but a little.
00:36:21.000What do you think is doing a better job getting their message out there?
00:36:25.000And are you seeing patterns that they're using that have to do with both Contagious and Catalyst?
00:36:31.000Yeah, I mean, I'll say a couple of things.
00:36:33.000You know, Contagious came out before the 2016 election.
00:36:38.000So obviously I couldn't talk about the 2016 election in that book.
00:36:41.000If you look at both what Obama ran on and what Trump ran on, they ran on something very similar, though different in some ways.
00:36:53.000Both of them used high arousal emotions to drive people to share their message and use that to drive action.
00:36:59.000And that's something I talked a lot about in Contagious, right?
00:37:02.000Often we think it's about functional reasons.
00:37:04.000In politics, for example, it's all about the bills and the policy details and all those things.
00:37:09.000But 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.
00:37:18.000So anger and anxiety are not the same as hope and inspiration.
00:37:21.000But both of them fire us up to take action.
00:37:24.000Right. You know, think about seeing a snake.
00:37:27.000That fear motivates us to take action, run away.
00:37:30.000Hope and inspiration excites us and motivates us to take action.
00:37:33.000And so both candidates leverage that in different but interesting ways to motivate action.
00:37:39.000I think you've seen the same thing more recently, right, where, you know, Biden, who used to be a very sort of policy person,
00:37:46.000is still talking about policy but talking much more in a stories and emotional way.
00:37:50.000Trump has always tended to talk in stories in terms of stories and emotion and really use that to rally his base.
00:37:56.000And so I think you're seeing both candidates realize, particularly in today's day and age,
00:38:01.000it's not information or policy proposals necessarily that drive action, whether fortunately or unfortunately, and I think often unfortunately.
00:38:09.000It's often stories and sound bites that are packaged and understand the fact that high arousal motion drive sharing that ultimately drive action.
00:38:18.000What 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?
00:38:29.000What role is media playing by using some of these strategies that you're talking about to get their message out there?
00:38:37.000What I think is interesting is the media is much more fragmented than it used to be, right?
00:38:41.000So 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.
00:38:49.000The problem now, first of all, nobody watches television.
00:38:55.000And even if they do, there are now so many different channels that people are watching that the audience is much more fragmented.
00:39:00.000And even if they're theoretically watching a television channel, they're probably also on their computer.
00:39:05.000They're probably also looking at Twitter or something else while they're doing it.
00:39:08.000And so the attention is not there that it might have been in the past.
00:39:12.000What 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.
00:39:20.000Each 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.
00:39:28.000And so this fragmentation makes it a lot harder for one message to hit everyone at the same time.
00:39:34.000That said, sharing becomes even more important, right?
00:39:38.000Because 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.
00:39:49.000Not only is traditional advertising much more expensive than word of mouth, which is free, but it's much less persuasive.
00:39:55.000And so I think we have to understand how word of mouth works, and we have to understand how to change minds.
00:40:00.000Otherwise, it's really hard to get our ideas, get them out there.
00:40:03.000It 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.
00:40:20.000It's almost like the great equalizer with what's going on today, if those that can learn on the one-on-one side.
00:40:25.000So 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.
00:40:33.000Now the audience kind of has an idea of what was discussed in Contagious and what was discussed in the Catalyst.
00:40:38.000And my recommendation, if you're watching this, it's 1-100 of what he talks about in the book.
00:40:43.000So we're going to put the links below for you to buy. I'll be very transparent with you guys.
00:40:47.000I've not read the Catalyst, but I've read Contagious, I don't know how many times.
00:40:52.000Every 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.
00:41:00.000But, 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.
00:41:10.000And he has a method of telling the story that resonates with an audience, okay?
00:41:15.000You see Ben Shapiro, different style. You see Candace Owens, different style.
00:41:21.000You see AOC, complete different style. You see AJ Lo, different style.
00:41:26.000You see these musicians, these artists, these politicians, these pundits that are going out there telling their stories.
00:41:33.000How 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.
00:41:43.000It just doesn't fit my personality. I resonate with this person's style.
00:41:47.000What does one do to match to the other person's style?
00:41:51.000Because 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.
00:42:03.000And you said, I just don't believe you. Is Joe Montana broke? Does he need to make money?
00:42:07.000Like, it just didn't make any sense. And I agree with you when I saw that.
00:42:11.000I went to the state when I first time watched that commercial of Joe Montana. I said, I just don't see Joe as Skechers.
00:42:17.000It doesn't make any sense to me. Right. Yeah. So money. Right.
00:42:21.000How does one align their personality and style to the messaging to be able to still make impact and change people's minds?
00:42:29.000Yeah, 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.
00:42:37.000I think some of us think, you know, oh, I have to be really persuasive person. I have to be, you know, very charismatic.
00:42:43.000I have to be all of those things. And to be a movie star, you probably do.
00:42:47.000You know, to be an elected official, you probably do. To be a successful business person, you don't have to be those things. Right.
00:42:54.000You 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.
00:43:04.000Let'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.
00:43:10.000But 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.
00:43:21.000And 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.
00:43:27.000But 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.
00:43:36.760And 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.
00:43:44.500Sure, 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?
00:43:55.180Great 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.
00:44:04.220And 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.
00:44:11.200If the message itself is powerful, it leaves the room with those people and shares itself generation upon generation.
00:44:18.140Yeah, I like that. Great messages share themselves. That's a very powerful statement.
00:44:22.580You'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.
00:44:28.500Final thoughts here before we wrap up. You know, pandemic is looking like it's coming to an end here.
00:44:34.660The cases are lower. That's our lore. I'm in Texas. You know, restaurants are going back to 100 percent.
00:44:40.320A lot of them people are still wearing masks to wear masks.
00:44:42.520But 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?
00:44:56.940Is there a big opportunity today with storytelling on regaining trust or gaining the trust of new customers?
00:45:02.600Certainly. I mean, I think, you know, as we've discussed a bit, you know, now is a time of huge uncertainty.
00:45:09.280People hate uncertainty. They want to do the same thing again and again.
00:45:11.740They've been forced to change in almost every area of their life.
00:45:14.920And while that's certainly difficult for people and has been quite difficult, it's also an opportunity.
00:45:19.640Because people have been forced to change, they're looking for new products and services and brands.
00:45:24.400You know, if you read some of the articles, the trends and what people are buying have been amazing to see.
00:45:29.000Right. You know, people are buying home gym equipment.
00:45:30.880Then they're buying teaching equipment for their kids.
00:45:33.200You know, the next thing is supposed to be, I don't know, outdoor fire pits as it gets colder for winter.
00:45:37.760And so people are saying, I'm in an unusual situation.
00:46:13.240Free trial is great because it's going to give people the experience to figure out whether they like what you're doing.
00:46:17.500And then they'll stick with you. Right.
00:46:19.300And 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.
00:46:31.140I'm certain anybody that's in business, a C-suite executive, founder, entrepreneur, salesperson took away a lot from today's meeting with you.
00:46:43.480Congrats 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.
00:46:58.020So first of all, if you've never read the book Contagious, I highly recommend it.
00:47:01.680We'll also put the link to both of his books below for you to go out there in order.
00:47:04.340But 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.
00:47:12.840And 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.
00:47:19.940And if you're not subscribed to the channel, please do so.