The 2009 viral video “United Breaks Guitars” invoked anger in thousands of disgruntled United (and non-United) patrons around the world. When promoting a product, you need to evoke the right emotions for your purposes. Contagious content evokes people to feel a strong emotion: awe, anger, excitement, amusement, sadness. People tend to talk about what comes to mind, so if you can create natural triggers that lead people to think about your product, more people will talk about it. Triggers are stimuli that make people think about a related product or idea: peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, cats and dogs.

Did you know there’s a restaurant in Philadelphia that sells a $120 philly cheesesteak? Did you know that a kangaroo can’t walk backward? Turn your product into social currency by making it, and those who talk about it, appear remarkable (interesting, exclusive, distinctive). People want to share products that make them look cool, smart, and trendy.

Through hundreds of intriguing and sometimes jaw-dropping stories, Berger identifies six key components to make everything-from a YouTube video to a new tech gadget-become contagious. In his New York Times Bestseller, Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Jonah Berger delves into what makes products and ideas go viral. “But although quality, price, and advertising contribute to products and ideas being successful, they don’t explain the whole story.”

Jonah berger new book