Crazy Spreading (1)-Improving the speed of information dissemination

Crazy Biography (Ⅱ) —— Spreading information by nature

We know that not every piece of news can quickly catch people's eyes through word of mouth and form a huge mass communication network. Why can some content and things spread wildly, while others are just a flash in the pan? The author tells a secret through this book, how to make products, ideas and habits spread like viruses through effective strategies.

Speaking of communication, first listen to a well-known story and think about why this story can spread all over the world. Legend has it that in ancient Greece, Paris, Prince of Troy, visited the nereus Palace of King Mo of Sparta and was warmly received by the other side. But when Paris left, she stole Helen, the wife of the Spartan king. This made Menelaus feel very embarrassed, so he decided to send his troops to attack Troy.

Troy is a strong city, easy to defend but difficult to attack, which led to the capture of Sparta 10, but it still failed. Later, someone gave him an idea to let the Spartan king pretend to retreat and board the battleship to leave, giving the Trojans the illusion of giving up the siege, and deliberately leaving a huge Trojan horse as a trophy when retreating. When the Trojans saw each other retreat, they thought they had won a great victory, so they pulled the Trojan horse into the city to show off.

In the evening, while the Trojans were feasting to celebrate their victory, the Spartan soldiers hiding in Troy slipped out quietly, opened the city gate and put them in the Spartan army that had already ambushed outside the city. Overnight, Troy was in ruins.

This is the story of Trojan horse. Now think about the following questions. How much do you know about this story? Do you remember the reason why this war started? Do you remember the names of the Prince of Troy and the King of Sparta?

Although the story spreads quickly, the content outside the trunk is easily lost in the spread, and only the core content will be retained. This raises a question. If this story is a tourist advertisement of the location of the king of Sparta, it is of little effect, because even if most people know this story, they will not know that it is related to Sparta. Why is this happening? To explain this problem clearly, we need to know the professional knowledge related to communication.

Crazy Biography is a book that tells you how to spread information. Harvard psychology professor commented on this book: "Berger knows better than anyone how to make information spread wildly." As he said, Berger is the author of this book and a professor at Wharton Business School. In his book, Berger summed up the six elements of The Legend of Madness: social currency, inducement, emotion, publicity, practicality and storytelling.

As a marketing book, Crazy Biography not only contains rich theoretical knowledge, but also discusses many real cases, which can make people learn a lot of communication skills and experience.

This book focuses on two main contents:

First, how to significantly improve the speed of information dissemination by mobilizing emotions or inducing?

Second, everyone has the nature of imitating, listening to stories and spreading valuable information. How do we use these properties to spread information?

In this part, we will mention three elements of communication, social currency, inducement and emotion.

Burberry is a very traditional British style luxury brand. The company is famous for its retail, wholesale and franchise. The consumption level of its users is also very high. In order to make full use of high-end users' ostentation psychology to increase sales, Burberry has set up a website to promote its products. Unlike most companies, it doesn't write many advertising slogans on the website, but links products with users and lets users actively promote the company. If you upload a photo of yourself wearing a Burberry costume to the website, then your photo will have a chance to appear on the homepage of the website. This way is very attractive to beauty lovers. Imagine that if your photo is adopted, you will be happy to tell your family and friends about it, and they may also upload their photos to the website after learning about it.

Why would someone take the initiative to spread the news that their photos were selected? That's because people are willing to convey something that makes them feel superior. This behavior is the function of social and monetary factors. The so-called social money factor is that some information is just like money. When people spread this information, they will get a carefree feeling like shopping.

There are many such situations in our lives. For example, if a child is praised by a teacher at school, he will certainly be eager to tell his family about it. But if criticized, most children will hide it in their hearts. After all, it is not a glorious thing, and spreading it out will not bring them a carefree feeling.

If we want others to help us spread our ideas, we might as well make these ideas have the characteristics of social currency to encourage others to spread them. For example, if a software wants to promote itself, it can hold a "I am the most beautiful today" shooting contest, let users upload their own photos, and inform users that they can help them canvass through friends. Winners will definitely show off their winning, and they will send corresponding promotion links to their circle of friends or Weibo. In this way, this activity greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of users and made users willing to promote the company's products for free.

In addition to online use of social money, offline marketing can also play a very good role. Many coffee shops will use membership cards to let users promote themselves for free. When drinking coffee with friends, users can use membership cards to pay for it, which will make them more face-saving, because if the consumption level of coffee shops is higher, the level of their cards will be higher, so that the social monetary effects will be more obvious. In a word, if information dissemination will bring a carefree feeling to users, users will actively disseminate this information, even if they know that this is the marketing strategy of the merchants. Because everyone has a desire to show themselves, as long as we make rational use of human nature, we can achieve good communication results.

Let's take a look at the marketing case of Mars. In fact, the marketing case is not very accurate, because Mars can succeed because of good luck. The story of Mars took place in the summer of 1997. The chocolate sales of the candy company Mars suddenly increased abnormally, which was beyond everyone's expectation, because the company did not hold any promotion activities and did not change the commodity prices. Later, Mars discovered that it was exposed to the light of NASA. At that time, after spending a lot of manpower and material resources, NASA finally sent the probe to Mars. The news made the whole world boil. The name Mars is homophonic with Mars in English.

Why can a homonym bring such a high sales growth to Mars? In fact, the reason is very simple, that is, the six elements of crazy transmission are at work. When the news of successful landing on Mars spreads all over the streets, the word Mars will appear in people's minds from time to time, and then it will be associated with Mars, which will greatly increase their sales. This sounds incredible, but this phenomenon is actually very common. Another interesting example is the performance of the song Friday. The amount of this song played on Friday was significantly higher than other times, which induced this element to work. The biggest characteristic of inducing factors is that if a word is mentioned frequently, people will have a deeper impression on it and think of it more easily in the subconscious.

Interestingly, the inducement principle can even affect the US presidential election. The research team in the book studied the proposal of increasing business tax and investing the increased business tax in the construction of public schools. They found that the voting rate of schools supporting this proposal was much higher than that of other polling places, because the surrounding environment always reminded voters of the importance of public schools. This inducement finally changed the voting results of voters.

There are also corresponding cases in life that induce this factor. For example, the design of high-end restaurants will make people feel that they have spent a lot of money here. In Starbucks, it is not surprising that a cup of coffee costs tens of dollars, but if coffee is so expensive at roadside stalls, customers will wonder if they have met a black shop. In addition, roadside billboards are quietly inducing customers. If you often see roadside advertisements of KFC, when you are thinking about what you want to eat, you will probably think of KFC directly. But I didn't choose "delicious" because "delicious" is a name of food I invented myself. If you don't know it, it won't appear in your mind.

However, not all emotions can inspire people to enjoy information. Interesting experiences will inspire people to share, happy experiences will inspire people to share, and so will happy experiences. But some emotions are just the opposite. They will stop people from sharing information. Sadness is such an emotion. When a person loses his beloved pet or his job, he may not have the heart to share it with everyone. Most sadness makes people listless. At this time, people don't want to do anything, let alone spread information.

In fact, in addition to sadness, satisfaction is also one of the emotions that hinder people from sharing. Why are most families we see online unhappy? There is a simple reason. Happy families seldom talk about their housework online. Most people who share their family experiences online are treated unfairly in real life. This kind of grievances and dissatisfaction will stimulate their desire to share, and people who live a happy life rarely say these things. So, what kind of emotions promote sharing and what kind of emotions inhibit sharing? After research, inhibition and promotion are not determined by positive or negative emotions. Generally speaking, the emotions that can stimulate people's communication are excitement, fun, anger and worry, while the emotions that inhibit people's communication are satisfaction and sadness. Emotion can greatly affect the spread of a thing, which is the third of the six elements of communication.

Making full use of other people's emotions will help the company to promote. For example, the word-of-mouth communication of Xiaomi, his success is largely due to the exciting characteristics of Xiaomi. Imagine how happy people with average income will be when they find that they can enjoy the configuration that only 5,000 yuan mobile phones can have through Xiaomi mobile phones, which will make them work harder to promote Xiaomi.

From a study.