Contagious: exciting similar emotions or conduct in others
Behavior: anything that one does involving action and response to stimulation
I thought I would take a moment to talk about the concept of ‘contagious behavior’. Obviously, the discussion of contagious behavior has increased since the publication of The Tipping Point.
As marketers we all know that 3rd party endorsements and peer referrals from influentials create the word-of-mouth that is the holy grail. We are driven every day to create the ever elusive ‘buzz’ for the products or services we are hyping at the moment.
But the goal of all of this has to be contagious behavior. That is the true holy grail of marketing because it is the action that is important, not the buzz.
Contagious behavior is the action instigated by buzz marketing, customer collaboration, social media, referral programs, experiential marketing and viral marketing. We want more than talk, more than content, we want action. Action that is spread from one person to the next, and the next and the next.
To put things into a little context, consider this. The earliest fossils from homo sapiens have been dated to about 195,000 years ago. Yep…195,000 years ago in northeastern Africa.
Now, what about ‘modern behavior’ when did our ancestors begin to create tools, ornamentation, drawn images? The earliest we’ve found dates to about 50,000 years ago. Big jump of somewhere in the neighborhood of 140,000 years.
And written language? What we consider the first known examples of written language dates to around 5,500 years ago.
That’s a really unbelievable timeline. Homo sapiens appear to have been here 195,000 years ago, we started to ‘create’ 50,000 years ago and we finally started writing it down 5,000 years ago.
So, it could be said, that contagious behavior was the primary means of interaction and communication for 190,000 years before written communications. No wonder this stuff is so ingrained in us.
It is in our DNA to be influenced by contagious behavior all around us. From the moment we come into this world, till the moment we leave, we react to stimulus. How we react to the waves of stimulus we encounter every day is the really interesting part.
We are happier when we are around happy people. That’s pretty logical. Now consider this, every happy person in your social network increases your chance of being happy by 9 percent. and the effects of catching someone else’s happiness lasts up to a year.
Studies show that good behavior and bad habits are also contagious. If you know someone who has quit smoking, you are more likely to quit. Like wise, if you have a friend who becomes obese your chances to also become obese increase 57%.
To many of us, these types of interactions are obvious and are core to what drives us as marketers and communicators. We want you to react to the stimulus we provide. We want to create that magical contagious behavior that makes people do something. That’s what we’ve always been chasing, we just have a lot more avenues, channels and tools today.
This is getting long. I’ll cut it short now, but come back and we’ll talk more.
kenvernon
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Great post Ken. I loved the insights from the Tipping Point and have been thinking about how to embed them into the customer experience whereever possible. Some of the simplest places to do this is to try to engineer “moments of truth” into the customer engagement process. I don’t think organization think enough about this kind of thing. We spend tons of money designing stores, or boatloads of dollars on a creative design, but fail to do the simplest thing possible. Script out what a customers experience should be with their organization. If you take the time to map this out, and look for opportunities to create powerful moments of truth, you can provide experiences worth sharing. Give your customers, who happen to be Mavens the tools the spead that word and start to benefit from contagious behavior.