Contagious Why Things Catch On

Information travels under the guise of what seems like idle
chatter.
BUILD A TROJAN HORSE
Stories thus give people an easy way to talk about products and ideas. Subway might have low-fat
subs, and Lands’ End might have great customer service, but outside of triggers in a conversation,
people need a reason to bring that information up. And good stories provide that reason. They
provide a sort of psychological cover that allows people to talk about a product or idea without

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seeming like an advertisement.
So how can we use stories to get people talking?
We need to build our own Trojan Horse—a carrier narrative that people will share, while talking
about our product or idea along the way.
—————
Tim Piper never had a sister. And he grew up going to an all-boys school. So he had always
thought it was a little ridiculous that so many of his girlfriends had beauty issues. They were always
worried that their hair was too straight, their eyes were too light, or their complexion wasn’t clear
enough. Piper didn’t get it. They seemed pretty enough to him.
But after interviewing dozens of girls, Piper started to realize that the media were to blame.
Advertising, and the media in general, taught young women that something was wrong with them. That
they needed fixing. And after years of being bombarded with those messages, women started to
believe them.
What would help women realize that these ads were fake? That the images being shown didn’t
reflect reality?
One night his girlfriend at the time was putting on makeup to go out when it hit him. He realized that
girls needed to be exposed to the before 
before
the after. What models look like before the makeup
and hair styling and retouching and Photoshop swoop in to make them “perfect.”
So he created a short film.
Stephanie stares into the camera and nods her head to the crew that she is ready to begin. She is
pretty, but not in a way that would make her stand out in a crowd. Her hair is dark blond, feathered,
and relatively straight. Her skin is nice but a few blemishes mar it here and there. She looks as though
she could be anyone—your neighbor, your friend, your daughter.
A bright light turns on, and the process begins. As we watch, makeup artists darken Stephanie’s
eyes and highlight her lips with gloss. They apply foundation to her skin and blush to color her
cheeks. They groom her eyebrows and lengthen her lashes. They curl and tease and style her hair.
Then the photographer appears with his camera. He takes dozens of photos. Fans are turned on so
her hair appears naturally tousled. Stephanie alternately smiles and stares provocatively at the
camera. Finally, the photographer gets a shot he likes.
But getting the perfect snapshot is only the beginning. Next comes the Photoshopping. Stephanie’s
image is fed into a computer, and begins to morph before our eyes. Her lips are inflated. Her neck is
thinned and lengthened. Her eyes are enlarged. These are only a handful of the dozens of changes that
are made.
You are now gazing at a snapshot of a supermodel. As the camera pans backward, you can see that
the image has been placed on a billboard for a makeup campaign. The screen fades to black, and
small words appear in white writing. “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.”
Wow. This is a powerful clip. A great reminder of all that really goes on behind the scenes in the
beauty industry.
But in addition to being a great conversation piece, it’s also a clever Trojan Horse for Dove
products.
—————
The media in general, and the beauty industry in particular, tend to paint a skewed picture of
women. Models are usually tall and skinny. Magazines show women with flawless complexions and

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perfect teeth. Ads scream that their products can transform you into a better you. Younger face, fuller
lips, softer skin.
Not surprisingly, these messages have a hugely negative impact on how women see themselves.
Only 2 percent of women describe themselves as beautiful. More than two-thirds believe that the
media has set an unrealistic standard of beauty that they’ll never be able to achieve. No matter how
hard they try. This feeling of not living up to expectations even affects young girls. Dark-haired girls
wish they were blond. Redheads hate their freckles.
Piper’s video, entitled “Evolution,” gives a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into making the
images we are bombarded with every day. It reminds people that these stunning-looking women are
not real. They are fantasies, fictions only loosely based on actual people. Concocted using all the
magic that digital editing can provide. The clip is as raw and shocking as it is thought provoking.
But the film wasn’t sponsored by concerned citizens or an industry watchdog group. Piper made the
film in coordination with Dove, maker of health and beauty products, as part of its “Campaign for
Real Beauty.” This was Dove’s effort to celebrate the natural physical variations we all have and
then to inspire women to be confident and comfortable with themselves. Another ad for soap featured
real women of all shapes and sizes, rather than the rail-thin models people are used to seeing.
Not surprisingly, the campaign sparked a great deal of discussion. What does it mean to be
beautiful? How are the media shaping these perceptions? What can we do to make it better?
The campaign created more than just controversy. In addition to making the issue more Public, and
giving people an excuse to talk about a topic that would have otherwise been private, the campaign
also got them thinking, and talking, about Dove.
The company was commended for using real people in its campaigns and for getting people to talk
about this complicated but important issue. And “Evolution,” which cost only a little over one
hundred thousand dollars to make, got more than 16 million views. It netted the company hundreds of
millions of dollars in exposure. The clip won numerous industry awards and more than tripled the
website traffic the company received from Dove’s 2006 Super Bowl ad. Dove experienced double-
digit sales growth.
“Evolution” was widely shared because Dove latched onto something people already wanted to
talk about: unrealistic beauty norms. It’s a highly emotional issue, but something so controversial that
people might have been afraid to bring up otherwise. “Evolution” brought it out in the open. It let
people air their grievances and think about solutions. And along the way the brand benefited. Dove
got people talking by starting a conversation about beauty norms—but the brand was smuggled in as
part of the discussion. By creating an emotional story, Dove created a vessel that carried its brand
along for the ride.
And that brings us to the story of Ron Bensimhon.
MAKING VIRALITY VALUABLE
On August 16, 2004, Canadian Ron Bensimhon carefully shed his warm-up pants and stepped to the
edge of the three-meter springboard. He had attempted dives from this height many times before, but
never during an event of this magnitude. It was the Athens Olympics. The world’s biggest stage for
sport and the pinnacle of athletic competition. But Ron did not seem fazed. He shook off the jitters
and raised his hands high above his head. As the crowd roared, he leapt off the end of the board and
completed a full belly flop.
A belly flop? In the Olympics? Surely Ron must have been devastated. But as he emerged from the

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water he seemed calm, happy even. He swam around for a few moments, hamming it up for the
audience and then slowly swam to the side of the pool, where he was met by a platoon of Olympic
officials and security guards.
Ron had broken into the Olympics. He wasn’t actually on the Canadian swim team. In fact, he
wasn’t an Olympic athlete at all. He was the self-proclaimed most famous streaker in the world, and
he had crashed the Olympics as part of a publicity stunt.
—————
When Ron jumped off the springboard, he wasn’t naked, but he wasn’t wearing swim trunks either.
He wore a blue tutu and white polka dot tights. And emblazoned across his chest was the name of an
Internet casino, 
GoldenPalace.com
.
This wasn’t the first Golden Palace publicity stunt (though the company did say that Ron’s stunt
was done without its knowledge). In 2004 it bid $28,000 on eBay for a grilled cheese sandwich that
some people believed displayed an image of the Virgin Mary. In 2005 it gave a woman $15,000 to
change her name to 
GoldenPalace.com
. But the stunt with the “fool in the pool,” as Bensimhon has
been called, was one of the biggest. Millions of people were watching, and the story got picked up by
news outlets around the world. It also got a huge amount of word-of-mouth chatter. Someone crashing
the Olympics and diving into a pool in a tutu? What a story. Pretty remarkable.
But as the days ticked by, people didn’t talk about the casino. Sure, some people who saw
Bensimhon’s jump went to the website to try to figure out what was going on. But most people who
shared the story talked about the stunt, not the website. They talked about whether the interruption
threw off the Chinese divers, who flubbed their final dive right after the trick and lost the gold medal.
They talked about security at the Olympics and how someone could slip through so easily at such a
major event. And they talked about Bensimhon’s trial and whether he would serve jail time.
What they didn’t talk about was 
GoldenPalace.com
. Why?
—————
Marketing experts talk about “the fool in the pool” as one of the worst guerrilla marketing failures
of all time. Usually they deride it for having disrupted the competition and ruining the moment for
athletes who had trained all their lives. They also point out that it led to Bensimhon being arrested
and fined. These are all good reasons to consider Bensimhon’s belly flop, well, a flop.
But I’d like to add another one to the list. The stunt had nothing to do with the product it was trying
to promote.
Yes, people talked about the stunt, but they didn’t talk about the casino. Polka dot tights, tutus, and
breaking into the Olympics to dive into a pool are all great story material. That’s why people talked
about them. So if the goal was to get people to think more about security at the Olympics or get
attention for a new style of tights, the stunt succeeded.
But it had nothing to do with casinos. Not even in the slightest.
So people talked about the remarkable story but left the casino out because it was irrelevant. They
might have mentioned that Bensimhon was sponsored by someone but didn’t mention the casino either
because it was so irrelevant that they forgot, or because it didn’t make the story any better. It’s like
building a magnificent Trojan Horse but forgetting to put anything inside.
—————
When trying to generate word of mouth, many people forget one important detail. They focus so
much on getting people to talk that they ignore the part that really matters: