Contagious Why Things Catch On

frequent
stimulus in the environment. A huge number of people drink coffee. Many drink it a number
of times throughout the day. And so by linking Kit Kat to coffee, Colleen created a frequent trigger to
remind people of the brand.
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Biologists often talk about plants and animals as having habitats, natural environments that contain
all necessary elements for sustaining an organism’s life. Ducks need water and grasses to eat. Deer
thrive in areas that contain open spaces for grazing.
Products and ideas also have habitats, or sets of triggers that cause people to think about them.
Take hot dogs. Barbecues, summertime, baseball games, and even wiener dogs (dachshunds) are
just a few of the triggers that make up the habitat for hot dogs.
Compare that with the habitat for Ethiopian food. What triggers most people to think of Ethiopian
food? Ethiopian food is certainly delicious, but its habitat is not as prevalent.
Most products or ideas have a number of natural triggers. Mars bars and Mars the planet are
already naturally connected. The Mars company didn’t need to do anything to create that link.
Likewise, French music is a natural trigger for French wine, and the last day of the workweek is a
natural trigger for Rebecca Black’s song “Friday.”
But it’s also possible to grow an idea’s habitat by creating new links to stimuli in the environment.

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Kit Kat wouldn’t normally be associated with coffee, but through repeated pairing, Colleen Chorak
was able to link the two. Similarly, our trays experiment created a link between dining-room trays
and a message to eat fruits and vegetables by repeatedly pairing the two ideas together. And by
increasing the habitat for the message, these newly formed links helped the desired behavior catch on.
Consider an experiment we conducted with BzzAgent and Boston Market. This fast-casual
restaurant is best known for home-style comfort food (rotisserie chicken and mashed potatoes) and
was primarily viewed as a lunch place. Management wanted to generate more buzz. We thought we
could help by growing Boston Market’s habitat.
During a six-week campaign, some people were exposed to messages that repeatedly paired the
restaurant with dinner. “Thinking about dinner? Think about Boston Market!”. Other people received
a similar advertising campaign that contained a more generic message: “Thinking about a place to
eat? Think about Boston Market!” We then measured how often the respective groups talked about the
restaurant.
The results were dramatic. Compared to the generic message, the message that grew the habitat (by
associating Boston Market with dinner) increased word of mouth by 20 percent among people who
previously had associated the brand only with lunch. Growing the habitat boosted buzz.
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Competitors can even be used as a trigger.
How can public health organizations compete against the marketing strength of better-funded rivals
like cigarette companies? One way to combat this inequality is to transform a weakness into a
strength: by making a rival’s message act as a trigger for your own.
A famous antismoking campaign, for example, spoofed Marlboro’s iconic ads by captioning a
picture of one Marlboro cowboy talking to another with the words: “Bob, I’ve got emphysema.” So
now whenever people see a Marlboro ad, it triggers them to think about the antismoking message.
Researchers call this strategy the poison parasite because it slyly injects “poison” (your message)
into a rival’s message by making it a trigger for your own.

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WHAT MAKES FOR AN EFFECTIVE TRIGGER?
Triggers can help products and ideas catch on, but some stimuli are better triggers than others.
As we discussed, one key factor is how