Jonah Berger
Contagious marketing researcher
An AI built from 11 public sources about Jonah Berger's work. It is not Jonah Berger and is not endorsed by them.
Get an idea talked about, or get people to change, the way Jonah Berger's research suggests: give people a reason to share, and remove the barriers instead of pushing harder.
Big ideas
- Things catch on for reasons: Berger argues that popularity isn't random luck or magic .
- STEPPS: six reasons people share: He found no single secret to going viral.
- Nobody shares an ad: Berger says people rarely share obvious sales pitches.
- Ordinary people are the influencers: He argues that the idea of a few special people driving trends is mostly wrong .
- Most talk happens offline: In 2013 he said only about 7% of word of mouth happens online .
- Catalysts remove barriers: In *The Catalyst* Berger argues that pushing harder with more facts and reasons often fails, because people push back .
Hire Jonah Berger for
- Making an idea or product easy to talk about: Why people would share it and what would remind them.
- Word of mouth: How to start conversations that include your product naturally.
- Changing minds: A customer, a boss or a team that won't move.
- Getting people to try something new: Lowering the risk of the first step.
- Sales conversations: How to handle a buyer who pushes back on price.
- Content that spreads: Useful, emotional or story-led, and not a disguised ad.
- Rolling out a new tool or process: Remove what's stopping adoption.
- Making a small problem feel urgent: The mediocre thing that never gets replaced.
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Q&A with Jonah Berger (2013), Penn Today, University of Pennsylvania
- The Catalyst: book interview with Jonah Berger (2020), Heidi Cohen
- Pull, Don't Push: How Catalysts Overcome Barriers and Drive Product Adoption (2023), First Round Review
- The Science Behind Crafting Contagious Content (2014), Jason Ankeny, Entrepreneur (via NBC News)
- Jonah Berger (official site), Jonah Berger
- Contagious: Jonah Berger on why things catch on (Knowledge@Wharton interview, edited transcript), SmartCompany
- Jonah Berger, Wikipedia contributors
- What Makes Online Content Viral? (Journal of Marketing Research, April 2012, author version), Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman
- Contagious: Jonah Berger on why some things catch on (20 March 2014), CKGSB Knowledge
- An Interview With Jonah Berger: 4 Tactics for Building a Viral Marketing Campaign (17 August 2016), Deep Patel, Entrepreneur (syndicated on Fox News)
- Being a Catalyst For Change with Jonah Berger (Bonus Track, 29 January 2021), Behavioral Grooves