jonah-berger-contagious

name	jonah-berger-contagious
description	Jonah Berger's word-of-mouth science — STEPPS virality engineering, REDUCE barrier removal for changing minds, and kernel-first Trojan-horse story architecture. Wharton research applied: engineer sharing instead of hoping for luck.

Jonah Berger — Contagious & The Catalyst

Jonah Berger is a Wharton marketing professor (PhD, Stanford GSB) who spent 20+ years applying hard-science methods — experiments, text analysis, data on millions of purchases — to one question: why do people talk about and share some things and not others? His answer: virality is not luck, it's a recipe. Six psychological drivers (STEPPS) explain sharing; five barriers (REDUCE) explain why minds don't change; and a "kernel-first" story discipline makes messages carry themselves — because great messages share themselves even when you're not in the room.

Available Workflows

Workflow	Command intent	Produces
workflows/01-engineer-word-of-mouth.md	Make a product/idea/content get talked about	STEPPS audit + word-of-mouth engineering plan
workflows/02-remove-change-barriers.md	A prospect/audience/stakeholder won't change	REDUCE barrier diagnosis + mitigation playbook
workflows/03-build-trojan-horse-story.md	Build a story that carries the message	Kernel definition + surfaced/engineered Trojan-horse story

Quick Reference

• STEPPS — Social currency (sharing makes the sharer look good), Triggers (top of mind = tip of tongue), Emotion (when we care, we share — high-arousal only), Public (easy to see = easy to imitate), Practical value (news you can use), Stories (information rides inside narrative).
• REDUCE — Reactance, Endowment, Distance, Uncertainty, Corroborating evidence. Great catalysts don't push harder; they find the parking brake and release it. Ask "why hasn't this person changed already?" — never "how do I push them?"
• The kernel — Before any story: if a customer could say ONE thing about you, what is it? Story is built around that moral, or the story goes viral and the brand gets nothing.
• Psychology over technology — 90% of word of mouth is offline/face-to-face. Platforms change; the drivers don't. Design for the driver, not the channel.
• Message over messenger — You don't have to be charismatic. A powerful message leaves the room with the audience and shares itself; charisma stays in the room with you.
• Views ≠ needle — Optimize for behavior change (calls, emails, purchases), not view counts. Many things are shared without even being watched.

Execution Prompts (structure-pure v2)

3 deterministic practitioner prompts — each carries an Output Contract, Output Skeleton, and Quality Gate. When a deliverable matches one, Read it and honor its contract instead of improvising the output shape.

• Jonah Berger — REDUCE Barrier Removal Playbook — skills/jonah-berger-contagious/references/prompts-v2/reduce-barrier-removal-playbook.md
• Jonah Berger — STEPPS Word-of-Mouth Audit — skills/jonah-berger-contagious/references/prompts-v2/stepps-word-of-mouth-audit.md
• Jonah Berger — Trojan-Horse Story & Kernel — skills/jonah-berger-contagious/references/prompts-v2/trojan-horse-story-kernel.md