Jonah Berger – författare

A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB ’MUST-READ’New York Times bestselling author Jonah Berger’s cutting-edge research reveals how six types of words can increase your impact in every area of life: from persuading others and building stronger relationships, to boosting creativity and motivating teams.Almost everything we do involves words. Words are how we persuade, communicate, and connect, the foundation of all verbal influence. They’re how leaders lead, salespeople sell, and parents parent. They’re how teachers teach, policymakers govern, and doctors explain. Even our private thoughts rely on language.But certain words are more impactful than others. They’re better at changing minds, engaging audiences, and driving action. What are these magic words, and how can we take advantage of their power?In Magic Words, internationally bestselling author Jonah Berger gives you an inside look at the new science and psychology of language and how you can use it. Technological advances in machine learning, computational linguistics, and natural language processing, combined with the digitization of everything from cover letters to conversations, have yielded unprecedented insights.Learn the specific communication skills salespeople use to convince clients, lawyers use to persuade juries, and storytellers use to captivate audiences; how teachers get kids to help and service representatives increase customer satisfaction; how startup founders secure funding, musicians make hits, and psychologists identified a Shakespearean manuscript without ever reading a play.This nonfiction guide is designed for anyone who wants to increase their impact. It provides a powerful toolkit and actionable techniques that can lead to extraordinary results. Whether you’re trying to persuade a client, motivate a team, or get a whole organization to see things differently, this book will show you how to leverage the power of magic words.Based on years of behavioral science research, this book breaks down the toolkit you need: Activate Identity and Agency: Learn why using nouns is more persuasive than using verbs, and how a simple word shift can help you be more creative and achieve your goals.Convey Confidence: Discover the language of confidence that helps lawyers persuade juries and leaders inspire action, and learn when expressing doubt can actually be more effective.Ask the Right Questions: Understand the science of asking questions, why asking for advice makes you seem smarter, and how to deepen any social connection.Leverage Concreteness: See why concrete language gets startups funded, makes customers feel heard, and why talking about "fixing" a problem is better than "solving" it.Employ Emotion: Master the emotional language that builds hit podcasts and captivates any audience by learning what truly makes a good story.

Why are some products and ideas talked about more than others? Why do some articles make the most emailed list? Why do some YouTube videos go viral? Word-of-mouth. Whether through face-to-face conversations, emails from friends, or online product reviews, the information and opinions we get from others have a strong impact on our own behaviour. Indeed, word-of-mouth generates more than two times the sales of paid advertising and is the primary factor behind 20-50% of all purchasing decisions.It is between 8.5 and 30 times more effective than traditional media.But want to know the best thing about word-of-mouth? It's available to everyone.Whether you're a Fortune 500 company trying to increase sales, a corner restaurant trying to raise awareness, a non-profit trying to fight obesity, or a newbie politician running for city council, word-of-mouth can help you succeed. And you don't have to have millions of dollars to spend on an advertising budget. You just have to get people to talk.The challenge, though, is how to do that. This book will show you how.

In Invisible Influence, the New York Times bestselling author of Contagious explores the subtle influences that affect the decisions we make – from what we buy, to the careers we choose, to what we eat.  If you're like most people, you think your individual tastes and opinions drive your choices and behaviours. You wear a certain jacket because you liked how it looked. You picked a particular career because you found it interesting. The notion that our choices are driven by our own personal thoughts and opinions is patently obvious. Right? Wrong.Without our realizing it, other people's behaviour has a huge influence on everything we do at every moment of our lives, from the mundane to the momentous. Even strangers have an impact on our judgments and decisions: our attitudes toward a welfare policy shift if we're told it is supported by Democrats versus Republicans (even though the policy is the same). But social influence doesn't just lead us to do the same things as others. In some cases we imitate others around us. But in other cases we avoid particular choices or behaviours because other people are doing them. We stop listening to a band because they go mainstream. We skip buying the minivan because we don't want to look like a soccer mom.By understanding how social influence works, we can decide when to resist and when to embrace it – and learn how we can use this knowledge to exercise more control over our own behaviour.

From the author of New York Times bestsellers Contagious and Invisible Influence comes a revolutionary approach to changing anyone’s mind.Everyone has something they want to change. Marketers want to change their customers’ minds and leaders want to change organisations. Start-ups want to change industries and nonprofits want to change the world. But change is hard. Often, we persuade and pressure and push, but nothing moves. Could there be a better way?This book takes a different approach. Successful change agents know it’s not about pushing harder, or providing more information, it’s about being a catalyst. Catalysts remove roadblocks and reduce the barriers to change. Instead of asking, “How could I change someone’s mind?” they ask a different question: “Why haven’t they changed already? What’s stopping them?”The Catalyst identifies the key barriers to change and how to mitigate them. You’ll learn how catalysts change minds in the toughest of situations: how hostage negotiators get people to come out with their hands up and how marketers get new products to catch on, how leaders transform organisational culture and how activists ignite social movements, how substance abuse counselors get addicts to realise they have a problem and how political campaigners change deeply rooted political beliefs.This book is designed for anyone who wants to catalyse change. It provides a powerful way of thinking and a range of techniques that can lead to extraordinary results. Whether you’re trying to change one person, transform an organisation, or shift the way an entire industry does business, this book will teach you how to become a catalyst.