Welcome once again to the Hugoversity library, where each month we review a PR and marketing-related book to quench our thirst for lifelong learning.
For this month’s book review, Captain Grammar Sian read the highly-topical The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread – and Why They Stop, by Adam Kucharski – an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
You may wonder what this has to do with PR and marketing? Well, it turns we can learn a lot about making campaigns go viral from viruses themselves…
What’s it all about?
‘A deadly virus suddenly explodes into the population. A political movement gathers pace, and then quickly vanishes. An idea takes off like wildfire, changing our world forever. We live in a world that’s more interconnected than ever before. Our lives are shaped by outbreaks – of disease, of misinformation, even of violence – that appear, spread and fade away with bewildering speed.
‘To understand them, we need to learn the hidden laws that govern them. From ‘superspreaders’ who might spark a pandemic or bring down a financial system to the social dynamics that make loneliness catch on, The Rules of Contagion offers compelling insights into human behaviour and explains how we can get better at predicting what happens next.’
A little bit of history
A great deal of the book focuses, rightly, on Ronald Ross, the 19th Century British doctor who discovered that mosquitoes spread malaria, winning the 1902 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for his research.
Rather than focusing purely on how an epidemic had behaved, Ross combined this with an understanding of social elements that shape it, and this made all the difference. Whereas others had looked backwards, he looked forwards, making predictions about the course of an outbreak and how any given intervention – hand-washing, social distancing – might affect it. Indeed, his ideas form the very basis of modern disease modelling – including the worldwide response to Covid-19.
All about the R
Kucharski starts by clarifying that the R (or reproduction) number depends on four factors; duration, opportunities, transmission probability and susceptibility (or DOTS, for short).
This is a handy way of showing how the different aspects of an epidemic all trade off against other, and how tweaks to each (for example, reducing social contact to drive down transmission probability) can have an impact of R overall.
Because no matter what you’re spreading (or trying not to), that R number is crucial; as Kucharski explains: “If R is above the critical number of one, there is potential for a large epidemic to occur.
“But even if R is below one, there’s still a chance that an infected person will pass the disease on to someone else. It might be unlikely, but it’s possible.”
What does it mean for us?
Naturally, concerned as it is with the spread of infectious disease and other grim subjects such as gang violence, Kucharski’s book largely focuses on how we can bring the R rate down and stop things from spreading.
However, in a chapter entitled Going Viral, the author looks at how the R number has been used to shape the rise of viral marketing.
He tells the story of student Jonah Peretti, who, in 2001, asked Nike for some personalised trainers bearing the word ‘sweatshop’. Nike refused repeatedly, on the grounds that the request contained ‘inappropriate slang’, and so Peretti decided to forward the entire email exchange to his friends. They, in turn, forwarded it to their friends, and so on and so forth, until, within days, the message had spread to thousands of people.
From there, it hit the media, and the story featured in the Guardian and the Wall Street Journal, while Peretti himself was invited to talk on the Today Show – all from one single email chain.
But could such contagion be replicated, or was it just a fluke? Peretti was convinced he could repeat the trick, and ended up leading a so-called ‘contagious media lab’, experimenting with what makes online content spread.
His findings shape the way we use social media today, as Kucharski explains: “Over the next few years, he would start to piece together features that were important for online popularity.
“Like how jumping on emerging news stories could drive traffic to websites. And how polarising topics got more exposure, while ever-changing content kept users coming back.
“His team even pioneered a ‘reblog’ feature that allowed people to share each other’s posts, a concept that would later become fundamental to how things spread on social media.”
All this research led Peretti to set up the ultimate in a rolling stream of viral content; Buzzfeed.
So, what did we learn?
You may have heard the mathematical modelling joke, “If you’ve seen one pandemic, you’ve seen… one pandemic.”
However, by focusing on the things that epidemics do have in common, Kucharski has lessons for us all, and The Rules of Contagion was a fascinating book, especially when read during lockdown.
While undoubtedly more accessible than it would have been last year, thanks the average reader’s new-found knowledge of R numbers, transmission rates and infectious disease, it was still clearly aimed at the layperson, packed with anecdotes and real-life examples.
What we found most engaging was learning about how epidemics of any kind spread, and the ways in which we can help to stop them or, conversely, help them on their way.
Who knew a rising R rate could be a good thing?
If you’d like to make your news go viral, throw us a bone on 01325 486666 or email study@hugoversity.com
