I want you to imagine for a moment that you're in New York city, if you don't live there, imagine you're walking around one weekend doing all the touristy stuff visiting. Times square, checking out the Empire State building, walking around the city. It starts to get late in the day, it's late on a Saturday and your stomach starts rumbling, it's time to get a bite to eat. When you're walking down the street on the lower East side, when you notice a big hot dog shaped sign, with the words Eat Me written in front, looks like almost like mustard. You say, I haven't had a hot dog in a while, I'll check this place out. So you walk down a flight of stairs into a restaurant called Crif Dogs. Now, if you like hot dogs, you will be in heaven, Crif Dogs has every hot dog you can imagine over. I think 20 to 30 hot dogs on the menu. They have a good morning hot dog with bacon, eggs and cheese. I don't know who would want to eat a hot dog like that for breakfast, but interesting nonetheless. Hot dog with green onion and pineapple and a traditional New York style water dog. So you're sitting there, you're finishing your hot dog when you notice something unusual in the corner of the room. It looks almost like a phone booth, like one of those things that Clark Kent might jump into to change into superman. So you have a couple of minutes, wipe the corners of your mouth, get the ketchup off you say, I'll check this phone without you walk inside. It's pretty cramped in there, it's a phone booth after all. But on the wall you'll see something you probably haven't seen in 20 maybe even 25 years. Remember rotary dial phones, remember those phones that you had to stick your finger into and go around in a circle? Well there's one on the wall right there. So just for fun, stick your finger to the number three, go around in a circle and hold that receiver up to your ear. Well the phone will actually ring, it'll go ring, ring, then someone will pick up the other line. And they'll ask you whether you have a reservation. Now, I remember the first time I heard this story I said reservation, I'm in a phone booth inside of a hot dog restaurant. What could I possibly have a reservation for? But if you're lucky and they have space, where a friend of yours happen to make a reservation, the back of that phone booth will open and you'll be let into a secret bar called, Please don't tell. Now please don't tell has violated a number of traditional laws of marketing. There's no sign on the street no sign inside the restaurant. In fact they've done everything they can to make themselves difficult to find. Yet they've never advertised and everyday they're full 3 PM the phone lines open up by 3:30 all the seats are gone. People frantically hit read out again and again on their phones trying to get through. And it's not for lack of competition, there are dozens of bars within a couple block radius that serve a similar product. So why were they so successful when many other bars fail? In fact most bars and restaurants fail. So what did they do to make themselves a hit? Well if you think about it, they made themselves a secret, let me tell you a little secret about secrets. Think about the last time that someone told you something, they told you not to tell anybody else. What's the first thing you then did with that information? If you're like most people you probably told someone, because having access to something that everyone else has, makes you feel smart, it makes you feel in the know. It gives you what I'll call social currency, just like the car we drive and the clothes we wear, the things we say and the things we share affect how other people see us. So one thing that drives people to pass things on is if it makes them look good. The better something makes us look, the more likely we are to share it. To help explain this concept, I want to introduce you to a friend of mine. Her name is Carla and she drives a minivan and I want to see how much you can guess about her based solely on the car that she drives. So if you had to guess for example, how old would you guess my friend is. Well you might say 35, maybe 45, she have kids probably. Do they play sports, probably. What sport do they play, well you might say soccer. How did I know that you would guess all those things, do I know that, Carla? No, because choices communicate information, car we drive and also the clothes we wear. I thought a lot about what to wear for this video. I knew that you'd be looking at me and making infants about me based on how I'm dressed, and I know that I have a little bit of a young face. So I wear a jacket to seem professional and encourage you to think that I'm 24 at least rather than 18 and have my own money and can buy my own clothes. Because I was talking to you wearing a T shirt as I probably much prefer to be doing, you probably wouldn't take me seriously. What we're wearing our clothes or a signal of who we are, just like what we drive. What's the same thing with what we talk about and share. If you ever look online, you'll notice that people share all sorts of positive things on social media. Look at me, I'm on vacation, look at me, I got a promotion, look at me my child did well in school. Why do people less likely to share negative things. Why does nobody share look at me, I'm in front of my computer doing Excel spreadsheets. They share things that make them look good rather than not good. They share things that make them look smart special and in the know rather than not so smart or not so special or not so in the know. What we share is a signal of who we are. Some people love talking about sports, it's a signal of their identity. Some people are foodies, love talking about the newest restaurants. People are into technology, your business, talk about those areas to signal things to others. And so if we want to get people to talk about us, one key thing we need to do is find that social currency. How can we make our customers or clients or the people we want to talk about us feel like insiders, feel smart, special and in the know like they're not like everybody else. Please don't tell did a great job of that. A hidden bar, right, it makes you feel special and in the know like you're different from others. Coca cola put people's names on the bottles. You can see pictures of different names when you walk into the store. you see your name on a bottle, you're much more likely to pick it up because it makes you feel different from others. That's one way to get social currency, but there's a few more. And another fun one is to find the inner remarkability. And I think this one is particularly important. Remarkability means worthy of remark, something that's surprising novel or interesting. And you might say, well certain things are naturally remarkable and others are doomed to fail. Think about a product or service you think would be difficult to get people to talk about. You might say toilet paper or socks, accounting maybe dishwashers or blenders. Nobody would talk about blenders, right. Let me show you a fun example how a company got over 200 million views for videos about blenders. >> Will it blend, that is the question. [MUSIC] I love my new iPhone, it does everything. But will it blend? That is the question. Let's find out. I think I'm going to push the smoothie button. Mm hmm, mm hmm. Yeah. Mhm. I smoke. Don't breathe this. Now you fans on Youtube have asked me to blend an iphone so I did it. But I have another, I'm going to put this on ebay. Now, that's pretty remarkable. This video has over 10 million views. They do them for lots of different products. The set has over 200 million blender sales go up over 700% when these videos come out And anyone would be happy with a 700% sales increase. That's certainly remarkable. They did this for a $50 marketing budget. That's even more remarkable. But that's not the most remarkable thing to me about this video. The most remarkable thing about this video to me is that they did this for one of the least exciting products ever. A blender. Most of us don't even have any idea what type of blender you might have in your home yet. This company got millions of people to talk about and share blenders. How? Because they found the inner remark ability, it's not that certain products are born remarkable and others are doomed to fail. Any product can be remarkable if you find that in the remark ability, if you show people again, rather than tell them, don't just tell them what we make a really powerful blender, how can you show them how powerful that blender is? Please don't tell, didn't just get up and say, hey, look at our blender, it works great. They made a piece of content, a story that carry that message along for the ride and by finding that inner remark ability they got people to talk and share
