Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation [Hardcover]

Sally Hogshead (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 2010

What triggers fascination, and how do companies, people, and ideas put those triggers to use?

Why are you captivated by some people but not by others? Why do you recall some brands yet forget the rest? In a distracted, overcrowded world, how do certain leaders, friends, and family members convince you to change your behavior? Fascination: the most powerful way to influence decision making. It's more persuasive than marketing, advertising, or any other form of communication. And it all starts with seven universal triggers: lust, mystique, alarm, prestige, power, vice, and trust.

Fascination plays a role in every type of decision making, from the brands you choose to the songs you remember, from the person you marry to the employees you hire. And by activating the right triggers, you can make anything become fascinating.

To explore and explain fascination's irresistible influence, Sally Hogshead looks beyond marketing, delving into behavioral and social studies, historical precedents, neurobiology and evolutionary anthropology, as well as conducting in-depth interviews and a national study of a thousand consumers, to emerge with deeply rooted patterns for why, and how, we become captivated.

Hogshead reveals why the Salem witch trials began with the same fixations as those in Sex and the City. How Olympic athletes are subject to obsessions similar to those of fetishists. How a 1636 frenzy over Dutch tulip bulbs perfectly mirrors the 2006 real estate bubble. And why a billion-dollar "Just Say No" program actually increased drug use among teens, by activating the same "forbidden fruit" syndrome as a Victoria's Secret catalog.

Whether you realize it or not, you're already using the seven triggers. The question is, are you using the right triggers, in the right way, to get your desired result? This book will show you.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brand executive Hogshead (Radical Careering) argues that exploiting certain "triggers" can boost relationships with customers, employees, and friends. Fascination is ultimately an instinctive drive that catalyzes countless behaviors, including purchasing decisions. Outlining seven triggers which "bring meaning to all types of otherwise meaningless scenarios," the author reveals how powerful brands like FedEx, Walt Disney World Theme Park and W Hotels combine such triggers as lust, power, mystique, and trust in different proportions to reel in consumers or reinforce messaging. Despite an uneven start, this slight but practical work packs a big punch.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“As Hogshead wends her way around the world of fascination, her citations are funny and apt, even educational... Fascinate is a fascinating book...” (Richard Pachter, Miami Herald )

“This slight but practical work packs a big punch.” (Publishers Weekly )

“Whenever your message hasn’t reached a customer, peer over at Sally Hogshead’s collection of stories and directives, replete with more illuminating, original, and doable ideas than you can handle in a lifetime. Okay, two lifetimes.” (Richard Laermer, author of Forecast 2011 and Full Frontal PR )

“Fascinate is a riveting journey through the forces of fascination—how it irresistibly shapes our ideas, opinions, and relationships—and how to wield it to your advantage.” (Alan Webber, author of Rules of Thumb )

“Can you dissect ‘fascination’? Sally Hogshead says, ‘Yes.’ Fascination is arguably the most powerful of product attachments—and this pioneering book helps us approach the word and the concept in a thoughtful and also practical manner.” (Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence )

“This is a transformative work, a beautifully written book that will forever change the way you see the world. I loved it. Let me be really clear: you need to buy this book, devour it, absorb it and then buy copies for your colleagues. A lot of copies.” (Seth Godin, author of Linchpin )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness (February 9, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061714704
• ISBN-13: 978-0061714702
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (79 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Consumer Behavior
  • #97 in Books > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Marketing

More About the Author

Sally Hogshead helps world-class businesses develop messages that influence and persuade consumers, partners, and employees. Starting out as one of the most award-winning advertising writers in the country, she is today a world-renowned brand consultant and speaker, leading keynotes for companies such as Starbucks and Microsoft as well as innovation workshops. As a creative director, she develops fascinating ideas for both Fortune 500 companies and start-ups. Hogshead and her work have been featured in the New York Times and on the Today show, CBS, ABC, and MSNBC.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book called Fascinate fails if you aren't compelled to read it in one sitting, February 26, 2010

By 

Julia C. Perry (Nashville, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation (Hardcover)

Which is exactly what I did!

I don't know Sally and I purchased her book right here in Amazon on referral from some old colleagues. So this review is the real deal, folks.

FASCINATE is a compelling journey into method and madness of persuasion. The concept is that whether you are pitching a new client, inviting a friend to lunch, luring a cranky toddler to sleep, or marketing a product, you are using triggers to elicit a certain response. Sally has narrowed these down to 7 (power, trust, mystique, prestige, vice, alarm and lust) and the book demonstrates and explains how dialing these triggers up and down can help you more effectively influence your relationships.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part uses lots of dare I say it ... fascinating examples ... of how fascination factors into key world events and even human development. It's a page-turner. The second part of the book reads more like your typical marketing book and won't be all that revolutionary to seasoned advertisers. But it does frame up basic motivators in a memorable way. The key take away from this section is that we are part of a fascination economy where companies and individuals that are fascinating or can make someone else feel fascinating as a result of their relationship with them will win. That's a concise bit of advice that can serve marketers, sales people, and anyone trying to persuade very well.

The third part of the book is probably my favorite. My number one pet peeve about business books is that they always promise to tell you how to be more successful but they never actually give you a formula for doing it. Sally gives her readers a clear plan for becoming more fascinating. I've already cracked the book open once this week when a concept we were planning to pitch to a client was falling just a little bit flat. I have a feeling I'll be doing that again and again.

For more on my thoughts on FASCINATE in the context of digital marketing, click here: [...]

Julia Perry
VP, Business Development
Something Massive

83 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Turns Out It's Not A Popularity Contest., February 9, 2010

By 

MARK DIMASSIMO (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation (Hardcover)

It's a Fascination contest! And with this somewhat startling insight, a book is born. And it's a book that walks its talk. It is fascinating. It hits all the seven triggers of fascination, and it earns our attention through every fascinating page. But here's the really interesting thing - this book isn't fascinating just because it tries to be. True, the author is something of a virtuoso of fascinating, being one of the most awarded advertising copywriters ever, and well-known as one of the brightest and most successful charmers in any business. This is all good, but what's going on in this book is something more fascinating. Call it depth. It's a book that has done its homework. A book that is chock full of new stories, insights and intelligence for people whose lives and livelihoods depend on being a bit more fascinating. A book with ample handles for people who want to grab hold of the concepts and put them to work. I enjoyed finding out my F-score, for example, and learning my fascination strengths and weaknesses. At it's core, this book addresses a critically important issue. Since, in this world, the good and the right don't necessarily win, but the fascinating have an unfair advantage -- it's important for everyone who's trying to get anything good done to become more fascinating, to put these concepts and these tools to work.

44 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seven fascinate triggers that help marketers break through the clutter, February 9, 2010

By 

David M. Scott "David Meerman Scott" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation (Hardcover)

I'm a marketer and I write marketing books, so I usually don't like to read titles in the genre, preferring things very different. However, I'm a sucker for anyone who has an interesting big-picture idea about how the world works. Better yet if the book is both applicable to marketers and in interesting read.

Sally Hogshead delivers with Fascinate, which reminds me of books like Seth Godin's Linchpin, the Heath brothers Made to Stick, and Malcolm Gladwell's books. She combines elements of psychology, sociology, neurology and illustrates with terrific stories.

Marketers like me know that there's a huge information glut today. As a marketer it is difficult to break through. But if we understand the seven fascinate triggers that Sally outlines in this book, we can create things that people will talk about and things that people will share with others. As a marketer, there is nothing better than when people share your ideas and tell your stories for you.