Customer Reviews

Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

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3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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

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.

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.

Fascination's only surprise is it is not fascinating. The book is thin, not just in pages, but in saying anything new in marketing. Lust is just another word for sizzle. Mystique is just another word for teaser ads. Alarm is just another word for the power of being left out. Prestige is just another word for branding. Power is just another word for expertise. Vise is just another word for using the power of bathing suits selling Sports Illustrated. Trust is just another word for being reliable.

The author makes a valiant, but overly thin research of human behavior and anatomy to explain why these seven "fascinations" work in marketing.

But we all know they work. And we all know that some work better than others for selling different things. And while the author tries to tell us why they work, most of us have been taught they work by being consumers or taking a Marketing 101 book.

As someone from the Northeast, I was pleased to learn from Sally Hogshead's new book that I lead a more fascinating life than folks in the rest of the country. At least, that's what she says, and I trust her to be right, because she's clearly done her homework at the same time as she's created a new category of thinking for advertisers, branders, PR folks, marketers -- anyone in the business of getting attention for themselves, their companies, or their products. The book is an extraordinary collection of insights, fresh thinking, pearls of wisdom, and funny asides. Hogshead is a very witty writer, and she manages to keep her text fascinating even as she's writing about the subject with clarity and verve. This is a brilliant book. Everyone except a handful of people who are already as fascinating as they need to be should read this book: President Obama, Drew Brees, and the late Marilyn Monroe come to mind. No doubt you can think of others.

This book attempts to explain why we are fascinated by some people and some things, but not interested in other people and things. I was hoping to gain insight into what types of marketing works and what doesn't. What did I learn? Sex sells. This is not exactly breaking news.

Sally talks about 7 triggers for fascination:
**lust
**mystique
**alarm
**prestige
**power
**vice
**trust.

They almost sound like the 7 deadly sins, don't they?

A chapter is devoted to each trigger and Sally gives examples of each trigger type. For example, mystique is represented by Coke's secret ingredient.

I didn't really see how these examples translated into practical advice. This was more of a pop psychology book attempting to explain human behavior, than a marketing book that would tell you how to harness this behavior to sell your product.

I suppose if you like pop psychology you might like this book.

At first, the book appears to be a piece of pop-psychology. It certainly is a very entertaining read, with lots of vignettes and anecdotes. But these anecdotes apparently are the product of heavy research; it has several profound insights and useful takeaways. I was most impressed by my "F score", which was dead on. Highly distilled, easily accessable, with good insights quickly gleaned, and follow-up material to go deeper.

Capturing people's attention in these ADHD times is crucial no matter what you do. This book can help you spring your trap a little faster.

Fascinate is a brilliant and transformative journey. Using captivating anecdotes and leveraging the author's incredible insight and research (not to mention her highly entertaining writing style), the book reveals the inner truth about how we see, and are seen, by everyone around us. It's hard to argue with the fact that in order to get any attention in today's ADD world, one really does have to fascinate- and this book clearly shows you how (and furthermore offers compelling evidence about why certain people, brands, etc. fascinate us).

Fascinate transcends the boundaries of advertising and is also, in fact, a revolutionary book about life and human nature. After reading it, you find yourself looking at the world through Hogshead's "seven triggers": how to utilize them, and how they are being utilized by others to inspire action and attraction. This book should be required reading for everyone who seeks to function and succeed in today's insanely competitive and distracted world. I loved reading it, and will read it again...

As the marketing world gets turned upside down, someone has to make sense of it all.

Sally Hogshead takes a mighty damn good run at it with her new book, FASCINATE.

FASCINATE's insights are completely relevant whether you are an ad agency exec, a Web 3.0 entrepreneur, or a small business owner on Main Street.

For my money, this is one of the fastest, most captivating reads you will find on the business bookshelf this year.

Instead of getting caught up in the vehicles (advertising, online, social media and the like), Hogshead remains media-agnostic and focuses on what's truly important: the universal triggers that captivate and motivate consumers on a deep emotional level.

These are powerful, simple, RELEVANT principles that anyone can put to work for themselves.

For me, Sally Hogshead's book does two powerful things.

1. It brings a structure and a logic to some of the things we marketers have probably known in the back of our minds our whole lives - and applied haphazardly. The Seven Triggers of fascination are tangible, useful tools that are every bit as reliable as the trusty hammer and wrench in your Craftsman toolbox. Using these triggers can dramatically increase your win/loss ratio as far as identifying and putting into practice the ideas that will successfully shape consumer loyalty to your brand.

2. It motivates me to let go of the old-school, "get attention + deliver strategic message here" Tab A/Slot B thinking that consumers are practically immune to these days. When I read FASCINATE (and I find myself turning back to chapters in this book again and again) it makes me excited about the future of marketing.

It's breezy, fun read that informs you with great anecdotes and refuses to bore.

Sally Hogshead has written a great new book. As someone whose livelihood depends on the ability to grab and hold people's attention, it's a must read whether you're in marketing, sales or just for life.

What I liked was how she broke down and made sense of so many things we take for granted. She explained how people interact effectively and how to use use those tools yourself.

The ability to hold someone's attention, or the attention of a community, is a critical currency is the age of social media. With conversations constantly in flow, and so many media demanding consumer attention, you can't just have something to say, you have to say it more effectively.

For me, it's an indispensable guide to effective communication, and not surprising, a read that grabs and holds your attention.