One thing that caught my attention about this book is how thoroughly researched it seemed. Derek investigates why certain works stay relevant while others flop. What is the secret sauce?

One key takeaway for me was that for something to become a hit, the popularity plays a huge role.

Derek systematically shows you how sometimes ideas need to be fought for to gain visibility in the marketplace; while other times is seems as if the popularity is instant

In summary, things don’t just happen. There is a lot of psychology and resilience that pay a huge role in the lasting success of a brand

Reviewed online in conjunction with several other titles; here is relevant section:

THE HIT MAKERS by Derek Thompson (2/7, Penguin) is already on our shelves. This work is a fun read for pop culture enthusiasts especially since, as the publisher says, "it leaves no Pet Rock unturned to tell the fascinating story of how culture happens and why things become popular." Thompson, senior editor at The Atlantic magazine, writes in an extremely entertaining and informative fashion. Each of his chapters includes plenty of facts and anecdotes, often centering around a trio of related examples such as chapter one, The Power of Exposure, which deals with Monet, Adele and Trump. Thompson explains fluency (thinking that feels easy) and disfluency (difficult to process), noting that "most people generally prefer ideas that they already agree with, images that are easy to discern, stories that are easy to relate to...." Often, then "less thinking leads to more liking." Similarly, USA Today recently noted that Trump's repetitive rhetoric is a trick used in advertising. THE HIT MAKERS's chapter eleven, What People Want II: A History of Pixels, and Ink, uses tabloids, television and news feed to introduce tales about George Gallup and applied anthropology. As he continues, Thompson mentions Steven Levy's "dozen doughnuts" problem, noting that if people think the [Facebook] News Feed is just a sugar bomb without any deeper meaning, readers might shutter their accounts." Did that realization lead to last Thursday's Building Global Community manifesto? Clearly, THE HIT MAKERS is a highly recommended and worthwhile read, filled with timely examples; it received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

Links in live post:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/02/16/mess-fake-news-disaster-trumps-repetition-advertising-tactic/98014444/
AND https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-community/10154544292806634

Excellent book! Genius and to the point. How nothing really goes viral There is a reason why and how something becomes popular.

Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson is a very highly recommended examination of popularity of things and how and why they gained their status. This is an engrossing look at popularity. Thompson has a comfortable writing style that is full of anecdotes and examples. He creatively ties widely divergent topics together in a fascinating, entertaining format.

Nothing really "goes viral." There is a reason why a song, movie, book, app, etc. became popular. Thompson explores "the psychology of why people like what they like, the social networks through which ideas spread, and the economics of cultural markets." As he succinctly points out, people are both "neophilic - curious to discover new things - and deeply neophobic - afraid of anything that’s too new. The best hit makers are gifted at creating moments of meaning by marrying new and old, anxiety and understanding. They are architects of familiar surprises." So, Hit Makers asks two questions: 1. What is the secret to making products that people like - in music, movies, television, books, games, apps, and more across the vast landscape of culture? 2. Why do some products fail in these marketplaces while similar ideas catch on and become massive hits?

Thompson covers a wide variety of pop cultural blockbusters ranging from and including Brahms lullaby, the impressionist canon (yeah, the Impressionists, as in painters), ESPN, Cheers and Seinfeld, Star Wars, Rock Around the Clock, Fifty Shades of Grey, Game of Thrones, Etsy, Facebook, the laugh track, Vampires, Disney Princesses, and much more. Even more interesting is how he ties so many different hits together to explain what they became hits. One principle that governs almost all hits is MAYA: Most Advanced Yet Achievable. "MAYA offers three clear lessons. First: Audiences don’t know everything, but they know more than creators do. Second: To sell something familiar, make it surprising. To sell something surprising, make it familiar. Third: People sometimes don’t know what they want until they already love it."

The incident that created the impressionist canon took me by surprise, and yet it makes perfect sense. Thompson shows how "the impressionist canon focuses on a tight cluster of seven core painters: Manet, Monet, Cézanne, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, and Sisley - the Caillebotte Seven. When painter and collector Gustave Caillebotte donated his art collection upon his untimely death, his donation helped to create the impressionist canon. The power of repeated exposure, whether it is paintings that are exhibited or other things is a powerful tool in determining what is a hit.

What makes a song succeed? "Even at the dawn of the American music business, to make a song a hit, a memorable melody was secondary to an ingenious marketing campaign." Interesting, but clearly true.

I wanted to pump my fist and yell "Yes, this!" when Thompson points out, and rightly so, that "there is such a thing as too much familiarity. It’s everywhere, in fact. It’s hearing a catchy song for the tenth time in a row, watching a movie that is oh so predictably uncreative, or hearing a talented speaker use overfamiliar buzzword after buzzword. In fluency studies, the power of familiarity is discounted when people realize that the moderator is trying to browbeat them with the same stimulus again and again. This is one reason why so much advertising doesn’t work: People have a built-in resistance to marketing that feels like it’s trying to seduce them." I have experienced this many times over the years (mindset or grit, anyone?) Recently when the video for a women's conference kept repeated the name of the event throughout the video as a buzz word, all it did was annoy me and strengthen my determination to not attend.

This is specifically for readers. Many of you will understand: "When people read, they hear voices and see images in their head. This production is total synesthesia and something close to madness. A great book is a hallucinated IMAX film for one. The author had a feeling, which he turned into words, and the reader gets a feeling from those words - maybe it’s the same feeling; maybe it’s not. As Peter Mendelsund wrote in What We See When We Read, a book is a coproduction. A reader both performs the book and attends the performance. She is conductor, orchestra, and audience. A book, whether nonfiction or fiction, is an 'invitation to daydream.'"

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the Penguin Publishing Group.

http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2017/02/hit-makers.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1905950354
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R36AB47CPYW6JB/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=110198032X

“Atlantic senior editor Derek Thompson uncovers the hidden psychology of why we like what we like and reveals the economics of cultural markets that invisibly shape our lives.”

Thompson walks us through what makes people like things – whether those things are songs or movies or pet rocks, or even so-called politicians. A central thesis is that hit makers nail that tension between familiarity and surprise – at providing their audiences with what he calls an “aesthetic aha!” He explores the idea of “fluency” – that our minds like things that feel familiar and that feeling reinforces for us that such things are “right” or “true.” And apropos of these times, he finds that “less thinking leads to more liking” and that “when something becomes hard to think about, people transfer the discomfort of the thought to the object of their thinking.”

As you may deduce from my quotes above, I found real value in this book, and highlighted sections for later review. I’ve shared concepts from this book with others, and have even gotten into discussions with strangers on airplanes about the ideas in this book.

Really interesting & thought provoking. Highly recommend.

I received a free ARC from Netgalley in exchange for a fair & honest review.

Excellent book on what makes things popular both socially and psychologically; recommended for popular reading section of academic libraries.

In his grandparent's home in Metro Detroit, Derek Thompson's mother sang him a lullaby in German. He later realized the song was not unique, but the universally popular Brahms lullaby, "Lullaby, and good night," published in 1868.

Thompson asks, how did this tune spread world-wide? There were no radio broadcasts, recordings, or cable television to disseminate the song.

It was brought to America in the late 19th c by immigrant Germans.

Thompson then turns his attention to art, presenting the history of famous impressionist paintings, collected by wealthy artist Caillebotte, and donated to France. These paintings by artists like Manet and Monet were the ones that did not sell; now these artists and paintings are now considered the core group of artists we call Impressionists.

How did the paintings no one wanted to buy become recognized as great examples of art?

Can popularity be predicted, manufactured, or marketed? How do ideas and fads spread? Why do some things catch on while others fail? How has the information age changed how popularity spreads?

In The Hit Makers Atlantic editor Derek Thompson presents interesting historical and contemporary examples of successful 'hits' that illustrate how success works.

I was captivated and fascinated by this book. The implications of Thompson's analysis has universal applications, including psychology, sociology, entertainment, and business.

Thompson explains that people feel comfortable with what they know--but familiarity gets stale. People reject something that is too outside their comfort level. Creators and Makers have to tweak the familiar to make it new, but not too new.

Means to becoming a hit includes the repetition of catch words that make speeches or advertising memorable; building on an existing fan base to guarantees users; and popular individuals influencing millions through social media.

I will be mulling this over for a long time as I watch for emerging 'hits' and think about how they came to be.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.