Something Massive considers the new book FASCINATE by Sally Hogshead

Book Review: FASCINATE, Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, by Sally Hogshead

Sally Hogshead’s book, 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 discusses the role of fascination with references to sex, facial recognition in babies, the Salem witch trials, the Mona Lisa, and amnesiacs with a similar approach as the super-popular Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Stevel Levitt and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Fascinated yet? I was. Sally makes the point that we have moved from a goods-based economy to a service-based economy to an information economy to an experience economy. We are now in 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.

I think this is an interesting point. Particularly in our field of digital marketing, experiences are now a dime a dozen. Gone are the days of wowing a consumer with some visually brilliant Flash zinger. Today, much of our marketing is based on social media which is predicated on the idea that people want to be the most fascinating thing out there with more followers, comments and retweets than anyone else. And if not that, they are trolling around to see what others find fascinating for entertainment. So Sally, I am in.

The second part of the book describes each of the 7 triggers in detail. This part reads like most advertising books and for the seasoned marketer, won’t be that revolutionary. That said, as any aspiring golfer (like me) will tell you, the fundamentals of the game don’t change but you don’t hit a hole in one until you find the visualization that works for you. Meaning, even if Part 2 feels a good bit like other marketing books, when considered in the context of a new concept like fascination, you are bound find some valuable nuggets that you can carry with you and influence success.

For me those nuggets were most closely related to my role in agency business development. Positioning an agency and its offering in such a way that potential clients are fascinated by it is the hole in one. The concept crystallized all kinds of ideas that had previously been just clouding up my brain like one big, amorphous lump (Sally, I’ll let you know if our new business win rate goes up as a result!)

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. Rather your are left with a bunch of stuff to consider and no real action plan for putting it into place. Sally’s book is the opposite. She 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.

So in sum, read Fascinate by Sally Hogshead. You can finish it in an evening or two and you’ll come away with loads of actionable strategies for making yourself or your company more captivating to the people who matter the most. It’s available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.