Business Book Review: Hooked by Nir Eyal
Learn the secrets of how big brands get you hooked on their products and services, so you can connect your own offerings to your people.
My Rating: ★★★★
Length: 256 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Released: 2014
Key Takeaways for Personal Branding
Hooked by Nir Eyal makes the formula of the most effective modern-day marketing accessible to all. The Hooked Model highlights how the biggest brands in the world get you ‘hooked’ on their products and services and how you can build comparable customer loyalty using the same tricks of the trade.
Hooked via habits
Social media companies spend billions getting you hooked on their services. Most of us use social media on autopilot.
Cognitive psychologists are said to define habits as “automatic behaviours” triggered by situational cues: things we do with little or no conscious thought. This means instead of relying on expensive marketing, clever companies link products and services to daily routines and emotions.
Eyal addresses the moral implications of seemingly brazen manipulation up front and at length. The model is based on getting customers hooked to behaviours they already want to do, but for a lack of a well-designed solution, don’t do:
“Hooked seeks to unleash the tremendous new powers innovators and entrepreneurs have to influence the everyday lives of billions of people. I believe the trinity of access, data, and speed presents unprecedented opportunities to create positive habits.”
The Hooked Model
The Hooked Model highlights four phases:
Trigger: This can be an external, e.g., email, or internal trigger (when users start to automatically cue the new behaviour as part of their everyday routine)
Action: The behaviour done in anticipation of the reward (e.g. clicking)
Variable reward: The Hooked Model creates a craving
Investment: An investment occurs when the user puts something into the product or service, such as time, money, data or effort
The model is designed to connect the user's problem to a company product frequently enough to form a habit.
The Habit Zone
The Habit Zone is the sweet spot for businesses - when a behaviour generates enough:
Frequency
Perceived utility
Entering the Habit Zone is what helps make the behaviour the default. If either of the two elements is lacking, it’s less likely that the desired behaviour will be a habit:
"For new behaviours to really take hold, they must occur often."
Eyal conveys his Hooked principles with ease, with the book richly referencing science at every turn. Hooked is a thoroughly researched labour of love on a mission to create constructive addictions.
Hooked by Nir Eyal, Available on Amazon.
