Fascinate
Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation
By: Sally Hogshead
Published: February 2010
Format: Hardcover, 266pp
ISBN-13: 9780061714702
ISBN-10: 0061714704
Publisher: Harper Business/HarperCollins
"You don't control fascination. Fascination controls you", writes award winning advertising writer, and world renowned brand consultant Sally Hogshead, in her entertaining and groundbreaking book Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation. The author takes a multi-disciplinary approach to why people are fascinated by other people, companies and brands, and identifies the seven emotional triggers that underline that deep seated fascination.
Sally Hogshead combines cutting edge research, including an exclusive Kelton study for this book, to demonstrate the importance of fascination triggers in our lives. Whether on a personal attraction level, or for making purchases in the marketplace, our seven emotional triggers predispose us to certain choices. These choices may even be different at various intervals in our lives, and they may even become obsessions rather than mere fascinations. Sally Hogshead points out that the seven triggers occur in different levels in each person, resulting in a myriad of different decisions, and also a potential challenging opportunity for marketers. The studies presented in the book point out that people not only want to be seen as fascinating by other people, but they want to be fascinated as well.
Sally Hogshead (photo left) recognizes that for companies and their brands, it is simply not enough to offer quality, or even a unique product or service. If a brand is not fascinating to people, it will suffer low sales volume, and perhaps even complete business failure. A good ideas or a good product is not enough. The company and its brands must, like an individual, be found fascinating and trigger at least one of the seven emotional triggers of fascination. Those seven triggers are:
* Lust - creates craving for sensory pleasure
* Mystique - lures with unanswered questions
* Alarm - threatens with negative consequences
* Power - commands and controls
* Vice - tempts with "forbidden fruits" causing us to rebel against norms
* Trust - comforts us with certainty and reliability
* Prestige- earns respect through symbols of achievement
For me, the power of the book is how Sally Hogshead combines leading edge scientific research with real world examples to present her case. Her pairing of theory and practical ideas, for understanding the power of fascination in both our personal and professional lives, turns the book into a powerful advertising and marketing manual. The concepts described in the book work at both the individual level and for businesses seeking insight into the buying motivations of their target markets. The book is far more than psychological ideas, as Sally Hogshead includes many entertaining and illuminating anecdotes and examples of the seven triggers in action, and how they affect people's lives in subconscious ways. The practical tools, for discovering the fascination level of a company, and the techniques to increase its fascination quotient, are valuable chapters in the book. They are a must read for anyone in sales, marketing, and advertising.
I highly recommend the pioneering and seminal book Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally Hogshead, to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the emotional and psychological triggers that influence our lives. Whether in interpersonal relationships, or in our buying decisions, our emotional triggers zero in on what fascinates us, causing us to act impulsively and even obsessively over the person or object of our fascination. At the same time, the book contains ideas for making oneself more fascinating to others on a personal level, and a company and its brands more fascinating on a business transactional level.
Read the important and well researched book Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally Hogshead, and discover your own personal fascination triggers, and how they motivate your own choices. The book will also help any company advertise, market and sell their products and services more effectively through a deeper understanding of the critical seven triggers of persuasion and captivation.
