Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation [Hardcover]

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.