A $100 cheesesteak made a steakhouse famous
Barclay's Prime in Philadelphia was a white-tablecloth restaurant with a serious steak menu. Then someone put a Philly cheesesteak on it — at a price that made people furious enough to tell everyone.
Barclay's Prime is an upscale Philadelphia steakhouse known for prime cuts and a refined room. It also serves a Philly cheesesteak.
The cheesesteak costs $100. It is made with Kobe beef, shaved truffles, and foie gras, and served with a small bottle of champagne. Almost nobody orders it for the food alone.
Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger uses this example in Contagious to illustrate social currency — the idea that people share things that make them look interesting, in-the-know, or surprising to others. A $100 cheesesteak at a steakhouse is a story. It provokes a reaction. "You won't believe what I saw" is the most reliable transmission mechanism word-of-mouth has.
The restaurant didn't advertise it. Diners photographed it, told their friends, wrote about it online. The absurdity of the price became the marketing. Berger's point is that remarkable products get talked about not because they're expensive or good, but because they give people something to say.
The lesson transfers: if your product or service doesn't give customers a reason to retell the experience, you're depending on advertising to do the job that the product itself should do.