Highlight cells that contain one of many

Generic formula 

=SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH(things,A1)))>0

Summary 

To highlight cells that contain one of many text strings, you can use a formula based on the functions ISNUMBER and SEARCH, together with the SUMPRODUCT function. In the example shown, the conditional formatting applied to B4:B11 is based on this formula:

=SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH(things,B4)))>0