Book: Made to Stick

Authors:

Chip & Dan Heath

Premise:

What is it about certain ideas/stories that makes people remember them?  Made to Stick breaks down a number of different messages/stories and analyzes what makes them compelling enough to remember.  Breaking down the analysis in this way shows you how you can get your messages to STICK, so not only can you learn how others have done it, but how you can do it too.
The book focuses on six principals that help your messages stick.  Interestingly enough the acronym spells SUCCESs.  Leave off the last “S” for savings.  I know a really bad reference to 1-800-Mattres commercial.  Each principle has it’s own chapter.

Before I start, I’d like to say that this post should be not be used as a substitution for reading the book.  I’m not Cliff Notes, I am just trying to create interest so that you will actually go and read the book.

SUCCESs:

So lets discuss the six principals and why they work.

Simple

This principle focuses on identifing the core of your message, the single most important thing.  The core should be simple & compact.  In the book the authors refer to a concept called Commander’s Intent (CI), which is taken from the military.  The following lines are taken directly from the book.

“CI is a crisp, plain-talk statement that appears at the top of every order, specifying the plan’s goal, the desired end-state of an operation.”

“Commander’s Intent manages to align the behavior of soldiers at all levels without requiring play-by-play instructions from their leaders.”

Examples:

Herb Kelleher (longest serving CEO of Southwest airlines).  “We are THE low-fair airline.”, this was the CI used to make decisions for the company.  If it didn’t satisfy the CI, then it wasn’t done.

James Carville (key political advisor to President Clinton during his campaign).  “It’s the economy, stupid.”, was the message that would become the core of Clinton’s successful campaign.

Unexpected

This principle focuses on getting people attention and then holding on to it once you have it.  They key aspect the authors talk about is to break peoples mental model of what they think you are going to say or what they think they know.  Surprise gets their attention, but how do you maintain it.  This is done by getting the audience behind the goal/message.  One way is to create some mystery around the message.  It’s in our nature to try and figure things out.  The local news uses this approach extremely well.

“Which local restaurant has slime in their ice machine?”  Find out at 11:00.

Concrete

The more abstract the concept, the less likely people are going to remember it.  Concrete ideas are easier to remember.  Experiments in human memory have shown that people are better at remembering concrete, easily visualized nouns than abstract ones.  People remember things that they can visualize in their heads.  A few exmples:

Abstract:  High-performance

Concrete:  V8 engine

Abstract:  World-class customer service

Concrete:  A Nordstrom representative gift wrapping an item from Macy’s.

Credible

Credibility helps people believe in the message.  There are a number of way to build credibility into your message.  I’m only going to talk about a few of them.  In an Anti-Smoking campaign that ran in the mid-1990s the main spokes person was a woman that had been smoking since she was 10 years old.  She had been smoking for about 20 years.  The campaign followed this woman as she struggled to live while slowly suffocating because of her failing lungs.  The campaign didn’t use statistics or a lot of data, they used what the authors call an Anti-Authority, they put a human behind the message.

Another way to establish credibility is to provide statistics in a way that people understand, in more of a human scale.  As an example:

“Scientists recently computed an important physical constraint to an extraordinary accuracy.  To put the accuracy in perspective, imagine throwing a rock from the Sun to the Earth and hitting the target within on third of a mile of dead center.”

“Scientists recently computed an important physical constraint to an extraordinary accuracy.  To put the accuracy in perspective, imaging throwing a rock from New York to Los Angeles and hitting a $0.50 coin.”

Which statement seems more accurate & impressive?

If you do the math, the scales are both the same, but studies have shown that more people, over 80% think that to achieve the second statement is more impressive.  This is because they can better comprehend the distance between New York and Los Angles than between the Sun and Earth.

Emotional

This principle is geared towards making people care about the message.  Making you feel something.  The beginning of this chapter opens up with a quote from Mother Teresa, “If I look at the mass, I will never act.  If I look at the one, I will do.”  This statement encapsulates the way most people behave.  Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University conducted test to prove this behavior.  You have to read the book to get the details.  The key thing here is to make your audience feel something about your message.

Stories

The final principal focuses on creating stories.  “Stories are effective teaching tools.  They show how context can mislead people to make the wrong decisions.  Stories illustrate causal relationships that people hadn’t recognized before and highlight unexpected, resourceful way in which people have solved problems.”

The reason why stories are an effective tool, is that when we are listening to a story, out minds are creating a mental model of what is being told.  Our brains are visualizing the objects that are being talked about and how the interactions are being played out as the story unfolds.

Stories can also inspire us into action.  Most inspirational stories have three types of plots, Challenge (to overcome obstacles), Connection (to get along or reconnect), and Creativity (to inspire a new way of thinking).

My Thoughts:

For anyone that has to communicate ideas either verbally or in written form, I think this book is a must read.  This book is for professionals in the consulting industry, teachers in schools, doctors, lawyers, etc.  Basically it’s for everyone, since we all need to communicate in order to function in this world.  Go out and buy the book.

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