One of the most interesting books I read this year is Chip and Dan Heath’s “Made To Stick” — a fast-paced tour of idea success stories. Here’s how a story helps rid one of the Curse of Knowledge. People matter to themselves. In fact, stories usually automatically meet other criteria for making ideas sticky: They are almost always concrete, they are often emotional and have unexpected elements. Why isn’t it already happening naturally? The Heath brothers give us six qualities of sticky ideas. As you’re formulating your next marketing campaign or product positioning bible, grab this article and use SUCCESs as your checklist. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. They’ve given us a cute little acronym to help them (ahem) stick: SUCCESs. That probably seems obvious: we know that sentences are better than paragraphs, easy words are better than hard words, etc. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is a book by brothers Chip and Dan Heath published by Random House on January 2, 2007. made to stick success model www.made to stick.com principle 1 simple principle 2 unexpected principle 3 concrete principle 4 credible principle 5 emotional The hard part about using a story is creating it. Unexpected ideas are more likely to stick because surprise makes us pay attention and think. They are a striking example of concreteness. For example, the story of the fox and the grape ends with the fox concluding that grapes out of his reach are likely sour — hence the phrase “sour grapes”, which appears in nearly every language. Made to Stick distills years of research and communication science into an easy-to-remember mnemonic and blueprint for creating ‘sticky ideas’; ideas that get understood, remembered and that change something – minds or behaviours. It functions more like a proverb than a sound bite. The book continues the idea of "stickiness" popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point, seeking to explain what makes an idea or concept memorable or interesting. The first requirement of effective communication is getting attention, the second is keeping it. Chip and Dan Heath offer us 6 qualities that make ideas sticky, all wrapped up in a clever acronym: Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories (SUCCES). In front of a judge, if a lawyer argues 10 points, then he might not remember them all. • It often isn’t clear what is best. Something becomes concrete when it can be described or detected by the human senses. Surprise is the opposite of predictability. Then, once their guessing machines have failed, help them refine their machines. Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audience’s guessing machines along the critical, counter-intuitive dimension. It is triggered when our expectations fail, and it prepares us to understand why the failure occurred. So, the lawyer needs to argue the most important point that will turn the case to his favor. Concrete ideas are easy to remember. It moves people to take action. To be surprising, an event can’t be predictable. They ask questions like: Who am I? What makes people believe ideas? They’re remembering the experience that taught them those lessons — the struggles, the political battles, the missteps, the pain. Unexpected–get your audience’s attention and hold it … Experiments have shown that people remember concrete over abstract nouns: “bicycle” over “justice” or “personality.”. Identify the central message you need to communicate — find the core; Figure out what is counter-intuitive about the message — i.e., what are the unexpected implications of your core message? So, a good process for making ideas stickier is: Surprise jolts us to attention. Humans think in patterns, the key is to break these patterns. Here are the 6 principles again: Apply these rules to make your own messages “stick” at your own pleasure. Novices perceive concrete detail as concrete detail; an expert sees concrete details as symbols of a pattern. And what matters to people? The power of being concrete is illustrated by the longevity of Aesop’s fables. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. But to be satisfying, surprise must be “post-dictable.” The twist makes sense after you think about it, but it’s not something you would have seen coming. Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. A key to making an idea sticky is to tell it as a story. In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of stories, advertising campaigns, and ideas that captivate. To get to the core, we’ve got to weed out the superfluous elements, and also the important ideas that are really important, but just aren’t the most important. As different as each sticky story may be, they share six characteristics. A V-8 engine is concrete; “high-performance” is abstract. Your Brain On Chaos: Debunking The Myth Of Tortured Artist, 5 Reasons Why Creativity and Business Have a Problematic Relationship, Why Freelance Writing is Killing Your Creativity (and how to reclaim it), 4 Ways to Squeeze the Juice Out of Your Creativity. That need can make us finish a bad book, or watch a bad movie to the end, because we want to know what happens. The extra attention and thinking sears unexpected events into our memories. Think of the hum of a fan, or traffic noise, or a familiar smell. The main difference between an expert and novice is the ability of the expert to see things abstractly. Performance & security by Cloudflare, Please complete the security check to access. The power of a good story is that it provides inspiration. The authors share the 3 major types of stories to look for. Your IP: 91.238.164.172 That doesn’t mean dumbing things down; it does mean finding the core of the idea. We feel a need to fill the gap. When people have too many choices, they tend to get paralyzed and find it difficult to make decisions. For example, the difference in reaction between a judge and a jury: The jury sees all the concrete aspects of a trial — the lawyers’ clothing, manner, the specific procedures in a classroom; the judge sees all in terms of legal precedent and the lessons of the past. The most basic way to make people care is to form an association between something they don’t yet care about and something they do care about; something that matters to them. When explaining how to solve problems someone might say “Keep the lines of communication open.” They are hearing in their heads a song filled with passion and emotion. Consider a software startup with the goal of building “the next great search engine.” Within the startup are two programmers with nearly identical skillsets working next to each other. This provides a concrete image which lasts: Compare “sour grapes” to the conclusion “don’t be such a bitter jerk when you fail.” The latter has no staying power: It is naked fact. The real difficulty is to be sure they are simple enough. It’s a fast-paced tour of idea success stories (and failures)—the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher’s simulation that actually prevented prejudice . Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. A similar style to Gladwell's is used, with a number of stories and case studies followed by principles. To make people care about ideas we get them to: Often people make decision not in a rational way — write down all alternatives and look at pluses and minuses — but instead they make them based on identity. And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? Cloudflare Ray ID: 5fa0e91a0f17b444 They need to share the story of their trials. We base it on authorities — our parents, traditions, experts, etc. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Why do some ideas thrive while others die? Perhaps the simplest of all sticky ideas is Einstein’s E = MC², which renders the complexity of the material universe and the mystery of relativity in 5 letters, numbers, and symbols. Even experts need clarity. The good news is that to make people care we don’t have to produce emotion from an absence of emotion. It will come as no surprise that one reliable way of making people care is by invoking self-interest. Stories encourage a kind of mental simulation or reenactment on the part of the listener that burns the idea into the mind. What kind of situation is this? Concreteness also enables coordination by making targets clear. If we are to succeed, the first step is this: Be simple. We only become aware of them when something changes. And what do people like me to do in this type of situation? We need to master the art of exclusion. Humans adapt incredibly quickly to patterns. This chapter focuses on how to create credibility when you don’t have such authority figures. To one “the next great search engine” means completeness, ensuring that the search engine returns everything on the web that could possibly be relevant. Of the 6 traits of “stickiness” described in this book, being concrete is the easiest to accept and implement.