Research

Stickiness is powerful: Making your message count

Books touting ways to improve business communication skills command acres of shelf space in local bookstores, mostly in the Bargain Bin section. They're literally "a dime a dozen." Then there are the true classics that take pride of place in front of the store, year after year. "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" is destined to be one of the latter. Chip and Dan Heath have taken an old topic which has vexed generations of communicators and given it new energy and ease of application.

2008-04-23

"Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" is destined to be one of the latter. Chip and Dan Heath have taken an old topic which has vexed generations of communicators and given it new energy and ease of application.

What it takes to stick

Not everyone knows what it takes to make an idea stick, but we certainly know a sticky idea when we hear one. Some sticky ideas — proverbs and fairy tales, for example — are hundreds or thousands of years old; versions of these can be found in many languages around the world. Others may be personal stories told to us by our parents, grandparents, or teachers and we can recall them with crystal clarity decades later.

An idea doesn't have to be true to be sticky. Remember the frenzy in the 1980s, when rumors of drugged or booby-trapped candy panicked parents, prompting hospitals and police stations to offer to X-ray children's Halloween treats? Urban legends are perfect examples of sticky ideas. The first time you heard the story of the guy who woke up in a bathtub filled with ice come on, admit it — you knew you'd never forget that one!

The Heaths offer their take on what it makes an idea stick. It consists of six principles: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, and Stories. Their verbal illustrations are impressive and at times entertaining, employing many real-world examples. They involve journalists, teachers, CEOs, playwrights — folks famous and not, in just about every walk of life.

The essentials of stickiness

Simple doesn't necessarily mean dumbed-down. The Heaths cite the Golden Rule as the ultimate model of simplicity: "a one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it." Southwest Airlines' Herb Kelleher is said to have summed up his company's success in a simple sentence: "We are THE low-cost airline." The Heaths use Kelleher's example of simplicity as an essential ingredient in the recipe for success.

Unexpectedness will get someone's attention by breaking a pattern. Urban legends almost always employ plot twists (usually unpleasant ones). The tactic of creating a puzzle and inviting your audience to "follow the clues" can be irresistible. How many movie plots rely on this device? But the communicator should beware of being overly gimmicky in employing this principle, the authors caution.

The Heaths illustrate the impact of unexpectedness with a wonderful story about a Sony Engineer who in the 1950s envisioned a radio that would fit into a pocket. The presentation could have been lengthy, technical and accurate, but the unexpected idea of "a radio that can fit into your pocket" was the surprising element that captured the imagination and enthusiasm of his co-workers. In the pre-transistor age, such a concept was outrageous!

Making it real

"What the world needs is a lot more fables," say the Heaths. Stories such as "The Fox and the Grapes" stamp an indelible image in our minds because they use concrete messages to illustrate profound human truths. This particular fable, along with its lesson of "sour grapes," has counterparts spanning the globe in many languages. Instead of fables, we have "buzzwords." These are so common, they are a source of office humor on the Internet (the "Business Buzzword Generator" and "Buzzword Bingo").

Most of us recall a famous classroom experiment, the brainchild of an Iowa schoolteacher who brought home the concept of racism by dividing her class into two groups — those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. This is the impact of an idea using a concrete communication tactic.

Credibility is another essential ingredient in the crafting of ideas that stick. Whether employed as analogy, statistics or expert testimony, its effectiveness is proven. Remember Joe Izuzu? He was the sleazy, lying car salesman character used by the Izuzu Motor Co. in TV ads in the late 1980s.

The writers of the Joe Izuzu commercials were employing a "reverse-credibility" strategy. The ads were extremely popular (perhaps due in part to the fact that the principle of "unexpectedness" was a vital component). The writers were taking a big risk — in this rare case, it paid off.

Making people care

Convincing people that your idea is true is important, but it is not enough, according to the Heaths. You also must make people care by appealing to the emotions. The Heaths examined this concept and decided that one way to make people care is to address their self-interest.

This, of course, is the basis of advertising. The most direct way of accomplishing this goal is to emphasize benefits to the consumer, rather than features of the product. In other words, answer the eternal unasked question "What's in it for me?" A case study presented in the book deals with a psychology study conducted in 1982 in Tempe, Arizona.

Potential Cable TV subscribers were solicited with literature describing the features and benefits of cable. One group was given technical information about the features of the new service, while the other heard a presentation employing the benefits from the customer's point of view. Not surprisingly, the second group signed up more subscribers.

Stories can succeed in making a message stick when nothing else can. A TV news reporter can report copious details about the tragic impact of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), but a story about a single individual suffering with this terminal illness is more likely to make an indelible imprint on the mind of the viewer. Listening to or reading a story goes beyond a passive experience, the Heaths say.

"When we read books, we have the sensation of being drawn into the author's world. When friends tell us stories, we instinctively empathize. When we watch movies, we identify with the protagonists." Storytelling is powerful.

A "tip" of the hat The brothers Heath took on the joint writing venture as a natural outgrowth of their separate — yet interrelated — communications careers. Chip researched the origin and makeup of "sticky" ideas as a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University. Several years ago he began teaching a course titled "How to Make Ideas Stick."

Dan, meanwhile, had co-founded the startup publishing company Thinkwell, which examined the best teaching methods for subjects like economics, biology, calculus, and physics. In the course of his work, Dan came to meet some of the most effective teachers and communicators on the planet. The brothers happily give credit to Malcolm Gladwell's 2000 bestseller "The Tipping Point" as the launching pad for their book.

Gladwell's book examined the forces that cause social phenomena to "tip," or make the leap from small groups to big groups. A section of the book dealt with what Gladwell termed "the stickiness factor." The Heaths' explain that their book "is a complement to 'The Tipping Point' in the sense that we will identify the traits that make ideas stick, a subject that was beyond the scope of Gladwell's book. Gladwell was interested in what makes social epidemics epidemic. Our interest is in how effective ideas are constructed."

Bottom Line:

Even the Heaths' "six principles of stickiness" have built-in sticky factor. You can remember them by employing the simple mnemonic SUCCES(s):

Simplicity
Unexpectedness
Concreteness
Credibility
Emotions
Stories

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