Made to Stick
Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
By Chip & Dan Heath
As a communicator, creating ideas that stick in a world where people are exposed to hundreds of ideas, thoughts, and pitches every day is one of the biggest challenges. How do you create memes that stand out? That will get noticed, understood, remembered, have a lasting impact and, even better, change your audience’s opinion or behavior?
Your opponent is “The Curse of Knowledge” – When you have knowledge, it is very hard to imagine the headspace of all those people who do not have that knowledge. Also, Decision Paralysis, Lack of a common language,
Chip and Dan Heath have a formula and a lot of great ideas to keep top of mind when deriving messages.
Key Principles for Ideas that Stick
SIMPLICITY – Your idea must be stripped down to its core, but be profound, or make it sticky. Don’t bury the lead. Complexity leads to wrong decisions, or indecision. You can get a lot of meaning into a simple idea by using markers people already know.
UNEXPECTEDNESS – Sticky ideas are counterintuitive or surprising … ideally, the idea arouses curiosity or further interest. Break the pattern – it makes people pay attention and think. Evoke emotions, but surprise needs to re-enforce the message and engage the audience’s guessing machine.
Mysteries invoke a need for closure. Curiosity happens when we see a gap in our knowledge. If you want people to listen, you have to expose the gaps in their knowledge first. >> Change your outlook from “what information do I want to convey to “What questions do I want my audience to ask.”.
CONCRETENESS – Explain ideas in terms of human actions and sensory information. Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images. Our brains remember concrete data better. Statements that are not concrete can be ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Novices crave concreteness. Abstraction makes ideas harder to remember. Concrete mobilizes focus and ideas can be shared.
CREDIBILITY – Sticky ideas need to carry their own credentials. People need to test/confirm your ideas for themselves. Often, you are fighting an uphill battle with a skeptical audience. Try authorities, people we want to be like, or testable credentials (the audience can test or answer. Vivid details help add to credibility, as do (comparative) statistics.
EMOTIONS – We feel for people, not abstractions. Targeting the right emotions is the trick. Once people get analytical, they are less likely to be emotional. Tap into deeply held worldviews. Associate with something they care about. Tap self-interest and benefits (the benefit of the benefit) at low cost. The tangibility of the benefits may be more important than the magnitude. Maslow: we think we are motivated by self-esteem, but others are motivated by baser self-interest. People are more likely to be motivated by group interest or the interests of their ideal self.
STORIES – They help us simulate, and mentally rehearse. They motivate, and help us manage emotions. Mental simulation is extremely effective. Key plots are “Challenge” (David vs. Goliath), Connection (people who bridge a gap), and Creativity (a breakthrough on a puzzle). Stories stop people from getting into an argument framework, and into a solutions framework. They defeat the “Curse of Knowledge”. They can embody all of the SUCCESs components.
It is very hard to unstick other sticky ideas. The best strategy is to come up with stickier ideas.
THE CORE:
- Identify the central message
- Figure out what is counter-intuitive about your message
- Communicate your message in a way that breaks their guessing machines
- Once the guessing machines have failed, help them refine.
