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Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by [Chip Heath, Dan Heath]

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Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die Kindle Edition

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The instant classic about why some ideas thrive, why others die, and how to make your ideas stick.

“Anyone interested in influencing others—to buy, to vote, to learn, to diet, to give to charity or to start a revolution—can learn from this book.”—The Washington Post

Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas—entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists—struggle to make them “stick.”

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds—from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony—draw their power from the same six traits.

Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. 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.

Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas—and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

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306 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House
Publication date

January 2, 2007
File size

3163 KB
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Jonah Berger
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Chip Heath
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Dan Heath
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Popular Highlights in this book

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The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern.
Highlighted by 2,234 Kindle readers
What we mean by “simple” is finding the core of the idea.
Highlighted by 1,051 Kindle readers
For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity.
Highlighted by 906 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Unabashedly inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling The Tipping Point, the brothers Heath—Chip a professor at Stanford's business school, Dan a teacher and textbook publisher—offer an entertaining, practical guide to effective communication. Drawing extensively on psychosocial studies on memory, emotion and motivation, their study is couched in terms of "stickiness"—that is, the art of making ideas unforgettable. They start by relating the gruesome urban legend about a man who succumbs to a barroom flirtation only to wake up in a tub of ice, victim of an organ-harvesting ring. What makes such stories memorable and ensures their spread around the globe? The authors credit six key principles: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions and stories. (The initial letters spell out "success"—well, almost.) They illustrate these principles with a host of stories, some familiar (Kennedy's stirring call to "land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth" within a decade) and others very funny (Nora Ephron's anecdote of how her high school journalism teacher used a simple, embarrassing trick to teach her how not to "bury the lead"). Throughout the book, sidebars show how bland messages can be made intriguing. Fun to read and solidly researched, this book deserves a wide readership. (Jan. 16)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

"Their analysis is peppered with memorable stories, images and facts ... This book is a gift to anyone who needs to get a message across and make it stick" * New Statesman * "This is great for anyone planning a speech or trying to get their message across at work" * Psychologies * "The Heaths push beyond what sounds like it should work and explain why it actually does" * Time Magazine * "... an entertaining, practical guide to effective communication." * Publishers Weekly * "Smart, lively . . . such fun to read" * Saturday Guardian * --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

Based on a class at Stanford taught by one of the authors, this book profiles how some ideas "stick" in our minds while the majority fall by the wayside. Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and compelling advertising make up much of the intrinsically interesting examples that the Heaths profile that qualify for "stickiness." This book explores what makes social epidemics "epidemic" and, as the Heaths cite from Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point (2000), defines the secret recipe that makes an idea viral. The principles of stickiness are examined--an unexpected outcome, lots of concrete details that we remember, emotion, simplicity, and credibility--all packaged in an easily told story format. Taking these five stickiness attributes, the book offers numerous examples of how these properties make up the stories we are all familiar with--the urban legend about kidney theft and the razor blades supposedly lurking in Halloween candy. Exercises, checklists, and other tools are sprinkled throughout the book to help the reader understand and test how stickiness can be applied to their ideas, whether they are teachers, parents, or CEOs. Gail Whitcomb
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Chip Heath is a professor of organizational behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He lives in Los Gatos, California.

Dan Heath is a Consultant to the Policy Programs of the Aspen Institute. A former researcher at Harvard Business School, he is a co-founder of Thinkwell, an innovative new-media textbook company. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—While at first glance this volume might resemble the latest in a series of trendy business advice books, ultimately it is about storytelling, and it is a how-to for crafting a compelling narrative. Employing a lighthearted tone, the Heaths apply those selfsame techniques to create an enjoyable read. They analyze such narratives as urban legends and advertisements to discover what makes them memorable. The authors provide a simple mnemonic to remember their stickiness formula, and the basic principles may be applied in any situation where persuasiveness is an asset. The book is a fast read peppered with exercises to test the techniques proposed. Some examples act as pop quizzes and engage readers in moments of self-reflection. The book draws on examples from teachers, scientists, and soldiers who have been successful at crafting memorable ideas, from the well-known blue eye/brown eye exercise conducted by an Iowa elementary school teacher as an experiential lesson in prejudice following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to conversations among Xerox repairmen. Readers who enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's Blink (2005) and The Tipping Point (2000, both Little, Brown) will appreciate this clever take on contemporary culture.—Heidi Dolamore, San Mateo County Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I I N T R O D U C T I O N

WHAT STICKS?

A friend of a friend of ours is a frequent business traveler. Let’s call him Dave. Dave was recently in Atlantic City for an important meeting with clients. Afterward, he had some time to kill before his flight, so he went to a local bar for a drink.
He’d just finished one drink when an attractive woman approached and asked if she could buy him another. He was surprised but flattered. Sure, he said. The woman walked to the bar and brought back two more drinks—one for her and one for him. He thanked her and took a sip. And that was the last thing he remembered.
Rather, that was the last thing he remembered until he woke up, disoriented, lying in a hotel bathtub, his body submerged in ice.
He looked around frantically, trying to figure out where he was and how he got there. Then he spotted the note: don’t move. call 911.
A cell phone rested on a small table beside the bathtub. He picked it up and called 911, his fingers numb and clumsy from the ice. The operator seemed oddly familiar with his situation. She said, “Sir, I want you to reach behind you, slowly and carefully. Is there a tube protruding from your lower back?”
Anxious, he felt around behind him. Sure enough, there was a tube.
The operator said, “Sir, don’t panic, but one of your kidneys has been harvested. There’s a ring of organ thieves operating in this city, and they got to you. Paramedics are on their way. Don’t move until they arrive.”

You’ve just read one of the most successful urban legends of the past fifteen years. The first clue is the classic urban-legend opening: “A friend of a friend . . .” Have you ever noticed that our friends’ friends have much more interesting lives than our friends themselves?
You’ve probably heard the Kidney Heist tale before. There are hundreds of versions in circulation, and all of them share a core of three elements: (1) the drugged drink, (2) the ice-filled bathtub, and (3) the kidney-theft punch line. One version features a married man who receives the drugged drink from a prostitute he has invited to his room in Las Vegas. It’s a morality play with kidneys.
Imagine that you closed the book right now, took an hourlong break, then called a friend and told the story, without rereading it. Chances are you could tell it almost perfectly. You might forget that the traveler was in Atlantic City for “an important meeting with clients”—who cares about that? But you’d remember all the important stuff.
The Kidney Heist is a story that sticks. We understand it, we remember it, and we can retell it later. And if we believe it’s true, it might change our behavior permanently—at least in terms of accepting drinks from attractive strangers.
Contrast the Kidney Heist story with this passage, drawn from a paper distributed by a nonprofit organization. “Comprehensive community building naturally lends itself to a return-on-investment rationale that can be modeled, drawing on existing practice,” it begins, going on to argue that “[a] factor constraining the flow of resources to CCIs is that funders must often resort to targeting or categorical requirements in grant making to ensure accountability.”
Imagine that you closed the book right now and took an hourlong break. In fact, don’t even take a break; just call up a friend and retell that passage without rereading it. Good luck.
Is this a fair comparison—an urban legend to a cherry-picked bad passage? Of course not. But here’s where things get interesting: Think of our two examples as two poles on a spectrum of memorability. Which sounds closer to the communications you encounter at work? If you’re like most people, your workplace gravitates toward the nonprofit pole as though it were the North Star.
Maybe this is perfectly natural; some ideas are inherently interesting and some are inherently uninteresting. A gang of organ thieves—inherently interesting! Nonprofit financial strategy—inherently uninteresting! It’s the nature versus nurture debate applied to ideas: Are ideas born interesting or made interesting?
Well, this is a nurture book.
So how do we nurture our ideas so they’ll succeed in the world? Many of us struggle with how to communicate ideas effectively, how to get our ideas to make a difference. A biology teacher spends an hour explaining mitosis, and a week later only three kids remember what it is. A manager makes a speech unveiling a new strategy as the staffers nod their heads enthusiastically, and the next day the frontline employees are observed cheerfully implementing the old one.
Good ideas often have a hard time succeeding in the world. Yet the ridiculous Kidney Heist tale keeps circulating, with no resources whatsoever to support it.
Why? Is it simply because hijacked kidneys sell better than other topics? Or is it possible to make a true, worthwhile idea circulate as effectively as this false idea?

The Truth About Movie Popcorn

Art Silverman stared at a bag of movie popcorn. It looked out of place sitting on his desk. His office had long since filled up with fake-butter fumes. Silverman knew, because of his organization’s research, that the popcorn on his desk was unhealthy. Shockingly unhealthy, in fact. His job was to figure out a way to communicate this message to the unsuspecting moviegoers of America.
Silverman worked for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a nonprofit group that educates the public about nutrition. The CSPI sent bags of movie popcorn from a dozen theaters in three major cities to a lab for nutritional analysis. The results surprised everyone.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends that a normal diet contain no more than 20 grams of saturated fat each day. According to the lab results, the typical bag of popcorn had 37 grams.
The culprit was coconut oil, which theaters used to pop their popcorn. Coconut oil had some big advantages over other oils. It gave the popcorn a nice, silky texture, and released a more pleasant and natural aroma than the alternative oils. Unfortunately, as the lab results showed, coconut oil was also brimming with saturated fat.
The single serving of popcorn on Silverman’s desk—a snack someone might scarf down between meals—had nearly two days’ worth of saturated fat. And those 37 grams of saturated fat were packed into a medium-sized serving of popcorn. No doubt a decentsized bucket could have cleared triple digits.
The challenge, Silverman realized, was that few people know what “37 grams of saturated fat” means. Most of us don’t memorize the USDA’s daily nutrition recommendations. Is 37 grams good or bad? And even if we have an intuition that it’s bad, we’d wonder if it was “bad bad” (like cigarettes) or “normal bad” (like a cookie or a milk shake).
Even the phrase “37 grams of saturated fat” by itself was enough to cause most people’s eyes to glaze over. “Saturated fat has zero appeal,” Silverman says. “It’s dry, it’s academic, who cares?”
Silverman could have created some kind of visual comparison— perhaps an advertisement comparing the amount of saturated fat in the popcorn with the USDA’s recommended daily allowance. Think of a bar graph, with one of the bars stretching twice as high as the other.
But that was too scientific somehow. Too rational. The amount of fat in this popcorn was, in some sense, not rational. It was ludicrous. The CSPI needed a way to shape the message in a way that fully communicated this ludicrousness.
Silverman came up with a solution.

CSPI called a press conference on September 27, 1992. Here’s the message it presented: “A medium-sized ‘butter’ popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theater contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings—combined!”
The folks at CSPI didn’t neglect the visuals—they laid out the full buffet of greasy food for the television cameras. An entire day’s worth of unhealthy eating, displayed on a table. All that saturated fat— stuffed into a single bag of popcorn.
The story was an immediate sensation, featured on CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN. It made the front pages of USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post’s Style section. Leno and Letterman cracked jokes about fat-soaked popcorn, and headline writers trotted out some doozies: “Popcorn Gets an ‘R’ Rating,” “Lights, Action, Cholesterol!” “Theater Popcorn is Double Feature of Fat.”
The idea stuck. Moviegoers, repulsed by these findings, avoided popcorn in droves. Sales plunged. The service staff at movie houses grew accustomed to fielding questions about whether the popcorn was popped in the “bad” oil. Soon after, most of the nation’s biggest theater chains—including United Artists, AMC, and Loews— announced that they would stop using coconut oil.

On Stickiness

This is an idea success story. Even better, it’s a truthful idea success story. The people at CSPI knew something about the world that they needed to share. They figured out a way to communicate the idea so that people would listen and care. And the idea stuck—just like the Kidney Heist tale.
And, let’s be honest, the odds were stacked against the CSPI. The “movie popcorn is fatty” story lacks the lurid appeal of an organthieving gang. No one woke up in an oil-filled bathtub. The story wasn’t sensational, and it wasn’t even particularly entertaining. Furthermore, there was no natural constituency for the news—few of u... --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From AudioFile

In an age in which politicians and CEOs sell bad ideas every day, it's fascinating to learn what makes certain ideas attractive, or "sticky." Memorable ideas have simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotionality, and a gripping story line. With fascinating examples and compact writing, this audio is partly a technical manual on how to evaluate other people's ideas, partly a lesson on how not to let complexity and abstractness obscure communication. Charles Kahlenberg's comfortable pacing and grasp of the topic make his performance seamless--and so tuned-in to his listeners. He's energetic but not juiced, involved but not too intense. T.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Chip and Dan Heath—a Stanford professor and an education entrepreneur, respectively—attempt to determine why one idea succeeds while another fails. What could have been a dry marketing textbook is, instead, a generally engaging narrative generously endowed with anecdotes and instructive sidebars. The Wall Street Journal expressed annoyance at the profusion of personal stories, while the Washington Post cited some problems with the overall framework. Overall, however, Made to Stick is a worthy addition to the spate of recent books that explain why we do the things we do and how this self-knowledge can be used more effectively. "Anyone interested in influencing others—to buy, to vote, to learn, to diet, to give to charity or to start a revolution—can learn from this book" (Washington Post).
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000N2HCKQ
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House; 1st edition (January 2, 2007)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 2, 2007
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3163 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 306 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #31,099 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #21 in Business Communication Skills
- #39 in Communication & Media Studies
- #50 in Personal Success in Business

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Dan Heath
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Dan Heath is the co-author, along with his brother Chip, of four New York Times bestsellers: Made to Stick, Switch, Decisive, and The Power of Moments. The Heaths' books have sold over 3 million copies worldwide and been translated into 33 languages.
Heath's fifth book, Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, will be released on March 3, 2020. Heath is a Senior Fellow at Duke University's CASE center, which supports entrepreneurs who are fighting for social good. A graduate of the University of Texas and Harvard Business School, he lives now in Durham, NC.
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Chip Heath
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Chip Heath is a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, teaching courses on business strategy and organizations. He is the co-author (along with his brother, Dan) of three books. Their latest book, Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions in Life and Work was published in spring of 2013 and debuted at #1 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and #2 on the New York Times. Their 2010 book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, hit #1 on both bestseller lists. Their first book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, spent two years on the Business Week bestseller list and was an Amazon Top 10 Business Book for both editors and readers. Their books have been translated into over 30 languages including Thai, Arabic, and Lithuanian. Chip has consulted with clients ranging from Google and Gap to The Nature Conservancy and the American Heart Association.
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SUCCESs to your sticky idea

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 10, 2011

Verified Purchase

The SUCCESs. Not the word that counts its literal meaning, but that invisible, intangible theory where we are able to express, deliver, and stick ideas to others. In this revealing book, you will be introduced to the six ingredients designed specifically to make ideas sticky, and let me deliver what I caught from this eye-opening book.

Others may experience over time they develop habits that slowly erode their mind's sensitivity. The inevitable pain and disappointment of moments such as delivering your ideas at a business meeting or a conference have caused you to set up walls around your mind. Much of this is understandable. But, there's no way around the truth: your mind is out of tune with confidence it was created to maintain. As we live in community, communication is the way for us to feel the unity. The book is even greater because the authors, Chip and Dan Heath, apply their SUCCESs theory onto practical situation to help readers understand more clearly. Without the SUCCESs rule, some kinds of communications might ease our conscience temporarily but would do nothing to expose the deeper secrets we carry and deliver. And, it might be the secrets that keep our minds in turmoil. Worse, this kind of communication could actually fuel destructive behavior rather than curb it. The rules the authors explain in this book might seem the things you would feel that you already know. But, these are the things you could easily ignore. The book is a great reference to keep you on succeeding the efficient deliverability of your ideas.

Chapter summary
Chapter1: Simple
When you needed to deliver your message in a brief and compact way, how would you prepare to deliver it to your audiences or readers? Simplicity is the key and first step to make a message sticky to others. Making it simple does not mean that you need to bring out your most important idea. It is critical to find the core. According to the authors, "finding the core isn't synonymous with communicating the core." But, that simplicity must come with its value. Like the metaphor of a company for the employees to be encouraged, your message needs to be simple and important to make your message remain not just in your mind but others as well.

Chapter2: Unexpected
"We can't demand attention. We must attract it" says the authors in the book. In order to grab people's attention, your message may be attractive with unexpectedness. Breaking a pattern could be one way. For example, the old emergency siren was too monotonic to stimulate our sensory systems and therefore failing to attract our attention. As the siren gets systematically and audibly improved, people hear much brighter and more stimulating sound and therefore being aware of some situation. In order to catch people's attention, you need to break the ordinary patterns. According to the book, "Our brain is designed to keenly aware of changes." The more you learn knowledge, the greater the knowledge gap you would get. Because we sometimes tend to perceive that we know everything, it's hard to glue the gap. However, curiosity comes from the knowledge gaps, so these knowledge gaps can be interesting.
Chapter3: Concrete
Humans can hallucinate and imagine what we've experienced in visual, audible, or any other sensory pathways. When we use all our sensory systems to visualize ideas or messages, then the ideas get much more concrete. As an example the authors provide in this chapter, "a bathtub full of ice" in the Kidney Theft legend is an example of abstract moral truths that makes it concrete.

Chapter4: Credible
When you are a scientist, you believe more in the things that are scientifically proven or that are referred to many other studies or to the words or the theories that the well-known scientist has established. That much, credibility makes or deceives people believe your ideas. Both authorities and antiauthorities work. We present results, charts, statistics, pictures and other data to make people believe. "But concrete details don't just lend credibility to the authorities who provide them; they lend credibility to the idea itself."

Chapter5: Emotional
What's in it for you? It is a good example of the power of association. Sometimes, we need to grab people's emotion. It does not mean tear jerking, dramatic, or romantic. It means that your idea must pull out people's care and attachment to it. However, we don't always have to create this emotional attachment. "In fact, many ideas use a sort of piggybacking strategy, associating themselves with emotions that already exist (Made to Stick)." People can make decisions based on two models: the consequence model and the identity model. The consequence model can be rational self-interest, while the identity model is that people identify such situations like what type of situation is this?

Chapter6: Stories
Have you seen and heard the story of the college student from the Subway campaign? He's the guy who lost hundreds of pounds eating Subway sandwiches. The story inspires people and even connects to people's real life. Like the book, Made to Stick, also presents a lot of stories to deliver and to help readers understand in each chapter, stories allow people to understand how your idea can affect or change their mind.

Close the book and think for a moment before you start reading. How are things with your mind? Chances are, you've never stopped to consider your mind. Why should you? There are interviews to prepare for, meetings to blow others' mind with your amazing ideas, and moments you need to bring up emotional attachment with your family or your friends. If you are all caught up with these things and ask yourself this, "how are things?" "How have I dealt with those situations?" Before you go reading, you first need to dispel a commonly held myth about communication. You need to understand your old habits would die hard. And, like any habit that goes unchecked, over time they come to keep disturbing you to make your ideas sticky. Try to use the clinic part in each chapter. It will enhance your understandings, and you will improve your skills to make your ideas survive. If you really want to understand much deeper, as you read the book, look up some informative articles about the anatomy and physiology of the brain. It will help you. According to the book, your ideas must simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and stories. Try to apply these rules into your next presentation. I was not a good organized speaker. When I adjusted my mind with these rules to prepare my presentation recently, an amazing thing happened. I am the leader of the young adult ministry of a small local church. At almost every meeting, I needed to make the members understand what and why we need to awaken ourselves and other people; they barely paid attention to what I was saying. Even they seemed understanding, but once they returned to their home or to their life, they forgot what I emphasized. However, with the rules I learned from the book, the members started showing their interests in what I say and paying good attention to it. It works!

Part of our confusion in delivering ideas stems from a misapplication of the rules we think we already know for persuasions. The notion that all confusions can be reduced down to a single underlying problem may strike you as a case of oversimplification. However, with the book, Made to Stick, you will track and be ready for your next presentation. When I was looking for a neuroscience book, Made to Stick was one of the recommended books related to neuroscience. The book is easy to follow, and it is really made to stick! If you are looking for a scientifically texted neuroscience book, this is not the book for you. However, this book will stir up your curiosity about neuroscience as a fundamental connector to higher neural knowledge. Simply, highly I recommend.

7 people found this helpful

Timothy Griffin

I'm stuck--basically.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 27, 2011

Verified Purchase

Overall Assessment:

I can vote this book four stars because, despite its defects, I have already verified its effectiveness in my own teaching and research--even before I read the book! And in fact the book actually does a good job, for the most part, of getting its message across using the very rules of the SUCCES model it is articulating: "Sticky" ideas tend to have the attributes of:

Simplicity
Unexpectedness
Concreteness
Credibility
Emotion
Stories

Key for readers is to understand the importance of how these rules help overcome "The curse of knowledge", illustrated beautifully by the cited research example in which "tappers" were amazed that "listeners" could not discern the tunes the former were composing using taps, because they of course already had the tune clearly in their head and could not grasp their listener's lack of frame of reference. The key thing we must do when trying to communicate a topic we thoroughly understand to a neophyte audience is pare messages down to basic cores and give them the attributes of the SUCCES model to make them "sticky"--or so the Heath brother say.

Again, the authors in each chapter did a nice job of applying the very rules they articulate while in the act of articulating those rules.

IChapter 1 ("Simple")

They provide the excellent examples of "Commander's Intent" employed by the military to simplify operational instructions for battlefield units confronted with the fact that "No plan survives contact with the enemy;" paring down the '92 Clinton campaign message to "It's the economy stupid;" following the generally applicable rule in journalism of not "burying the lead"; the "a bird in the hand" metaphor and its multinational variations; Hollywood high-concept pitches such as Alien being "Jaws in Space", the use of "generative analogies" such as "staff as cast members" at Disneyland.

Chapter 2 ("Unexpected").

People pay attention when something is counterintuitive. I was pleased that I had been instinctively using this principle in my teaching. The "gap theory" of curiosity posits that "gaps" in our understanding of the world (mysteries) create a need for resolution in the mind of the audience. Sticky ideas play to this crucial aspect of human nature.

Chapter 3 ("Concrete")

Specific, concrete ideas ("''60 Chevy") are stickier than more general and abstract ones ("American automotive engineering"), so concrete examples and references help ideas stick. Making an idea sticky means exploiting the "Velcro theory" of memory: Memory is like Velcro, with loops that enable a concept to attach to it, and different constituents of our memory have more loops to which an idea might be attached. Concrete ideas have more loops.

(I was less pleased with the Heath Brothers' use of the example of Jane Elliot, who famously used the blue-eye/brown-eye distinction among her students to illustrate the power of arbitrary bias. To me it was a concrete example of overeager progressivism degenerating into an unethical psychic assault on children.)

(Chapter 4: "Credible")

Obviously, support from real authorities can make an idea stickier if people believe it has expert corroboration (e.g. "97 percent of researchers whose specialty is climate science agree with the conclusions presented by the IPCC"). However, an idea can have "internal credibility" if it contains little concrete details that make it seem real (like the various renditions of the urban legend of the boyfriend murdered and scraping his lifeless foot on the roof of the car to be discovered by discovered by his horrified date; people always place it in their home county!). Another way to make an idea credible is to put it in a comprehensible scale. Statistics require comparative referents that make sense to people (you're more likely to be killed by a deer than a shark--which also has counterintuitiveness). There is the Sinatra Test of credibility: one impressive factual achievement means the product can "make it anywhere". Another example is the "testable credential", such as Ronald Reagan asking if you are better off four years ago than you are today.

(Chapter 5: "Emotional")

No surprises here, and again it pleased me to note I was using this technique if not explicitly. And one of the best emotional appeals is self-interest: ("Acting on climate change now could save our ass.") An interesting discussion to come out of this is that Maslow's hierarchy of needs might not be a correct model in the sense of recognizing a set order in which those needs are met. Different appeals can be successful by appealing to different components of the hierarchy (e.g. you might be able to appeal to someone better at actualization level even if some "lower" level need might seem like the likely target.) Examples of emotional appeals to get kids to appreciate the importance of math with near slam-dunk application of the SUCCESS model: "Never. You will never use this again. But Math is mental weight training."

(Chapter 6: "Stories")

Yet again having used this in my own research and teaching it's a sense of vindication to see it recommended. Obviously, memorable anecdotes stick better than dry recitation of dreary numbers and arguments.

Minor Critique:

All this is great food for thought for those of us trying to articulate something we think is "true" to the world, but I do have a couple of reservations, and I do not guarantee that their articulation conforms to the SUCCES model:

First, taken to an extreme, the SUCCES model makes communicators slaves to the psychology, emotionalism, simplemindedness, and laziness of the audience. Neil Postman's *Amusing Ourselves to Death* discusses the degeneration of American culture from the days of a highly literate populous in the early republic to the modern discordant hash of electronic sound bites. For example, while the Heath brothers lauded the Clinton campaign's successful employment of "It's the economy, stupid," as a keen adaptation to James Carville's admonition that "If you say three things, you say nothing," I more lament that power in our democracy is so easily won and lost on such paltry turns of phrase.

Second, some really important things just might be inherently un-sticky, and maybe sometimes the best way to make something stick is to communicate it to a strictly qualified and interested audience, or warn an unqualified an uninterested in advance: "Look. This is tedious and boring. But it's still very important. Pay attention." The current deficit reduction debate is an example in which sticky but grotesquely distorting clichés like, "on the backs of the elderly and sick", or "no more taxes on the American people," or "tax breaks for the rich," and so on are thrown around willy-nilly, and more often than not, stick.

At some point we as an audience consuming ideas need to see what's sticking to us and why--and ask whether we need to get ourselves disentangled and be open first to the truth, not stickiness.

5 people found this helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Frankselbow

Good, but too much filler

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 3, 2018

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This is a reasonably decent source of information on the title subject: making ideas stick. However, I have two criticisms that aren't meant to dismiss or rubbish the book, just to put it into context:

1. The useful information content is minimal and could be fitted on less than ten pages, in my opinion
2. The book suffers from repetition and that American writing style of endless cameos to illustrate the point. Yes, cameos can be helpful, but the amount of writing dedicated to examples far outweighs the simple explanation of its simple principles.

In summary, good basic principles that could comfortably fill a pamphlet but that have been massively padded out into a book.

My suggestion: buy a used copy

16 people found this helpful

C. Weldon

Best read of the year

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 1, 2019

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Each year one or two books change my view on the world and I start quoting them constantly. Last year it was Jo Owens' How to Lead. This year it is Made to Stick. Just last week at Bring Your Child to Work Day a colleague asked me to talk to her daughter about communication and my job as a business analyst. How could I get across the idea that my job was about translating requirements from the business into specifications for their mother to code? Sounds pretty boring for a 9-year old, right?

But I had just read 'made to stick' and the chapter on the Curse of Knowledge. So we played a game. I tapped out a tune for her to guess and she didn't get it. Then I got her to tap out a tune for me and I didn't get it. "Did you hear the tune in your head?" I asked her. Yes, of course she did. "So did I when I did it, but all you heard was tapping."

"And that's what it is like when someone tells me they want your mum to solve a problem for them. They maybe have a clear picture in their mind of what they want, they hear the tune in their head, but I have to make sure your mum hears the tune too and not just the tapping."

Thank you, Chip and Dan.

6 people found this helpful

Nick Michelioudakis

A Review - for Educators

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 14, 2016

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I believe this book should be compulsory reading for every educator. Indeed I will go a step further – I think it may well be more useful to us than any single book on teaching.
The book is about effective and persuasive communication. The Heath brothers start with the Q: ‘Why is it that some ideas are so memorable?’ A: Six key elements [SUCCES]: i) Simplicity (Keep it simple!) ii) Unexpectedness (Surprise = retention!) iii) Concreteness (Avoid abstract or ‘deep’ messages) iv) Credible (Is it believable?) v) Emotions (It is emotion, not reason that makes people act!) vi) Story (The most memorable messages are in the form of a story).
In analysing these elements they explain all kinds of interesting notions, such as ‘the curse of knowledge’ (p. 19). What would happen if you were to tap your finger to the rhythm of a well-known song without actually humming it? Would people be able to guess it? 50% of respondents said ‘Yes’. Incredibly, the actual number was 2.5%!! It is exactly the same when we try to communicate a message – we think others understand, but very often they don’t! (Moral: check that your students have really understood what you have told them or what they have to do. Get feedback as much as possible!)
Heath & Heath go on to stress the importance of ‘curiosity’ (pp. 84 – 87). This is the technique that soap operas, cinema trailers and some gifted presenters use to hook the readers/listeners’ interest. (Moral: Whether it is the contents of a text, or the lesson, it pays not to tell students everything up front. We can excite their curiosity even about mundane things.)
A surprising research finding on p. 89 is of great importance to us; Q: Which is better: consensus-building activities or ones encouraging heated debate? A: The latter! In a controlled study, 18% of students who had done a consensus-type activity chose to watch a short film about the topic, but the number rose to 45% among those who had engaged in a debate! (Moral: use more debates to get students worked up so they are motivated to find out more about the subject under discussion!)
The two brothers also give us a host of useful tips on how to make our presentations / articles interesting (which is of course of immense value for students / adult learners). Here are a few research-supported findings: a) avoid obscure language (p. 106) b) including details makes your argument more convincing (p. 139) c) ‘translate’ statistics down to the human scale (the human brain cannot make sense of huge numbers! – p. 144).
Above all however, remember to use stories. Human beings are wired for story. As somebody once so memorably put it: ‘Facts tell – stories sell!’

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16 people found this helpful

Amit N

Very good book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 26, 2021

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Before you buy this book, read about the concept it’s covering. This covers the success of ideas/concepts and reasons behind them with examples. It’s advocates that any idea can be put through a framework to make it more sticky or successful among people. This book may not be for all but people with content writing, user experience , product management etc Anybody who has to convey the ideas.

2 people found this helpful

Neil

Love this book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 17, 2019

Verified Purchase

Some amazing ideas in this book... if you're an educator, this book will help you think about how to structure your lessons to create intrigue and to make the ideas stick.

There is one thing I disagree with though; the book lists some conventional advice about making ideas stick, such as delivery, posture, etc; it then goes on to say that all of these techniques have some merit, apart from repetition and that repetition is a quality of a badly designed story or idea. I fundamentally disagree; repetition has been a cornerstone of so many of history's most memorable speeches, Shakespeare's writing and a classic and reliable technique in learning; repetition is incredibly important and if it is done right, can help students look at a topic from multiple perspectives and leverage long term memory.

Don't bash repetition!

3 people found this helpful

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