This post continues the tradition of life in learning that I had started while I had devoted an year to academic pursuit. The life in learning posts are typically longer than my regular posts and summarize my key takeaways from reading a book. This entry in the series is based on Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath.

Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath opens with an urban legend that ends with someone you know in a bathtub filled with ice and a pipe protruding from his lower back. Then, it proceeds to discuss why the urban legends are memorable. You tell the story once and the core details will stay with the listener for the next retelling. In fact, the core details of the story will remain intact over multiple retellings by multiple people. And the Heath brothers asked – Why?

An analysis of a large pool of urban legends, proverbs, stories that have endured for centuries brought the authors to the conclusion that following certain principles in communicating an idea can make the ideas stick with the audience. “Stickiness” of an idea is an ode to Malcolm Gladwell’s introduction of the word in The Tipping Point.

The authors refer to an Israeli study of 200 successful ads. The research team studied all those ads and determined that 90% of those ads follow one of the same basic six templates. Designing your ad based on one of the six templates increases the chances of its success.

Distilling everything they have learnt through their research, the authors introduce their own framework for making ideas sticks. They call it the SUCCESs framework: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Stories.

Simple

The authors start with making it clear that by Simple, they don’t mean dumbing down of an idea. It means to find the core of an idea. It’s as if among all the jewelry around, you are trying to find “the one ring to rule them all”.

To illustrate finding a core, the Heath brothers highlight one of my all-time favorite concepts of leadership- Commander’s intent.

The commander’s intent needs to be simple but also central. In a military context, all the carefully laid plans can go bust, but if you are trying to achieve that one thing that is communicated as Commander’s intent, you are still on mission. Finding the core is that important.

While reading this, I reiterated the below rules for myself –

1. You can’t have multiple cores in one idea.

2. ⁠The core defines the idea, everything else, all intellectual thought process, all knowledge, all brilliant arguments are peripheral.

Once you have found the core idea, you need to make that compact.  Compact ideas are easy to remember. However, in order to find a compact idea, don’t lose sight of your core. A compact idea which doesn’t represent your core, is a useless idea.

At times, it might be difficult to compact your core. Through an example of explaining the idea of a Pomelo fruit, the authors explain the usage of schema in creating compact ideas. The core idea of a Pomelo is of a citrusy fruit, of a certain shape and size, color, texture and taste. However, all of this is difficult to remember. A simpler way to represent is – a supersized grapefruit. Using the schema of a grapefruit allows us to retain the core while it also makes the idea of a Pomelo fruit memorable.

Unexpected

How to get attention and keep attention? Getting attention of your audience can be done using anything shocking or unexpected. In fact, the second tool to make ideas stick is Unexpected. However, following the lead from the previous chapter, this one also delves into Unexpected, but for What end. An example using two shocking ads shows that if your core message is not identified then just making the message shocking won’t make that big of an impact.

People might remember it for the shock value, but it’ll be the wrong message.

Shocking or Unexpected phrases help to get the attention of the audience. However, the larger question is – how to keep it. The authors cite research done by Robert Cialdini to arrive at the answer. Use mysteries. Start with a question, that creates a “knowledge gap”. If needed, first supply the knowledge and then create gaps. Our brain cannot stand knowledge gaps. This is the reason that even if we know that a movie is pathetic, we still sit through. After all, we want to know how it ends.

Once you have the mystery, keeping the audience is much simpler.

Don’t start with what message I want to convey. Start with what questions do I want my audience to ask.

Concreteness

Once you’ve found your core message and have made it simple, and you have the attention of your audience, how do you ensure that the message is memorable.

The facts and stats to support your argument may sound impressive, but they are not memorable. People remember concrete details. Take a look at the two sentences below.

70% of respondents in a corporate survey mentioned that they don’t know where their Organization is headed.

Vs

8 out of 11 players in a football team don’t know which one is their goalpost.

Which one will stay with you?

Concrete details matter. They provide a way to connect with your audience. They allow your core message to exist in a context that your audience understands.

Out of all the methods to make your message stick, concreteness is the easiest to apply. You need to find details which explain the message in a real world setting.

Credible

Imagine your message is simple and concrete and you’ve found a way to communicate this in a manner that gets attention. Still no one listens to the message. You lack credibility.

Why should people listen to you? Large corporations solve this problem either through brand ambassadors who can be related to the message in some manner. For example, Usain Bolt for Gatorade. Or, they get some authority to endorse their message- 90% of the Dentists recommend Pepsodent.

But, how do “you” get credibility? Bringing in vivid details makes the message sound more credible. For example, I consume a health drink every morning vs Every morning, I prepare a health drink with honey, lemon, black pepper and cinnamon in warm water and sip it slowly over 10 minutes. The second message, even though longer has more stickiness.

And then there is the Testable credential. If you are able to state something that can be tested by the audience themselves, it immediately gives you credibility. However, you need to ensure that after testing, only your desired message is getting proven.

Emotional

Is there poverty in Africa – Yes

Do you care – ??

When you are pitching your message to an audience, you also need to find out why should they care. Unless this is done, your message has no staying power. And the message won’t move people to action.

There are three ways to make your message appeal to your audience’s emotional core –

1. Associations – if you know that certain associations will appeal to your audience, you can use them. Be careful to avoid associations that are taken negatively by your audience.

2. ⁠Appeal to people’s self interest – for example, the world’s best seed vs the world’s best lawn. What’s in it for you.

3. ⁠Appeal to identity – People like you care about these things. People like you do things like this.

Stories

Stories follow almost all of the previous principles. They are concrete, unexpected, credible, emotional. The challenge is to make sure that the story conveys your core message in a simple manner.

There are three basic ways to tell a story –

Challenge Plot – David vs Goliath, triumphing over odds

Connection Plot – something that sparks connection between two people, groups. Something that goes beyond the social divide.

Creativity Plot – a story where a problem gets solved in a creative manner. And then that creative manner gets noticed and is sanctified.

You don’t need to build stories. They are happening all around us. You just need to be able to notice them. Once you have put on the filters of the basic story plots, you can easily identify a story as it happens.

Right stories make people act.

Finally…

Any of us, with the right insight and with the right message, can make our idea stick.

An idea begins at the Answer stage. This is the stage when you are looking for a solution to a problem. You do your research, maybe you get all academic, and arrive at a solution to a problem. Once you arrive at the answer, you have also gained the knowledge through your research. And now you have the curse of knowledge. You don’t know anymore what it was like to not know. And then you get to the second stage – Telling Others.

The Others do not know. But your curse of knowledge makes you forget that. First realize this – Others do not know. Then arrive at the core of your idea and make it simple.

Then you have to –

Get people’s attention – Unexpected

Make them Understand and Remember- Concrete

then Make them Agree/Believe – Credible

then Make them care – Emotional

And finally Make them act – Story

That’s all there is to make your idea sticky.

Which ideas? How do you generate those ideas? Simple answer is – mostly you don’t. Mostly you catch them. Keep the filter of spotting core idea in action. And then use them. You see something, your filter should tell whether this is related to any core idea that you want to communicate. And then use it with the SUCCESs framework.

Sticky advice for certain scenarios

In this section of the book, the authors have given advice on certain situations where the need to make an idea sticky is critical.

Talking strategy – your strategy needs to spread in the organization. It can’t be a high level abstract statement. It needs to be a story that conveys that statement. The strategy guides the behavior. If no one understood, how can they act.

Talking education – Follow the six principles for making your ideas sticky. Always start with, if I need to teach this concept – how do I get to the core? A good method is – what is the essential that my students need to get out of this course. Then use the principles to make the lessons concrete, credible. Use mystery and emotions. Tell stories that convey the core idea in its simplest form. Remember Saturn’s rings. Whether they are solid material, gas or vapor? That’s a mystery. And that’s also a lesson in discovering material science.

There are times when you want to unstick an idea. For example, some bad news has spread about you or your organization. How do you handle that? The authors propose two methods: Unsticking an idea can be done by either another stickier idea. Or by action that credibly debunks the sticky idea.  

I found the book to be filled with useful and actionable advice. The book is an engrossing read and I highly recommend this for anyone in need to stick an idea among his/her audience.