Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck

by Chip Heath

Celebrities and other aspirational figures make up the second class of “authorities.”

honesty and trustworthiness of our sources, not their status, that allows them to act as authorities. Sometimes antiauthorities are even better than authorities.

The use of vivid details is one way to create internal credibility—to weave sources of credibility into the idea itself. Another way is to use statistics.

Statistics are rarely meaningful in and of themselves. Statistics will, and should, almost always be used to illustrate a relationship. It’s more important for people to remember the relationship than the number.

Another way to bring statistics to life is to contextualize them in terms that are more human, more everyday.

Statistics aren’t inherently helpful; it’s the scale and context that make them so.

An example passes the Sinatra Test when one example alone is enough to establish credibility in a given domain.

If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

asking customers to test a claim for themselves—is a “testable credential.” Testable credentials can provide an enormous credibility boost, since they essentially allow your audience members to “try before they buy.”

Using testable credentials allows people to try out an idea for themselves.

When associations to certain terms are drawn repeatedly—sometimes with precision, sometimes with crudeness—the effect is to dilute the power of the terms and their underlying concepts.

get self-interest into their headlines by promising huge benefits for trivial costs:

“The most frequent reason for unsuccessful advertising is advertisers who are so full of their own accomplishments (the world’s best seed!) that they forget to tell us why we should buy (the world’s best lawn!).”

The first lesson is not to overlook self-interest.

it may be the tangibility, rather than the magnitude, of the benefits that makes people care.

In other words, a lot of us think everyone else is living in Maslow’s basement—we may have a penthouse apartment, but everyone else is living below. The result of spending too much time in Maslow’s basement is that we may overlook lots of opportunities to motivate people.

We all like to get bonuses and to have job security and to feel like we fit in. But to focus on these needs exclusively robs us of the chance to tap more profound motivations.

three strategies for making people care: using associations (or avoiding associations, as the case may be), appealing to self-interest, and appealing to identity. All three strategies can be effective, but we’ve got to watch out for our old nemesis, the Curse of Knowledge, which can interfere with our ability to implement them.

Mental simulation is not as good as actually doing something, but it’s the next best thing. And, to circle back to the world of sticky ideas, what we’re suggesting is that the right kind of story is, effectively, a simulation. Stories are like flight simulators for the brain.

The story of David and Goliath is the classic Challenge plot. A protagonist overcomes a formidable challenge and succeeds.

This is what a Connection plot is all about. It’s a story about people who develop a relationship that bridges a gap—racial, class, ethnic, religious, demographic, or otherwise.

The third major type of inspirational story is the Creativity plot. The prototype might be the story of the apple that falls on Newton’s head, inspiring his theory of gravity.

springboard story as a story that lets people see how an existing problem might change. Springboard stories tell people about possibilities.

A springboard story is an exercise in mass customization—each audience member uses the story as a springboard to slightly different destinations.

The first villain is the natural tendency to bury the lead—to get lost in a sea of information. One of the worst things about knowing a lot, or having access to a lot of information, is that we’re tempted to share it all.

paralysis—the anxiety and irrationality that can emerge from excessive choice or ambiguous situations.

Curse of Knowledge. You know things that others don’t know, and you can’t remember what it was like not to know those things. So when you get around to sharing the Answer, you’ll tend to communicate as if your audience were you.

1. Pay attention: UNEXPECTED 2. Understand and remember it: CONCRETE 3. Agree/Believe: CREDIBLE 4. Care: EMOTIONAL 5. Be able to act on it: STORY

They laughed when you shared a story instead of a statistic. But when the idea stuck

Sticky = understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought or behavior. SIX PRINCIPLES: SUCCESs. SIMPLE UNEXPECTED CONCRETE CREDIBLE EMOTIONAL STORIES

Simple = core + compact.

Unexpected GET ATTENTION: SURPRISE.

HOLD ATTENTION: INTEREST.

Create a mystery:

Concrete

Write with the concreteness of a fable.

Make abstraction concrete:

Credible HELP PEOPLE BELIEVE.

EXTERNAL CREDIBILITY. Authority and antiauthority.

INTERNAL CREDIBILITY. Use convincing details.

Make statistics accessible.

Find an example that passes the Sinatra Test.

Use testable credentials.

Emotional MAKE PEOPLE CARE. The Mother Teresa principle: If I look at the one, I will act.

APPEAL TO SELF-INTEREST (AND NOT JUST BASE SELF-INTEREST).

APPEAL TO IDENTITY.

Stories

STORIES AS SIMULATION (TELL PEOPLE HOW TO ACT).

STORIES AS INSPIRATION (GIVE PEOPLE ENERGY TO ACT).

Challenge (to overcome obstacles), Connection (to get along or reconnect), Creativity (to inspire a new way of thinking). Tell a springboard story: a story that helps people see how an existing problem might change.