Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

by Chip Heath

To summarize, here’s our checklist for creating a successful idea: a Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story.

All creative ads resemble one another, but each loser is uncreative in its own way.

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Psychologists define schema as a collection of generic properties of a concept or category. Schemas consist of lots of prerecorded information stored in our memories.

People are tempted to tell you everything, with perfect accuracy, right up front, when they should be giving you just enough info to be useful, then a little more, then a little more.

The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern.

To be surprising, an event can’t be predictable. Surprise is the opposite of predictability. But, to be satisfying, surprise must be “postdictable.”