Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

by Chip Heath

“sure-thing principle”

uncertainty—even irrelevant uncertainty—can paralyze us.

meaning into a little bit of messaging. And how do you do that? You use flags.

Proverbs are the Holy Grail of simplicity. Coming up with a short,

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

If you want your ideas to be stickier, you’ve got to break someone’s guessing machine and then fix

(1) Identify the central message you need to communicate—find the core; (2) Figure out what is counterintuitive about the message—i.e., What are the unexpected implications of your core message? Why isn’t it already happening naturally? (3) Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audience’s guessing machines along the critical, counterintuitive dimension. Then, once their guessing machines have failed, help them refine their machines.

One important implication of the gap theory is that we need to open gaps before we close them. Our tendency is to tell people the facts. First, though, they must realize that they need these facts. The

“What questions do I want my audience to ask?”

pulled the rug out from under them.

They were suffering from the Curse of Knowledge. They had lost the ability to imagine what it was like to look at a technical drawing from the perspective of a nonexpert.

Rather, the moral of the story is to find a “universal language,” one that everyone speaks fluently. Inevitably, that

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

People remember things better because they evoke more emotion,

The mere act of calculation reduced people’s charity.

Belief counts for a lot, but belief isn’t enough. For people to take action, they have to care.

They called it Honoring the Game.

interest. He says that the WIIFY—“what’s in it for you,” pronounced whiff-y—should be a central aspect of every speech.

Subsequent research suggests that the hierarchical aspect of Maslow’s theory is bogus—people pursue all of these needs pretty much simultaneously. There’s no question that most starving men would rather eat than transcend,

but there’s an awful lot of overlap in the middle.

“Group interest” is often a better predictor of political opinions than self-interest.

we’ve got to watch out for our old nemesis, the Curse of Knowledge, which can interfere with our ability to implement them.

“If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”

(knowledge about how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act). Note

credible idea makes people believe. An emotional idea makes people care.

mental practice alone produced about two thirds of the benefits of actual physical practice.

• It’s simple: Eat subs and lose weight. (It may be oversimplified, frankly, since the meatball sub with extra mayo won’t help you lose weight.) • It’s unexpected: A guy lost a ton of weight by eating fast food! This story violates our schema of fast food, a schema that’s more consistent with the picture of a fat Jared than a skinny Jared. • It’s concrete: Think of the oversized pants, the massive loss of girth, the diet composed of particular sandwiches. It’s much more like an Aesop fable than an abstraction. • It’s credible: It has the same kind of antiauthority truthfulness that we saw with the Pam Laffin antismoking campaign. The guy who wore 60-inch pants is giving us diet advice! • It’s emotional: We care more about an individual, Jared, than about a mass. And it taps into profound areas of Maslow’s hierarchy—it’s about a guy who reached his potential with the help of a sub shop. • It’s a story: Our protagonist overcomes big odds to triumph. It inspires the rest of us to do the same.

“And who is my neighbor?” In response, Jesus told a story: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. “A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. “But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The lawyer replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

What’s missing from this tale, for modern-day readers, is a bit of context. The Samaritan in the story was not simply a nice guy. He was a nice guy crossing a huge social gulf in helping the wounded man. At the time, there was tremendous hostility between Samaritans and Jews (all the other main characters in the story). A modern-day an...

lesson of the story is clear: Good neighbors show mercy and compassion, and not just to people in ...

If you’re a great spotter, you’ll always trump a great creator. Why? Because the world will always produce more great ideas than any single individual, even the most creative one.

When students are asked to recall the speeches, 63 percent remember the stories. Only 5 percent remember any individual statistic.

The first villain is the natural tendency to bury the lead—to get lost in a sea of information. One

The second villain is the tendency to focus on the presentation rather than on the message.

Pay attention 2. Understand and remember it 3. Agree/Believe 4. Care 5. Be able to act on it

notice that the framework matches up nicely: 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