Made to StickWhy Some Ideas Survive

and Others Die...

A  presentation  by  Adrian  Bashford

Which is True?

• 38 NY citizens stood by and watched as a woman was attacked 3 times and murdered

• Coca-Cola rots your bones

• The Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from the moon

• You use only 10% of your brain

About the Authors

• Brothers: Chip and Dan Heath

• Chip Heath: Professor of organizational behaviour, Stanford University & ‘Fast Company’ Magazine columnist. Consulted on “making ideas stick” to Nike, Ideo (!) and the American Heart Institute.

• Dan Heath: Founder of Thinkwell Publishing, education consultant to Harvard Business School, Duke University & winner of the 2005 New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest.

or their ‘Sticky’ credentials

What needs ‘Stickiness’?• Ideas

• Marketing

• Uncommon sense

• Business objectives

• Your résumé

• Urban Myths

• Brand

• Public health

• Politicians

• Charities

• ...

• Everything?

Are you inspired?

“Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry

through maximum team-centred innovation and strategically targeted

aerospace initiatives.”

Don’t most corporate vision/missions sound like this?

What did JFK know?“I believe this nation should commit itself, to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and

returning him safely to the earth.”

He knew the secret of

S.U.C.C.E.S.(s)

S.U.C.C.E.S.(s)• Simple

• Unexpected

• Concrete

• Credible

• Emotional

• Story

Sticky

We will talk about...• Simple - How Clinton used it to get elected

• Unexpected - Why Nordstrom employees stand out

• Concrete - Exactly how unhealthy is theatre popcorn?

• Credible - Winning a court case using a Darth Vader toothbrush

• Emotional - Why you’ll donate less after solving a math problem

• Story - How a guitar can unite a nation

1. Simple = Core & Compact

• The most important decision you have to make

• What is the one thing you want people to remember

• What is the one thing you want people to do?

To make a profound idea compact you've got to pack a lot of meaning into a little bit of messaging.

Getting to Simple

• The 3 Why?’s (or 5 if you are Toyota)

• Avoiding the ‘Curse of Knowledge’

• Use what’s there: Analogies, Schemas* & Generative Metaphors

*Material covered in more detail

Schema: Using What’s There

• Schema = Collection of generic properties of a concept or category which are pre-recorded in our brains.

• Which are you more likely to remember?

• The pomelo, (Citrus maxima or Citrus grandis), is a citrus fruit native to South East Asia. It is usually pale green to yellow when ripe, with sweet white (or, more rarely, pink or red) flesh and very thick spongy rind. It is the largest citrus fruit, 15-25 cm in diameter, and usually weighing 1-2 kg.

• A pomelo is basically a supersized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind.

Simple & Clinton• James Carville: Lead strategist for the

Clinton campaign’s successful run in 1993

• “Its the economy stupid”

• People need a constant reminder to fight the temptation to do too much.

• Clinton had to give up other cherished platform elements to focus on the one message that would drive him to victory.

Not Clinton

2. UNEXPECTED• Why is ‘Unexpected’ important to ‘Stickiness’?

• You have to get people to pay attention to your message

• Once you have their attention, you must keep it

vs.

Getting Interest• Methods:

• Break a pattern

• Open a knowledge gap

• Pose a question or puzzle

• Challenge people to predict an outcome

• Use a mystery story

Maintaining Interest• Methods:

• The gap theory of curiosity

• Close knowledge gaps while opening new ones

• Turning point concept

• Shift from conveying information to deciding what questions you want your audience to ask

Examples• Nordstroms

• Ad Council - The Enclave Minivan

• WestJet & Southwest Airlines

• Subway

You don’t get what you expect, so you remember!

3. CONCRETE• Why is ‘Concreteness’ important to ‘Stickiness’?

• You need to connect a diverse audience to your idea

• To get your message across you must be clear

• Your message must be memorable

Concreteness is used to dispel ‘The Curse of Knowledge’

Concrete: Examples• Why did Kennedy choose “landing a man on the

moon and returning him safely to the earth” instead of “strategically targeted aerospace initiatives”?

• When presented a difficult concept, people desire ‘an example’

• The average American would not resonate with achieving an ‘aerospace initiative’, but ‘man on moon’ was very Concrete.

Concrete: ImagesA medium bag of popcorn is as bad for you as:

=

Isn’t this easier to remember than “Popcorn has XX grams of saturated fat”?

Combined!!

4. CREDIBLE• Why is ‘Credibility’ important to ‘Stickiness’?

• So far, you have decided on your message, got people’s attention and made memorable...

• Now you have to get people to believe it!

Making the Incredible Credible (for Mortals)

• The self-testable credential*

• Borrow someone else’s credibility

• The anti-authority (stories with real people)

• Lies, damn lies & statistics

• The significant impact of detail*

Self-testable Credentials

Was the little old lady a world renowned burger expert, public figure or Nobel Laureate?

Where did the power of this message come from?

Detail

• Study included several multiple identical court cases, each identical, with two variables:

• Evidence was presented with additional vivid –but irrelevant– detail either in defence or in prosecution evidence against ‘bad parents’

• Jurors were different for each trial

• 5.8/10 jurors found the parents guilty in one scenario, 4.3/10 in the other

Credibility & the Darth Vader toothbrush.

Make sure your alibi has lots of detail!*

5. EMOTIONAL

Emotion = Action• Think about the previous video:

• Who was the target audience?

• What emotions would it elicit in that audience?

• Why would this translate into action?

‘Truth Campaign’ facts:

Remembered spontaneously by 22% of kids

Kids exposed to this campaign were 66% LESS likely to smoke.

2 years later, smoking had dropped 18% in high school and 40% in middle school.

Emotional Hurdles• People are usually reluctant to spell out the ‘WIIFM’

• Semantic Stretch - Words that have a lot of emotional impact get overused

• Our analytical brain - Much like surprise and anger being ‘Sticky’ opposites, so are analytical thought and emotion

• We are hard-wired to feel emotion for people, not abstractions*

• People aren’t motivated by the same things, or even necessarily by self-interest!

Piggy-Backing Emotions Example

• Target audience: 18 to 35-year old, pickup-driving anti-authoritarian male who liked sports and country music, and wasn't motivated by emotional associations with cuddly owls. Also happened to be the worst litter offender in Texas.

• Getting Bubba to identify the tough masculine texan as someone who doesn’t litter

Caring About the Individual

• IDEO video from the perspective of a patient that goes into the hospital for a leg fracture

• The doctor as patient

• The doe-eyed Ethiopian child vs. statistics

"If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will." - Agnesë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Blessed Theresa of Calcutta)

6. STORY

Question: Can a guitar unite a nation?

The Velcro™ Theory of Memory& Story

• Imagine your brain as having the thousands of loops of a piece of Velcro™ - representing all of its diverse filing cabinets of memory

• The theory proposes that the more hooks your story has, the more likely it is to stick in your memory

As you hear a story, you live it in your own mind... like experience.

Inspirational Plots• Of all plot types, 3/25 are ‘inspirational’:

• The Challenge Plot

• The Creativity Plot

• The Connection Plot

• Chicken Soup stories: 80% are ‘inspirational’

• People Magazine: 60% of non-celebrity stories

Inspiration leads to action.

Six String Nation’s SUCCESs

• Simple - 1 Canada: not ‘red’ or ‘blue’

• Unexpected - Someone built a guitar out of 64 parts that represent Canada?

• Concrete - Guitar is based on real objects that represent parts of Canada

• Credible - Borrows credibility from famous people and places, as well as anti-authorities

• Emotional - Feeling of patriotism, all Canadians have a link to this guitar in some way, love of music

• Story - Each part has a story, and the guitar itself now is creating many more!

Cheat Sheet:

1. Pay attention - UNEXPECTED

2. Understand and remember it - CONCRETE

3. Agree / Believe - CREDIBLE

4. Care - EMOTION

5. Be able to act on it - STORY

For an idea to stick, it must make the audience:

Sticky

One Final Thing...• By using the S.U.C.C.E.S.s framework, you are

seeking to create an engaged and motivated audience for your idea

• This audience has a say in how the message lives and is passed on

The success of our ideas isn't whether people mimic them exactly, it's wether we

achieve our goals.