MADE TO STICK – Chip and Dan Heath
SUCCES
Simple – Unexpected – Concrete – Contextual – Emotional – Stories
Step-by-directions, how to achieve stickiness
“Those are the six principles of successful ideas. To summarize, here’s our checklist for creating a successful idea: a Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story. A clever observer will note that this sentence can be compacted into the acronym SUCCESs. This is sheer coincidence, of course. (Okay, we admit, SUCCESs is a little corny. We could have changed ‘Simple’ to ‘Core’ and reordered a few letters. But, you have to admit, CCUCES is less memorable.)” (pg. 18)
Understanding how connections can be wired between ideas and people – between your ideas and the people you hope will be struck by them. The expert "wants to talk about chess strategies, not about bishops moving diagonally." It's the showing, not the telling. The stickest most important lesson: They know that with ideas it's not the telling but the showing that counts, so they've filled their book with stories that illustrate their theories.
“Stickiness means that a message makes an impact. You can't get it out of your head. It sticks in your memory."
What makes some ideas famous? They came up with 6 common themes that super hit ideas share. These 6 themes allow anyone to reverse engineer their ideas and make them more sticky. More pass-able.
1. SIMPLE = CORE + COMPACT - Like a proverb. Short, but meaningful. Simplicity: the idea must be stripped to its core idea, the touchstone, and the most important benefits of the touchstone should jump out. “A writer knows they have achieved perfection not when they can think of nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away without losing the essence of the idea. The CORE! “It’s hard to make ideas stick in a noisy, unpredictable, chaotic environment. If we’re to succeed, the first step is this: Be simple. Not simple in terms of ‘dumbing down’ or ‘sound bites.’ What we mean by ‘simple’ is finding the core of the idea. ‘Finding the core’ means stripping an idea down to its most critical essence.” (pgs. 27, 28)
2. UNEXPECTED - The twist in the story makes it memorable. Break peoples usual patterns of perception , feelings and the actions that result from those perceptions and feelings based in past, present, future. Unexpectedness: the idea must destroy preconceived notions about something. This forces people to stop, think, and remember. “If we are to motivate people to pay attention, we should seize the power of big suprises, curiosity” Capture and Hold Attention – We have 3 seconds to capture attention. Create mystery by pointing out a knowledge gap, tease with information. “The gap theory" of curiosity. This is the notion that a gap in knowledge is painful – it's like having an itch that needs to be scratched. It's also the reason that murder mysteries, crossword puzzles, sport contests, and even Pokémon succeed in grabbing attention: An audience is challenged to predict an outcome and then left wondering, "What will happen?" and "Was I right?" We need to first open gaps before we close them. Most often, the communicator's tendency is "to tell people the facts. First, though, the recipient of the message must realize that they need these facts." “The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern. Humans adapt incredibly quickly to consistent patterns. Figure out what is counterintuitive about the message—i.e., What are the unexpected implications of your core message? Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audiences’ guessing machines.” (pgs. 64, 72)
3. CONCRETE - As opposed to abstract. Visible in real life experiences. Concreteness: avoid statistics, use real-world analogies to help people understand complex ideas. Help people understand and remember from the their past and present experience. Use the Velco Theory of memory. The more memory hooks you give them to attach your ideas to their past and present experience. Make them experience your ideas in the past present and the possibilities of the future. Help them bring their knowledge to the idea. “Abstraction makes it harder to understand an idea and to remember it. It also makes it harder to coordinate our activities with others, who may interpret the abstraction in very different ways. Concreteness helps us avoid these problems.” (pg. 100) Use analogies. Parallels. Metaphors. Pictures. Tangible ideas makes it easy for people to understand remember your blog posts.
4. CREDIBLE - Must be believable. Credibility: if people don't trust you, they'll ignore you. In some cases, they will be openly hostile, which means they'll actively try to dispute your message! Help people believe by using authority and anti-authority figures, institutions, ideas. Honesty and trustworthiness matter!!! Internal Credibility: What they know from their own past and present experiences. Thoughts and Emotions, Results, Actions. External Credibility – Statistics. “How do we get people to believe our ideas? We’ve got to find a source of credibility to draw on. A person’s knowledge of details is often a good proxy for her expertise. Think of how a history buff can quickly establish her credibility by telling an interesting Civil War anecdote. But concrete details don’t just lend credibility to the authorities who provide them; they lend credibility to the idea itself.” (pgs. 138, 163) Give specific details and quote experts to make your post credible. Add testimonials and show the number of people who comment on your blog to make your blog seem credible. Improve your crediblity and people will believe in you - and agree with you more often.
5. EMOTIONS - Emotions: information makes people think, but emotion makes them act. Appeal to emotional needs, sometimes even way up on Maslow's hierarchy. Internal Emotions: What they know from their own past and present experiences. What kind of Emotions do they draw from this. What kind emotions do they want for the Future? Take the benefits and apply them to their Self Interest. What do they want to avoid and what do they want to gain? Engage what they want to feel, visualize, experience. Thoughts and Emotions, Results, Actions. “How can we make people care about our ideas? We get them to take off their Analytical Hats. We create empathy for specific individuals. We show how our ideas are associated with things that people already care about. We appeal to their self-interest, but we also appeal to their identities—not only to the people they are right now but also to the people they would like to be.” (pg. 203) One easy trick to touch people’s hearts is writing for one single person. Use a lot of “You” in your blog posts. Use powerful words and phrases instead of weaker overused cliches.
6. STORIES - Providing inspiration to towards ideas or away from ideas and simulation of how a person can see themselves doing the same thing. Stories: telling a story [gets] people into paying closer attention, and feeling more connected. Remember the Jared Subway commercials? Get people to ACT. Take ACTION. Stories are a Simulation, a plan which they can see, feel themselves in doing the same thing. Stories about the future and the possibilities. “A story is powerful because it provides the context missing from abstract prose. This is the role that stories play—putting knowledge into a framework that is more lifelike, more true to our day-to-day existence. Stories are almost always CONCRETE. Most of them have EMOTIONAL and UNEXPECTED elements. The hardest part of using stories effectively is make sure they’re SIMPLE—that they reflect your core message. It’s not enough to tell a great story; the story has to reflect your agenda.” (pgs. 214, 237) Tell stories and anecdotes to make your point. People will forget theory. But they won’t forget stories that convey the same message as those theories. Stories are a powerful means to make people take action.
create a mystery, curiosity, make us aware of a gap in our knowledge
FLOW OF ENERGY – (TEAR) THOUGHT-EMOTION-ACTION-RESULTS
The mind is contaminated by emotions, moods, desires, goals, and simple self-interest....