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From Made to Stick
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Make it Stick
spontaneousMotivated *(3)Curious (13)Organized (5)FriendlyHigh heel girlDeterminedOften smilingI believe in godEntrepeneur
impatientOpen minded (9)Good temperDaftWriterspiritualConnectedBrunetteperfectionist
AmbitiousNot patient at allDon‘t have many ideasCreative (?)DreamyMessyHonesttalkativeRisk takingHard working (3)
1. SIMPLE
2. UNEXPECTED
3. CONCRETE
4. CREDIBLE
5. EMOTIONAL
6. STORIES
From Made to Stick by Heath Brothers
A successful defense lawyer says, ―If you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won‘t remember any.‖.
1. Who Who are you talking to?
What do they need to know; want to know;
How do they prefer receiving the info
2. Why
Why are you having this conversation– your motive?
What/How
The Message(what you
Need to say):
and
How do you need to say
it to be effective?
The more we reduce the amount of information; the stickier it will be.
Describe with clear, concrete specific words.
Simplify by taking out any extra ―baggage‖ words
Avoid large clauses which are weighty and add little
Try to weigh the sentence with the most important point at the end.
Combine sentences to minimize ideas
Mark Twain: ―I apologize for writing you a long letter, but I didn‘t have time to write you a short one‖
Some guidelines for concise writing:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/572/01/
Here's a list of some words and phrases that can often be pruned away to make sentences clearer
:kind ofsort oftype ofreallybasicallyfor all intents and purposes
definitelyactuallygenerallyindividualspecificparticular
past memoriesvarious differenceseach individual _______basic fundamentalstrue factsimportant essentialsfuture plansterrible tragedy
end resultfinal outcomefree giftpast historyunexpected surprisesudden crisis
Many pairs of words imply each other. Finish implies complete, so the
phrase completely finish is redundant in most cases.
Words like :
In these cases it‘s worthwile to add a few words to DESCRIBE the experience instead of giving us the ―label‖
NiceInterestingImportantAwesome
GreatCuriousOpen-minded
Use action words instead of general terms ones
Use active form rather than passive
Question every word in the sentence
Combine sentences
We were searching for a professor who had experience
At this point in time we have not as yet made a decision on the date.
Look at this list:
J FKFB INAT OUP SNA SAU NESC O
You have one minute to remember it.
You want to always make it as easy as possible for the receiver to get the core idea.
You will get a lot more ―bang for the buck‖ by connecting with already known ideas and held values.
For example : the pomelo is the largest citrus fruit. The rind is very thick but soft and easy to peel away. The resulting fruit has a light yellow to coral pink flesh and can vary from juicy to slightly dry and from seductively spicy sweet to tangy and tart.
The pomelo is basically a supersized grape fruit with a very thick and soft rind.
ANALOGIES FALL INTO THE SAME FAMILY
THEY ANCHOR ON TO WHAT WE ALREADY ―KNOW‖
Aesop‘s fables are a good example
They have survived for 2,500 years.◦ ―sour grapes‖ are known through out the world
They encode human nature in stories represented with specific actors and specific actions—
The grapes, the fox, the dismissive comment
Imagine if instead he had just said, ― hey, if you can‘t have it forget about it‖. How many years would that have existed?
Trader joes‘ is a specialty store that carries exotic food at low prices. For example you can get a half a liter of Mexican chili soup for $1.99
They define their customer target profile as◦ An unemployed college professor who drives a very
very used volvo.
◦ It‘s a very simplified caricature of their client. But it gives everyone a strong, clear image. And it gives them a common image.
They allow small ideas to explode into meaning. Think how far two words ―sour grapes‖ can go, AND be remembered more easily
Proverbs --― short sentences drawn from a life time‖
Shared experiences
Memes
Any others???? You tell me…..
◦ They help leverage context and expectation to produce an instantly larger result (from 140 characters)
To avoid cliché‘s seek out less common proverbs such as the ones from africa below:
Man is the head of the family, woman the neck that turns the head
An old man who dies is a library wich burns
If you don‘t stand for something you will fall for something
Dream as if you‘ll live forever; live as if you‘ll die tomorrow
MomentVerb tense; context
Frame- how big is the scenceyou are painting; what is the perpectiveof the narrator
Image-If you choose to employ imagery, remember the profile image should perfectly mutable
WordShould be ‗fresh‘ use thesauruses,references to current editorial and other resources
FlowFocus on your lead in, the first couple of words which are the most valuable signals:It
The more you work on a story the more you can lose your direction
The more we know, the more we want to tell◦ Don‘t say too much: keep it simple
And
The more we know the more we forget that others don‘t know it! ◦ Never talk about heads; keep it simple
Recognized by unique features:◦ Measured in number of characters
◦ Time sensitive and serial, but
◦ Allows for hypertext
◦ Genre measured by its expressiveness
Form is short, blunt, vigorous, concise
Judged in three ways: Read it fast
Read faster
Skim it *taken from 140 characters
An experiment was done in an in-store promotion
There were two tables◦ Table one has 24 different jam flavors
◦ Table two has 6 flavors
Both tables had lots of people come up and taste.
Afterwards they analyzed the sales of the people who had gone to table one vs. table two.
How did the added varieties/choice make a difference?
The table with 6 flavors sold 10 times as much as the other table with 24 flavors.=
Decision paralysis
As a boy, he once had an opportunity to steal a watermelon from an unattended wagon. He carried it off and sat down in a secluded spot, ready to devour it. As he looked at that watermelon, twain is said to have remarked that a fuuny feelng came over him. He couldn‘t eat it. I knew what he had to do. He carried it off to the fruit wagon, put it back and took a ripe one.
Neologism- coin a word related to your field.
Oxymoron- something that combines two seemingly contradictory ideas: giant shrimp; extremely normal
Personification-Representing a thing or an object as a person
Hypercorism nicknaming results in words like movie ; telly, aussie, dupe; as well as duplication john-john
Metonymy- when a business executive becomes a suit-race horse becomes the track
Charactonym- the name suggests the personality trait
Portmanteau- the collision of two words- troubulous= trouble +garrulous and means gossipy, meddlesome
Work in groups—
Pretend you‘re going to run a communication agency in english◦ Identify the core ―Positioning‖
◦ Write an introductory paragraph to attract attention– try to use some of the techniques to make it sticky.
◦ In this case please send your work to me
Deadline: Friday Oct.1
―…Ritualized moments of everyday communication — greeting someone, answering a telephone call, wishing someone a happy birthday — are full of these canned phrases that we learn to perform with rote precision at an early age. Words work as social lubricants in such situations…‖
New york times sept 19, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19FOB-OnLanguage-Zimmer.html?ref=magazine
