Executive Summary

Introduction: What Sticks? The book starts off with a story of something that happened to a friend of a friend of the authors’ that I swear is totally true. Actually, it’s the ages-old kidney harvesting story where the guy wakes up in a bathtub full of ice and a note on the wall to call 911 (if you’ve never heard this, you’re in the vast minority: check out snopes.com). They compare this patently false, yet sticky story with a passage from a paper distributed by a nonprofit organization: “Comprehensive community building naturally lends itself to a return-on-investment rationale that can be modeled, drawing on existing practice…” While admittedly not a fair comparison, the authors point to the fact that they are two poles on the stickiness spectrum. And this book is about nurturing the traits of the more sticky story. Just because something is true doesn’t make it sticky. Case in point: urban legends like the gang of organ harvesters. And although a 1985 ABC News poll showed that 60% of parents are worried their children’s Halloween candy might be contaminated, a study has shown that since 1958 there have been only two cases of Halloween candy being tampered with. And both of these were by the children’s own family. The six principles of stickiness covered in greater detail in this book are:

1. Simplicity 2. Unexpectedness 3. Concreteness 4. Credibility 5. Emotions 6. Stories

John F. Kennedy used these six principles when he said America would “put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.” Imagine if he had said, “Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives.”

Chapter 1: Simplicity Commander’s Intent Because “No plan survives contact with the enemy,” in the 1980s the US Army adapted its planning process and introduced the Commander’s Intent (CI). The CI is a simple statement that lets colonels and captains make their own plans and improvise on them to do whatever they need to do to accomplish the original intent. (The CI may be “Break the will of the enemy in the Southeast region.” The colonels and captains may respond with something more concrete like “Have the Third Battalion on Hill 4305, to have the hill cleared of the enemy so we can protect the flank of Third Brigade as they pass through the lines.” The value of the CI is that it strips everything down to the core intent. In our communication we need to do the same. Because “you can’t have five North Stars.” Herb Kelleher, the longest-serving CEO of Southwest airlines, said, “We are THE low-fare airline. Once you understand that fact, you can make any decision about this company’s future as well as I can.” So when Tracy from marketing says her surveys indicate that the passengers might enjoy a light entrée on the Houston to Las Vegas flight, all anyone as to ask is, “Will adding that chicken Caesar salad make us THE low-fare airline from Houston to Las Vegas?” Kelleher’s Commander’s Intent is “We are THE low-fare airline.”

Similarly, James Carville headed Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaign with his Commander’s Intent: “It’s the economy, stupid.” If it’s the economy, it couldn’t be a balanced budget, even when Ross Perot started talking about it. “If you say three things, you don’t say anything.” Schemas Simple messages are core and compact. It’s not a sound bite. It’s a proverb. It’s harder to memorize these letters:

J FKFB INAT OUP SNA SAI RS Than it is to memorize these:

JFK FBI NATO UPS NASA IRS They’re the same letters. But in the first set, we’re trying to remember raw data. In the second set, we’re remembering concepts. It’s so much easier to latch onto an idea that already has profound compactness. “You tap the existing memory terrain of your audience. You use what’s already there.” Explanation 1: A 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. Explanation 2: A pomelo is basically a supersized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind.

Calling a pomelo a “grapefruit” is using a schema. Psychologists define schema as a collection of generic properties of a concept or category. Good teachers intuitively use lots of schemas. It’s like high-concept pitches in Hollywood (Alien was “Jaws on a spaceship. Speed was “Die Hard on a bus”). Or Disney calling their employees “cast members” (jobs are “performances,” uniforms are “costumes,” and walking around the park is being “onstage”). But the schemas must make sense. “Contrast Disney with Subway. Like Disney, Subway has created a metaphor for its frontline employees. They are ‘sandwich artists.’ This metaphor is the evil twin of Disney’s ‘cast members.’ It is utterly useless as a guide to how the employee should act…We wonder how long an employee would last at Subway if she exhibited a lot of individual expression.”

Chapter 2: Unexpected

The first problem of communication is getting people’s attention. And the most basic way to do that is to break a pattern. Surprise makes us want to find an answer – to resolve the question of why we were surprised – and big surprises call for big answers. (Gimmicks are not surprises because there’s not enough relevance to sustain interest.) A good process for making our ideas stickier:

1. Identify the central message you need to communicate (find the core). 2. Figure out what is counterintuitive about the message (what are the

unexpected implications of your core message). 3. Communicate in a way that breaks the audience’s guessing machines.

Common sense is the enemy of sticky messages. If I already “get” what you’re trying to tell me, why should I obsess about remembering it? Breaking the Pattern Screenwriter Nora Ephron recounts a lesson she learned in journalism school. For the first assignment, the teacher reeled off a series of facts and asked the students to find the core message. The facts were: “Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchings, and California governor Edmund ‘Pat’ Brown.” The students typed away, trying to condense the material into a single sentence like “Governor Pat Brown to address faculty….” After the teacher read the submissions he finally said, “The lead to the story is ‘There will be no school next Thursday.’” This was an incredibly sticky idea because it broke a pattern in the students’ minds and made them commit to their own flawed way of thinking first. Mysteries and Curiosity Mysteries are powerful because they create a need for closure. The Aha! Experience is much more satisfying when it is preceded by the Huh? Experience. Mystery is created not from an unexpected moment but from an unexpected journey.

Curiosity happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge. 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. But first, the audience must realize they need the facts. The Knowledge Gap When the American Broadcasting Corporation signed a contract to televise NCAA football games in the 1960s, they were faced with the challenge of making games in distant parts of the country relevant and interesting to viewers who had no stake in the game. How do you go about making viewers in College Station, Texas care about the Michigan vs. Ohio State matchup?

A 29-year-old employee named Roone Arledge had an idea: Put the games in context (most games of the time only showed what was happening on the field). In a memo, Arledge wrote: “[The viewer] must know what the surrounding country and campus look like, how many other people are watching this game with him, how the people dress at football games in this part of the country, and what the game means to the two schools involved.” In the 1960’s, this was a revolutionary idea.

Arledge made instant use of the gap theory. How do you get people interested in a topic? You point out a gap in their knowledge. It’s no accident that mystery novelists and crossword-puzzle writers give us clues. When we feel that we’re close to the solution of a puzzle, curiosity takes over and propels us to finish. Each goal has to be audacious and provocative, but not paralyzing.

Chapter 3: Concrete Imagine if Aesop had told his fable of the fox and the sour grapes like this:

Aesop’s Helpful Suggestions – “Don’t be such a bitter jerk when you fail.” It wouldn’t have survived for centuries, nor would the term “sour grapes” appear with such frequency in cultures as diverse as Hungarian, Chinese and Swedish. That’s because concrete images stick.

Language is often abstract, but life is not abstract. 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. It’s why the Nature Conservancy found success in referring to “that really important area to the east of Silicon Valley,” as “The Mount Hamilton Wilderness.” The name gave the area concreteness; it ceased being a set of acres and became an eco-celebrity. It’s why in the 1960s, Boeing gave the following concrete parameters to its designers of the 727: “The 727 must seat 131 passengers, fly nonstop from Miami to New York City, and land on Runway 4-22 at La Guardia. Imagine if they’d merely said the goal of the 727 was to be “the best passenger plane in the world.” The Velcro Theory of Memory Like Velcro, memories have sets of hooks on them; the more hooks, the more vivid and easy to recall the memory will be. Which of these has more hooks:

• Remember the house where you spent most of your childhood. • Remember the first line of “Hey Jude.” • Remember the capital of Kansas. • Remember the definition of “truth.”

Kaplan and The Maroon Portfolio When Jerry Kaplan met with the biggest, most prestigious VC firm in Silicon Valley to pitch his idea for his company, he felt under-prepared and believed his chances were shot. “Thinking I had blown in, and therefore little to lose, I decided to risk some theatrics,” he said. He tossed his maroon leather case into the air, and it landed in the center of the table. “Gentlemen,” he said, “here is a model of the next step in the computer revolution.” The first question was, “Just how much information could you store in something like this?” Kaplan said from that point on, he hardly had to speak, as partners and associates traded questions and insights that fleshed out his proposal. His maroon portfolio had given them a hook. It was a concrete image of what his computer notebooks would be. Their eventual investment valued Kaplan’s nonexistent company at $4.5 million.

Grant’s Packet James Grand was the director of UNICEF for many years. He always traveled with a packed filled with one teaspoon of salt and eight teaspoons of sugar – the ingredients for Oral Rehydration Therapy when mixed with a liter of water.

He would pull out this packet when meeting with the prime ministers of developing countries and say, “Do you know that this costs less than a cup of tea and it can save hundreds of thousands of children’s lives in your country?”

That packet gave them a hook. It was concrete.

Chapter 4: Credible In the 1980s, two medical researchers from Perth, Australia, named Barry Marshall and Robin Warren discovered that ulcers were caused by bacteria. But despite their research, their findings weren’t well received by the medical community because neither Marshall nor Warren were well known Ph.D.s. Warren was a staff pathologist, and Marshall was a 30-year-old internist in training. Because they lacked credibility, they couldn’t even get their research paper accepted by a medical journal. Finally, Marshall’s patience ran out and he chugged a swamp water-like glass of about a billion H. pylori bacteria. As his own test subject, he began vomiting and experiencing pain within a few days, and then cured himself with a course of antibiotics and bismuth. This dramatic demonstration gave them credibility and gave their research a second wind. Ten years later, the national Institutes of Health finally endorse the idea that antibiotics were the preferred treatment for ulcers. And Marshall and Warren received the Nobel Prize in medicine in the fall of 2005.

Anti-authorities To tap into credibility, we often default to two options: experts and celebrities (we trust the recommendations of people whom we want to be like). But we can also use anti-authorities, like when an anti-smoking message is delivered by someone whose larynx was removed due to throat cancer. Anti-authorities show us that it’s the honesty and trustworthiness of our sources, not their status that allows them to act as authorities.

Credibility is in the Details A person’s knowledge of details is often a good proxy for her expertise. Concrete details don’t lend credibility to the authorities who provide them, but to the idea itself. Vivid details boost credibility because they make the idea more meaningful. Statistics Statistics are often used to increase credibility. But they are rarely meaningful in and of themselves. They should be used to illustrate a relationship. It’s more important for people to remember the relationship than the number. In Stephen Covey’s book The 8th Habit, he describes a poll of 23,000 employees to report the following:

• Only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why.

• Only one in five was enthusiastic about their team’s and their organization’s goals.

• Only one in five said they had a clear “line of sight” between their tasks and their team’s and organization’s goals.

• Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals.

• Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work for. As sobering as those statistics are, they’re very abstract. But Covey superimposes a very human metaphor over the statistics and says, “If, say, a soccer team had these same scores, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all by 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.”

Statistics aren’t inherently helpful; it’s the scale and context that make them so. Here is a similar example: Example A: You’re more likely to drown on a beach in an area protected by a

lifeguard than you are to be attached by a shark. In the United States in 2000, twelve people died in lifeguard-protected areas. There were no fatalities from sharks.

Example B: You are more likely to be killed by a deer than by a shark. In fact, a deer

is 300 times more likely kill you (via collision with your car). While Example A is good and credible, Example B is even more unexpected and memorable. The Sinatra Test In “New York, New York,” Sinatra sings, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere…” An example passes the Sinatra Test when one example alone is enough to establish credibility in a given domain.

The Indian courier company Safexpress was hoping to attract business from a major Bollywood studio to distribute its films. With piracy and deadlines a big priority, a small company like Safexpress might not be considered. But Safexpress had passed a Sinatra Test: It had successfully handled the released of the fifth Harry Potter book in India.

Safexpress could have used statistics and testimonials from satisfied CEOs to pitch the business. But there is something extraordinary about being the company that handled the Harry Potter release.

Outsourcing Credibility to the Customer In Cliff Freeman’s classic “Where’s the beef?” campaign for Wendy’s, they didn’t draw on internal credibility by quoting a statistic like “11% more beef!” Instead, the commercials developed a brand-new source of credibility: the audience. The spots implicitly challenged customers to verify Wendy’s claims: See for yourself – look at our burgers versus McDonald’s. You’ll notice the size difference!

Consider how the NBA outsources credibility during rookie orientation:

A few weeks before the NBA season begins all the rookie players are required to meet in Tarrytown, New York for an orientation session. One of the priorities is educating these young, sudden celebrities about AIDS. The NBA could use a celebrity/expert like Magic Johnson. Or quote statistics, or use vivid details. But the NBA came up with a better way.

One year, despite the secrecy surrounding the orientation, a group of female fans staked out the location of the orientation meeting and hung out in the hotel lobby and bar hoping to get noticed. Players were pleased by the attention and the flirting, and some even made plans to meet up with the women later on after orientation.

The next morning, the players were surprised to see these same women in their orientation sessions. They introduced themselves again, one by one. “Hi, I’m Sheila and I’m HIV positive.” “Hi, I’m Donna and I’m HIV positive.”

Contrast that to the NFL’s approach where one year, league personnel had every rookie put a condom on a banana. What’s more likely to stick with someone: hearing about someone who fooled someone else, or being fooled yourself?

Chapter 5: Emotional Mother Teresa once said, “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” It’s for this very reason we’re more likely to give to a cause that asks us to help feed Rokia, a seven-year-old girl from Mali who is desperately poor, than if we hear a list of bullet pointed statistics like “Food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than 3 million children.”

It’s no surprise that studies have shown that emotional pleas elicit donations than statistical ones. But studies have also shown that when people are presented with both statistical and emotional stories, they still give less than if they’d been given the emotional story alone. When people think analytically, they’re less likely to think emotionally. Belief isn’t enough. For people to take action, they have to care. The most basic way to make people care is to form an association between something they don’t yet care about and something they do care about. Maslow’s Basement Abraham Maslow is the psychologist famous for his Hierarchy of Needs – the pyramid that ranks human needs from basic (physical, security, belonging, etc.) to more fulfilling (aesthetic, self-actualization, transcendence). But if we take Maslow’s pyramid literally, it’s a ladder to climb (you can’t fill your aesthetic needs until your learning needs are taken care of). But most research says we pursue all of these needs simultaneously – something to remember when appealing to an audience’s emotions.

Imagine a company is offering its employees a $1000 bonus if they meet certain performance targets. Here are three ways to present the bonus:

1. Think of what that $1000 means: a down payment on a new car or that new home improvement you’ve been wanting to make.

2. Think of the increased security of having that $1000 in your bank account for a rainy day.

3. Think of what the $1000 means: the company recognizes how important you are to its overall performance. It doesn’t spend money for nothing.

When people ask which positioning appeals to them personally, they overwhelmingly say No. 3. But when asked what is the best positioning for other people they respond with No. 1, followed by No. 2. The learning from studies like this is that we tend to think everyone else is living in Maslow’s basement. And to focus on these needs exclusively robs us of the chance to tap more profound motivations.

Dining in Iraq Of all the Army canteens in Iraq, none is as famous among the soldiers as the Pegasus chow hall. There are even legends of soldiers driving to Pegasus from the Green Zone just to get a meal. A chef sorts through the daily fruit shipping to prepare the perfect fruit tray. The dessert table features five kinds of pie and three kinds of cake. The Sunday prime rib is marinated for two full days. With the exception of spices a cook from New Orleans orders, Pegasus gets its food from the same suppliers as the other dining halls. But according to the man in charge, Floyd Lee, “I am not just in charge of food service; I am in charge of morale.” In terms of Maslow’s hierarch, Lee is shooting for transcendence, the highest need.

Self-Interest vs. Group Interest In appealing to others’ emotions, it’s important not to overlook self-interest. It’s better to say “You enjoy a sense of security when you use Goodyear Tires” than to say, “People enjoy a sense of security…” But sometimes in forming opinions people seem to ask not “What’s in it for me?” but “What’s in it for my group?” Sometimes people make decisions based on identity. The successful slogan “Don’t Mess with Texas” was originally an anti-liter campaign that essentially made it un-Texan to liter.

Chapter 6: Stories A story’s power is twofold: It provides simulation (knowledge about how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act).

The right kind of story is, effectively, a simulation. It’s the reason flight simulators are better for pilots than stacks of instructional flash cards. They more that training simulates the actions we must take in the world, the more effective it will be.

Jared’s Story The success of the Jared campaign for Subway Sandwiches is a story as inspiration (motivation to act). The Jared campaign was a testimonial of how the anti-authority, Jared Fogel went from 425 pounds and size XXXXXXL shirts to 180 lbs. on his own “Subway diet.” Subway was trying to market low fat sandwiches under using the phrase “7 Under 6,” referring to seven kinds of sandwiches under 6 grams of fat. 7 Under 6 was a slogan. Jared was a story. 7 Under 5 was a modest success. Jared was a sensation, garnering immediate attention from USA Today, ABC, Fox News and Oprah.

The Three Basic Plots The Jared story reminds us that we don’t always have to create sticky ideas because spotting them is often easier and more useful. A great spotter will usually trump a great creator. To help spot ideas, there are three basic plots to consider: THE CHALLENGE PLOT: This is where a protagonist overcomes a formidable challenge and succeeds. Sea biscuit. Star Wars. Lance Armstrong. Rosa Parks. Challenge plots inspire us to act. THE CONNECTION PLOT: This is where people develop a relationship that bridges a gap. The Good Samaritan. Romeo & Juliet. Titanic. The famous Mean Joe Green commercial for Coke. Connection plots make us want to help others, be more tolerant and cooperative. THE CREATIVITY PLOT: This is where someone makes a mental breakthrough, solving a long-standing puzzle, or attacking a problem in an innovative way. MacGyver. Ernest Schackelton. The 101st Airborne. Creativity plots make us want to do something different, to be creative, to experiment with new approaches.

Epilogue: What Sticks In 1946, Dodger’s coach, Leo Durocher, was mocking the Giants in a pre-game press conference. A reporter asked, “Why don’t you be a nice guy for a change?” Durocher pointed at the Giant’s dugout and said, “Nice guys! Look over there. Do you know a nicer guy than [Giants’ manager] Mel Ott? Or any of the other Giants? Why, they’re the nicest guys in the world! And where are they? In seventh place?” Before long, this quip passed from one person to another until Durocher was quoted as saying, “Nice guys finish last.” He spent years denying it before eventually accepting it. In fact, Nice Guys Finish Last was the title of his autobiography. Similarly, nowhere in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works does Sherlock Holmes say, “Elementary, my Dear Watson.” And the phrase “Play it again, Sam,” is never spoken in the movie Casablanca. Our ideas may go through revisions and iterations. The question we have to ask ourselves in any situation is this: Is the audience’s version of my message still core? If they are, we should get over our “idea pride” and embrace the audience’s judgment. Villains

• Tendency to focus on the presentation rather than on the message. • Decision paralysis – the anxiety and irrationality that emerges from excessive

choice or ambiguous situations • The Curse of Knowledge – forgetting what it’s like not to know something, and

talking to ourselves in language only we understand Making an Idea Stick For an idea to stick, it’s got to make the audience:

1. Pay attention (be UNEXPECTED) 2. Understand and remember it (be CONCRETE) 3. Agree/Believe (be CREDIBLE) 4. Care (be EMOTIONAL) 5. Be able to act on it (be a STORY)

So rather than guess about whether people will understand our ideas, we should ask, “Is it concrete?” Rather than speculate about whether people will care, we should ask, “Is it emotional?”

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