Made to Stick

This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind.

Why do remote controls have more buttons than we ever use? The answer starts with the noble intentions of engineers. Most technology and product-design projects must combat “feature creep,” the tendency for things to become incrementally more complex until they no longer perform their original functions very well.

How could a false idea displace a true one?

the design of the message itself is far from clear.

6. Stories

GET PEOPLE TO ACT.

STORIES AS SIMULATION (TELL PEOPLE HOW TO ACT).

The day the heart monitor lied: how the nurse acted. Shop talk at Xerox: how the repairman acted. Visualizing “how I got here”: simulating problems to solve them. Use stories as flight simulators. Clinic: Dealing with problem students.

STORIES AS INSPIRATION (GIVE PEOPLE ENERGY TO ACT).

Jared, the 425-pound fast-food dieter. How to spot inspiring stories. Look for three key plots: Challenge (to overcome obstacles), Connection (to get along or reconnect), Creativity (to inspire a new way of thinking). Tell a springboard story: a story that helps people see how an existing problem might change. Stephen Denning at the World Bank: a health worker in Zambia. You can extract a moral from a story, but you can’t extract a story from a moral. Why speakers got mad when people boiled down their presentations to stories

5. Emotional MAKE PEOPLE CARE.

The Mother Teresa principle: If I look at the one, I will act. People donate more to Rokia than to a huge swath of Africa. The Truth anti-smoking campaign: What made kids care was not health concerns but anticorporate rebellion.

USE THE POWER OF ASSOCIATION.

The need to fight semantic stretch: the diluted meaning of “relativity” and why “unique” isn’t unique anymore. Transforming “sportsmanship” into “honoring the game.”

APPEAL TO SELF-INTEREST (AND NOT JUST BASE SELF-INTEREST).

Mail-order ads—“They laughed when I sat down at the piano….” WIIFY. Cable television in Tempe: Visualizing what it could do for you. Avoid Maslow’s basement: our false assumption that other people are baser than we are. Floyd Lee and his Iraq mess tent: “I’m in charge of morale.”

APPEAL TO IDENTITY.

The firemen who rejected the popcorn popper. Understand how people make decisions based on identity. (Who am I? What kind of situation is this? And what do people like me do in this kind of situation?) Clinic: Why study algebra? Don’t mess with Texas: Texans don’t litter. Don’t forget the Curse of Knowledge—don’t assume, like the defenders of the duo piano, that others care at the same level that you do

4. Credible

HELP PEOPLE BELIEVE.

The Nobel-winning ulcer insight no one believed. Flesh-eating bananas.

EXTERNAL CREDIBILITY. Authority and antiauthority. Pam Laffin, smoker.

INTERNAL CREDIBILITY.

Use convincing details. Jurors and the Darth Vader Toothbrush. The dancing seventy-three year old.

Make statistics accessible. Nuclear warheads as BBs. The Human Scale principle. Stephen Covey’s analogy of a workplace to a soccer team. Clinic: Shark attack hysteria.

Find an example that passes the Sinatra Test. “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.” Transporting Bollywood movies: “We handled Harry Potter and your brother’s board exams.” A business-friendly environmentalist and the textile factory that actually purified the water that fed it—and yielded fabric that was edible.

Use testable credentials. “Try before you buy.” Where’s the beef? Snapple supports the KKK?! Coaches: It’s easier to tear down than to build up: Filling the Emotional Tank. NBA rookie orientation: “These women all have AIDS.”

3. Concrete

HELP PEOPLE UNDERSTAND AND REMEMBER.

Write with the concreteness of a fable. (Sour grapes.) Make abstraction concrete: The Nature Conservancy’s landscapes as eco-celebrities. Provide a concrete context: Asian teachers’ approach to teaching math. Put people into the story: accounting class taught with a soap opera. Use the Velcro theory of memory: The more hooks in your idea, the better. Brown eyes, blue eyes: a simulation that “cured” racial prejudice.

HELP PEOPLE COORDINATE.

Engineers vs. manufacturers: Find common ground at a shared level of understanding. Set common goals in tangible terms: Our plane will land on Runway 4-22. Make it real: The Ferraris go to Disney World. Why concreteness helps: white things versus white things in your refrigerator. Create a turf where people can bring their knowledge to bear: The VC pitch and the maroon portfolio. Clinic: Oral Rehydration Therapy. Talk about people, not data: Hamburger Helper’s in-home visits and “Saddleback Sam.”

2. Unexpected

GET ATTENTION: SURPRISE.

The successful flight safety announcement. Break a pattern! Break people’s guessing machines (on a core issue). The surprise brow: a pause to collect information. Avoid gimmicky surprise—make it “postdictable.” “The Nordie who …” “There will be no school next Thursday.” Clinic: Too much on foreign aid?

HOLD ATTENTION: INTEREST.

Create a mystery: What are Saturn’s rings made of? Screenplays as models of generating curiosity. The Gap Theory of Curiosity: Highlight a knowledge gap. Use the news-teaser approach: “Which local restaurant has slime in the ice machine?” Clinic: Fund-raising. Priming the gap: How Roone Arledge made NCAA football interesting to nonfans. Hold long-term interest: the “pocketable radio” and the “man on the moon.”

1. Simple

FIND THE CORE.

Commander’s Intent. Determine the single most important thing: “THE low-fare airline.” Inverted pyramid: Don’t bury the lead. The pain of decision paralysis. Beat decision paralysis through relentless prioritization: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Clinic: Sun exposure. Names, names, names.

SHARE THE CORE.

Simple = core + compact. Proverbs: sound bites that are profound. Visual proverbs: The Palm Pilot wood block. How to pack a lot of punch into a compact communication: (1) Using what’s there: Tap into existing schemas. The pomelo. (2) Create a high concept pitch: “Die Hard on a bus.” (3) Use a generative analogy: Disney’s “cast members.”