A review of Chip and Dan Heath’s book – ‘Made to Stick’
Posted by Sally Kay on August 15, 2011
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“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. In newspaper photos of missing girls from the seventies, most looked like me: white girls with mousy brown hair. This was before kids of all races and genders started appearing on milk cartons or in the daily mail.”
You’ve just read part of the opening paragraph from the successful Alice Sebold novel ‘The Lovely Bones’. I read this book over 4 years ago yet I could still remember the opening paragraph almost perfectly. This is what Chip and Dan Heath describe as a ‘sticky’ idea in their book ‘Made to stick’.
While reading this book I realised (even more than before) how much this idea of ‘stickiness’ applies to us as brand consultants, Dan and Chip Heath give brilliant and compelling examples of what we can do to make sure our ideas register with our clients and what our clients can do to make sure their brands register with their consumers. The key SUCCES (Simple, Unexpected, Credible, Concrete, Emotional, Stories) criteria outlined in the book can be summarised as follows:
- Unexpected: Get people to pay attention to the message we are delivering
Such as using a ‘surprise’ element like the ‘I was murdered’ in the first paragraph of The Lovely Bones
- Simple and Concrete: Get people to understand what we are saying
Leave out all the unnecessary information and abstract fluff, focus on the core of the story such as; ‘Consumer fed, not consumer led’ and it can be enduringly powerful
- Credible: Get people to believe what we are saying
Brand consultancies can do this through people and project credentials and confident projection, our clients brands can do this through compelling reasons to believe: ‘Dettol, kills 99.9% of germs’
- Emotional: Get people to care about what we are saying
People remember things because they evoke emotion; public speakers are often very good at this, for example Mother Teresa once said: ‘If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.’ Making the story more personable gives it more emotion
- Stories: Get people to act on it appropriately
The right stories make people act, instead of just listing the ‘rules’ or ‘tips’ we should build the story. Taking the ‘Good Samaritan’ as an example; this takes the moral rule ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ and makes it stick for centuries by turning it into a story
Great book!
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