Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Made to Stick - A Summary Lesson

This is from the Easy Reference Guide in Made to Stick to give you a bit more of an idea of what the book covers. And how to make messages stick in the minds of your audience.

What Sticks?

What is sticky anyway? Understandable, memorable, and effective in changing behavior.

The Six Principles to a successful sticky message: SUCCESs - Simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional stories.

What's the biggest villain in terms of complicating the creation and delivery of your message? The Curse of Knowledge. Knowing too much about what you're talking about will undoubtedly hamper your effectiveness at creating a lasting, simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, and emotional message.

Here are the 6 tenets of a sticky message broken down:

1. Simple
Find the Core, Share the Core

2. Unexpected
Get Attention: Surprise
Hold Attention: Interest

3 Concrete
Help people understand AND remember

Help people coordinate (make it tangible)

4. Credible
Help people believe
Offer external or internal credibility
Use convincing details, make statistics accessible and understandable

5. Emotional
Make people care
Use the power of Association
Appeal to self interest
Appeal to identity

6. Stories
Get people to act
Use stories as simulation (tell people how to act)

Some of the messages that the authors have broken down to understand why they have persevered: Nice guys finish last, Elementary, my dear Watson, It's the economy, stupid...

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