Made to Stick

by: Chip and Dan Heath

Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observations rings true: urban legends, conspiracy theories and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile people with important ideas struggle to make ideas stick.

Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do you improve your chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. The brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier.

Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. Proactive, eye opening and often funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principals of winning ideas – and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own message stick.

I liked this book because it is well organized and resonated with my common sense approach to marketing. There are six key “stickiness” principals which spell out the acronym SUCCESs (small s stands for six!), so it is easy to remember whenever you have a creative expression challenge. Here are the sticky principals…

Principle #1 Simplicity – How do you find the essential core of an idea?

Principle #2 Unexpectedness - How do we get people to pay attention to our ideas?

Principle #3 Concreteness – How do we make our ideas clear?

Principle #4 Credibility- How do we get people to believe our ideas?

Principle #5 Emotions - How do we get people to care about our ideas?

Principle #6 Stories – How do you get people to act on our ideas?

Like the Heath brothers taking a creative challenge and applying the rules will help you and guide you on determining if your creative expression can stick.

As a summary the SUCCESs approach helps people to remember…

• Pay attention Unexpected
• Understand & remember Concrete
• Believe and agree Credible
• Care Emotional
• Act Stories.

Lesson learned by reading this book is to think about how you creatively promote your business to ensure that your position sticks?

Posted in: Entrepreneurship