“If you say three things, you don’t say anything.”
James Carville said this, and it has a profound meaning. Too many things and your listeners may not be able to follow you. The context here is how you can make your idea stick and survive.
Chip and Dan Heath have researched in depth the reasons why some ideas stick in listeners’ minds and others fade away. Based on their research, they have also suggested ways by which you can make your ideas survive and make a lasting impact on your listeners in their book ‘Made to Stick’.
The authors have given an acronym or a kind of checklist to check for the stickiness of an idea: ‘SUCCES’, i.e., Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Story.
Your idea should be simple and represent the core of your message, something similar to proverbs that have survived generation after generation without any promotion. If you conveyed too many things, you would invite decision paralysis or the message would be doomed because of the ‘curse of knowledge’. So, peel your message, get to the core, and keep it simple, like ‘The Low Fare Airlines’, which gives all Southwest Airlines employees absolute clarity in making decisions. Another example I liked in the book was ‘Commander’s Intent’, which is like giving the entire message like a commander in something like one-liners and letting the team figure out the plans per their roles.
Your idea should crush the guessing machines of your listeners and take them on the path of solving the mystery. If your idea motivates your listeners to find out ‘what’s next’, it will stick with them. The writers have forwarded the case study of Nordy (employees at Nordstrom), wherein the idea of customer service is presented in famous stories of Nordys who helped their customers in unexpected and unconventional ways.
The authors have further cautioned about the excessive use of numbers or statistics. Your idea should be concrete and not abstract, like a definition of truth. Among many examples, the one of UNICEF chief ‘Jim Grant’ stuck with me. He used to carry packets of ORS while visiting heads of state. Without any jargon or statistics, he used to show them how to mix that packet with water in order to save millions of children in their countries. His message was, ‘Do you know that this costs you less than a cup of tea and yet can save thousands of children in your country?’. Simple and concrete.
Further, you should relate your message to something the listeners already know. That will make the message credible on its own. The famous election quote by Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” makes this point clearer.
If your message invokes emotions, it will inspire people to care and, finally, to act. The authors have mentioned one experiment where people donated more positively when they were asked to help one child than when they were asked to donate generously for the entire program. Statistics and numbers invoke analytical thinking, and thus the message of such offerings doesn’t inspire action.
Stories are the perfect way to share sticky messages. The book highlights one such story: ‘The Story of Jared’, a story about a fat boy losing weight using Subway sandwiches. An experiment done at Standford also suggests the same message. Stories are easier to remember and therefore become an ideal way of conveying messages rather than statistics.
The book is an eye-opener on many grounds, like the experiment of ‘Tapper and Listeners’, where tappers always listen to the music in their minds, whereas Listeners only hear the discrete tapings, which make no sense to them. The curse of knowledge always comes as a barrier to creating a stickier message. The authors have cautioned against this many times in the book.
The language is lucid and easy to read. I feel that this book should be part of our educational system. I really enjoyed reading this book. Thanks to Chip and Dan Heath for writing such an insightful book.
Categories: Business/ StartUp, Effective Communication, New Age Marketing, Non Fiction, Parenting
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