Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Made to Stick Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath (based on 235 customer reviews)

(Hardcover)
Edition: 1
Author: Chip Heath
Publisher: Random House

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Most useful review as voted by customers:
132 out of 145 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 1/4/07

"Do it yourself" consulting: Crafting memorable messages with integrity

If you are going to write a guide to crafting sticky ideas, your book had better embody your principles. Authors Chip and Dan Heath succeed admirably. What I love about "Made to Stick" is that it is not merely entertaining (though it is), it provides practical, tangible strategies for creating sticky ideas. Once you understand these recommendations, you can boil them down to a set of touchstone points to evaluate your own work. This sets "Made to Stick" apart from the work of Malcolm Gladwell, whom the Heath brothers cite as an inspiration. I enjoyed Gladwell's books but could not necessarily apply his ideas to my own work.

My review copy of "Made to Stick" is covered with highlighter. I am reading the book once through for pure pleasure, and then I am going back again to apply the ideas to evaluate the communications of a non-profit organization I am working for. "Made to Stick" challenges you to distill the essence of your message, to get back to core principles and to communicate them in a memorable way. Chip and Dan point out that as we become experts, we tend to use abstraction to define our ideas, and we lose our ability to communicate with novices. They teach us how to bridge that gap so that our ideas are once again accessible by everyone.

"Made to Stick" gives you the tools you need to revamp your own messages. It provides "do it yourself" conuslting in book form, which will be appreciated by activists, entrepreneurs, and businesses of all sizes.

103 out of 111 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 2/25/07

Valuable insights for marketers, advertisers and sellers

With an entertaining blend of case studies and startling research, the Heath brothers lay out the critical elements of a sticky idea. They are--

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories

As you might expect, the authors use these techniques to drive home their point. For example, in the chapter on stories, they talk about Subway's Jared campaign--quite a dramatic behind-the-scenes story besides being a near perfect example of storytelling in marketing.

Although these six elements seem like common sense, they are woefully underapplied in business communication. The authors state it well--

"Business managers seem to believe that, once they've clicked through a PowerPoint presentation showcasing their conclusions, they've successfully communicated their ideas. What they've done is share data."

Well researched, easy to read and hard to forget.

63 out of 70 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 4/28/07

Excellent Presentation of Core Ideas with Lots of Examples

This book is getting a great deal more attention than Allison Fine's "MOMENTUM: igniting social change in the connected age," so up front I want to say I consider them BOTH to be extremely complementary to one another, and MUST READS for any social activist or political reformer, as well as for those crafting educational or corporate messages.

I cannot improve on Brian Bex Huf's review, which I voted for, but for the sake of coherence for those who are alerted when I do a review, here is the meat from Brian's review:

* Simplicity: the idea must be stripped to its core, and the most important concepts should jump out.
* Unexpectedness: the idea must destroy preconceived notions about something. This forces people to stop, think, and remember.
* Concreteness: avoid statistics, use real-world analogies to help people understand complex ideas.
* Credibility: if people don't trust you, they'll ignore you. In some cases, they will be openly hostile, which means they'll actively try to dispute your message!
* Emotional: information makes people think, but emotion makes them act. Appeal to emotional needs, sometimes even way up on Maslow's hierarchy.
* Stores: telling a story [gets] people into paying closer attention, and feeling more connected. Remember the Jared Subway commercials?

The book ends with a five page reference guide that persuaded me of the author's value as consultants. They have given us a low-cost book we can use our5selves, but I am also persuaded they are valuable as brain-stormers for those trying to craft transpartisan and electoral reform messages, so I am recommending them both to the leadership of Reuniting America.

LOTS of details and examples. Easily a five-star book with great social and political value.

Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual

26 out of 30 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 1/22/07

Creative suggestions that writers and teachers can use

Although aimed at a business audience, I found the authors' suggestions for effective communication equally applicable in classrooms and writing projects. Success in helping students learn or persuading readers follows from applying the "SUCCESs" formula: keep your message Simple but profound; spark interest by opening with the Unexpected; use Concrete examples rather than abstract formulations; make your message Credible by reporting from direct experience; draw people in with Emotional impact; and use Stories to make your message memorable and of human interest. The authors base their arguments on well-validated social-psychological principles but never let the science get in the way of their well-written recommendations. I highly recommend this book for teachers at every level of instruction and for authors who want to increase the impact of their written words.

21 out of 26 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 1/11/07

The most important book you will read this year

If you need to communicate ideas, if you are a businessperson, marketer, teacher, clergyperson, politician, parent or spouse, you need this book.

If you are a reader of Malcolm Gladwell, if you enjoyed any of Seth Godin's books, if you want to stay out of a bathtub filled with ice with one of your vital organs removed, you need this book.

Seriously, Chip and Dan have taken a concept that was briefly introduced in Gladwell's The Tipping Point -- the characteristics of ideas that are memorable and longstanding -- and turned it into a recipe book for constructing memborable stories.

The book is organized around a set of six powerful principles that anyone can use to transform themselves into more effective communicators. It's written with humor and real-life examples that make it a quick read, but also one that "sticks" with you long after you put it down.

Keep one for yourself and buy copies for everyone who inflicts PowerPoint presentations on you at work. You'll be glad you did.

16 out of 20 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 2/14/07

The Sticking Point for Busting the Communications Stall

This is the best book about communications I've read since I discovered Stephen Denning's work on telling business stories. I highly recommend Made to Stick to all those who want to get their messages across in business more effectively.

Imagine if people remembered what you had to say and acted on it. Wouldn't that be great? What if people not only remembered and acted, but told hundreds of others who also acted and told? Now you're really getting somewhere!

Brothers Chip (an educational consultant and publisher) and Dan (a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Business School) Heath combine to develop Malcolm Gladwell's point about "stickiness" in The Tipping Point. To help you understand what they have in mind, the book opens with the hoary urban tale of the man who ends up in a bathtub packed with ice missing his kidney after accepting a drink from a beautiful woman. That story, while untrue, has virtually universal awareness. Many other untrue stories do, too, especially those about what someone found in a fast food meal.

The brothers Heath put memorable and quickly forgotten information side-by-side to make the case for six factors (in combination) making the difference between what's memorable and what isn't. The six factors are:
1. Simplicity (any idea over one is too many)
2. Unexpectedness (a surprise grabs our attention)
3. Concreteness (the more dimensions of details the more hooks our minds use to create a memory)
4. Credibility (even untrue stories don't stick unless there's a hint of truth, such as beware of what's too good to be true in the urban legend that opens the book)
5. Incite Emotions in Listeners (we remember emotional experiences much more than anything else; we care more about individuals than groups; and we care about things that reflect our identities)
6. Combine Messages in Stories (information is more memorable and meaningful in a story form . . . like the urban legend that opens the book)

Before commenting on the book further, I have a confession to make. This book has special meaning for me. I was one of the first people to employ and popularize the term "Maximize Shareholder Value" by making that the title of my consulting firm's annual report (Mitchell and Company) over 25 years ago when we began our practice in stock-price improvement. That term has become almost ubiquitous in CEO and CFO suites, but hasn't gone very far beyond the discussions of corporate leaders, investment bankers and institutional investors and analysts.

The authors use that term in the book as an example of a communication that hasn't stuck broadly. And they are right. Having watched that term over the years go into all kinds of unexpected places and be quoted by people who had no idea how to do it long ago convinced me of the wisdom of telling people what to do . . . not just what the objective is.

The authors make this point beautifully in citing Southwest Airline's goal of being "THE low-fare airline." If something conflicts with being a good low-fare airline at Southwest, it's obvious to everybody not to do it.

You'll probably find that some of the examples and lessons strike you right in the middle of the forehead, too. That's good. That's how we learn. I went back to a new manuscript I'm writing now and wrote a whole new beginning to better reflect the lessons in Made to Stick. I've also recommended the book already to about a dozen of my graduate business students. So clearly Made to Stick is sticking with me.

If you find yourself skipping rapidly through the book, be sure to slow down and pay attention on pages 247-249 where the authors take common communications problems and recommend what to do about them (such as how to get people to pay attention to your message). That's the most valuable part of the book. It integrates the individual points very effectively and succinctly.

I also liked the reference guide on pages 252-257 that outlines the book's contents. You won't need to take notes with this reference guide in place.

So why should you pay attention? The authors demonstrate with an exercise that people who know and use these principles are more successful in communicating through advertisements than those who are talented in making advertisements but don't know these principles. Without more such experiments, it's hard to know how broad the principle is . . . but I'm willing to assume that they have a point here.

No book is perfect: How could this one have been even better? Unlike Stephen Denning's wonderful books on storytelling, this book is more about the principles than how to apply the principles. I hope the authors will come back with many how-to books and workbooks.

I would also like to commend the book's cover designer for doing such a good job of simulating a piece of duct tape on the dust jacket. That feature adds to the stickiness of this book.

15 out of 20 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 1/2/07

Let's Get Sticky!

Made to Stick is a great read and more! Taking the idea of stickiness introduced by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point, authors Heath and Heath have produced more than a great read. They've developed a workshop approach that helps the reader understand what makes things stick and then begin to see how to craft their own stickiness! Packed with captivating stories that make the point, Made to Stick is a very engaging read with plenty to chew on.

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