2007/01/23: CSM: Why some ideas stick and others don't
The 'stickiest' ideas -- regardless of merit -- have a lot in common. This book explains what that is.
[...]
Coauthors (and brothers) Chip and Dan Heath -- a Stanford Business School professor and an education entrepreneur respectively -- spent a decade disassembling and trying to understand the inner
workings of memorable, persuasive ideas, no matter what kind of packages they came in.
They studied political speeches, urban legends, news reports, management directives, and marketing messages like Subway's --
not to mention culture-crossing proverbs, the various fables of Aesop, and the many soups of chicken (for the soul).
It didn't matter whether the ideas themselves were good or bad, just that they'd "stuck." (Not only is the Great Wall of China
not the sole man-made structure visible from space; it isn't visible from space at all. And still...)
What the Heaths discovered was that the stickiest ideas, regardless of intrinsic merit, had a lot in common. Or, more
accurately, the ways they were presented had a lot in common.
[...]
Each of these ideas, as conveyed, could be described using one or more of just these six à la carte attributes:
simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and story-containing. Line up the first letters of those characteristics, add a
lower-case "s" (poetic license), and you've got the handy acronym SUCCESs.