This is an excellent book for folks in marketing, business, education or really any field where you need to communicate an idea and have your audience remember it. The book is written around 6 qualities that make ideas stick:
- Simplicity – How do you strip an idea to its core without turning it into a silly sound bite?
- Unexpected – How do you capture people’s attention and hold it?
- Concrete – How do you help people understand your idea and remember it much later?
- Credible – How do you get people to believe your idea?
- Emotional – How do you get people to care about your idea?
- Stories – How do you get people to act on your idea?
One of my favorites parts of the book is when they discuss the story of Subway’s Jared Fogle. Jared was massively overweight and came up with his own weight loss plan of eating Subway’s veggie and turkey subs (hold the mayo and cheese) for lunch and dinner nearly everyday, and doing some extra walking. The result is that he lost over 200 pounds. A university newspaper wrote about the story, which caught the attention of a local Subway franchise owner, who in turn contacted Subway’s ad agency. They were excited about the idea but couldn’t get Subway’s marketing director on board (“I’ve seen that before. Fast foods can’t do healthy.”) The lawyers also saw potential liabilities in making weight loss claims to the public. The idea seemed dead but the agency persisted, created the spots for free and convinced Subway to do a small region test. The ads were a success and were rolled out nationally, which lead to several TV appearances for Jared, including Opera. The campaign has continued for the last 15 years and Jared has appeared in over 300 TV spots. The takeaways are:
- Subway’s “7 subs under 6 grams of fat” was an good idea but it didn’t stick nearly as well as Jared’s story did. People won’t usually remember statics or facts but they remember good stories.
- The franchise owner and ad agency recognize a good idea when they saw one. Other folks heard the idea and thought of all the reasons why it wouldn’t work. If you believe in an idea, be persistent.
- If the local franchise owner wasn’t reading the paper, he wouldn’t have seen the idea. Pay attention to what’s going on out there. You don’t have to always create a great idea yourself, you just need to be observant so you can recognize them when they are in front of you.
I highly recommend this book. You can learn more about the book and it’s concepts at heathbrothers.com/books/made-to-stick/.
