M A DE tto

o STICK
T E AC H E R S G U I D E
Why Some Ideas Survive
and Others Die

MADE
to

STIC K

Chip Heath & Dan Heath

RANDOM HOUSE HARDCOVER ISBN 13: 978-1-4000-6428-1

304 pages $24.95/$30.00Can.

O V E R V I E W
Made to Stick is a book about creating messages that last, messages that create change. So often when
were given communication advice, its about the delivery: Stand up straight. Make eye contact. Or its
meta-advice: Tell em what youre gonna tell em, tell em, then tell em what you told em. Know your audience. But theres one thing missing: What do you actually say or write? For any given idea we have, there
are 100 different ways to communicate it. Which one do you choose? The book answers these questions,
and this guide helps to distill these concepts into teachable exercises.

C H A P T E R

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER SUMMARY

he book opens with the famous urban legend about the business traveler who accepts a drink from an
attractive stranger, only to lose consciousness and wake up in a bathtub full of icewithout his kidneys.
Why does a false idea like the kidney thieves story circulate so effortlessly, when so many of us fight in
vain to have our ideas stick?
A sticky idea is one that is understood, remembered, and creates some kind of changein opinion, behavior, or values.
We begin to show that dissimilar ideassay, the kidney thieves tale and a non-profit campaign warning
about the fattiness of movie popcornhave certain traits in common. In studying a panorama of ideas,
ranging from urban legends to ad campaigns to proverbs, weve identified six traits that sticky ideas share.
(See pp. 1619 for a summary.) They are: SIMPLE, UNEXPECTED, CONCRETE, CREDIBLE, EMOTIONAL,
and STORY.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Why is it so easy for an urban legend like the kidney thieves to stick?
2. What idea traits were shared by the kidney thieves urban legend and the CSPIs campaign against
movie popcorn?
3. What are some examples of situations when itd be important for you to make an idea stick? [Note: Here
you are fishing for ideas that need to endure, like strategies or advice or job interviews, versus ideas that
dont, like small talk.]
4. The authors cite a research study that shows that there are a few templates that are responsible for lots of
successful ads. They say a color by numbers approach may actually be desirable. Do you agree? Why or
why not?
5. What is the Curse of Knowledge? Have you ever been on the other side of the Curse of Knowledge . . .
from your parents, an auto mechanic, a doctor? Have you ever had professors (present company excluded)
who have suffered from the Curse of Knowledge?
6. Take an idea like the Atkins diet. What traits of stickiness does it exhibit?

ACTIVITIES/EXERCISES
1. Unpacking urban legends.
a. Start by asking, What is your favorite urban legend? Many students will believe the legends about
you only use 10% of your brain, the Kidney Theft Ring, and booby-trapped Halloween candy.
It typically takes time to get students to tell the first urban legend, but after the exercise gets started
its a great source of laughter and fun.
b. Keep track of the legends students tell on the board and afterward go back and take a few of the
legends that get the most reaction and ask, What makes this one stick? The discussion will highlight
many of the points we describe in the book: theyre unexpected, emotion-provoking, etc.
c. Make the point that its unfair that these bogus ideas survive in the world, while teachers, managers,
or public health officials have trouble getting their ideas across.
2

2. Unsticking sticky ideas.

a. Give students some sticky ideas and assign them to make the sticky ideas unsticky. This is in the spirit
of the example we give in Chapter 1 (p. 21), converting JFKs man on the moon idea into Our mission
is to become the international leader in the space industry, using our capacity for technological innovation to build a bridge towards humanitys future. You can use any sticky ideasome candidates
might be: the Kidney Theft legend, the razor blade in the apple Halloween legend, the This is your
brain on drugs campaign, or stop, drop and roll.
b. Compare the before and after and diagnose which traits are changing to make the idea less sticky. For
instance, in the JFK doublespeak example, the idea is growing radically less concrete, less unexpected,
and less simple.
3. The Tappers and Listeners Game.
a. See the description on pages 1921. You can run this game liveyou are the tapper and the class is the
listener. Set up the game as follows: Im going to tap out the rhythm to a song that all of you know.
Afterwards Im going to ask you to guess what song it is. Please hold your guesses until I finish tapping.
We suggest you tap out The Star-Spangled Banner. Often people will guess Happy Birthday.
b. Debrief: Discuss why the game is hard for the Listener but seems easy to the Tapper. Use this as a way
to introduce the Curse of Knowledge concept, and then broaden the discussion to the many areas of
life where the Curse of Knowledge is in evidence: teachers and students, doctors and patients, managers and employees, parents and children, etc.

E X P A N D E D

A C T I V I T Y

Speech exercise
We use this exercise to emphasize to students how difficult it is to make ideas stick. It successfully opens them to a
module (or a whole course on communication). Its best when it happens early on so students can see, in real life,
how difficult it is to convey an idea to others. This exercise never fails to produce lots of enthusiasm and good insight.
Students are given some background information from the Department of Justice (see pp. 49 of this guide) and
they prepare a one-minute speech for or against the idea that property crime is a serious problem
facing the United States. In class, students present their speeches to a small group of 7 or 8. They carefully rate
each speaker on scales that indicate how compelling, interesting, and persuasive each speaker is, then they think
the exercise is over.
You then distract the students by asking them to take a short break or watch a brief in-class video, about 1015 minutes of distraction in all. Then you give them a surprise assignment to recall everything they can remember from the
speeches they just heard. An embarrassed groan typically fills the classroom as students realize they dont remember much of what they heard only 15 minutes ago. After everyone writes down what they can remember, they
get together in their group to compare notes on who made their messages stick. Each group quickly realizes that
certain tactics worked poorlycomplex messages with lots of statistics dont stick. And certain tactics work well:
People remember simple messages, with human scale statistics. They remember concrete, vivid examples. They
remember personal stories.
In class, you can conduct a simple discussion based around two questions: What stuck? and What didnt? The
discussion will set up the rest of the course well, because the things that worked provide an outline of the topics in
Made to Stick: In almost every class of 30 or more people, at least one person will have been successful by using
each tool from the SUCCES framework. The power of this exercise is that it facilitates easy comparison. Because
students are all given identical assignments, they see that some messages succeed and some fail spectacularly, and
there is a logic to what works and what doesnt.
3

Preparation question for students: You should prepare a 1 minute persuasive speech to either support or oppose the
idea that property crime is a serious problem in the United States. If your last name is in the beginning of the alphabet (AK), you should argue that property crime is a serious problem. If your name is in the latter part of the alphabet (LZ) you should be argue that property crime is not a serious problem. Take the 1 minute time limit seriously
during class you will be timed on the speech, so make sure you can give it in one minute or less. You will give your
speech to a group of 68 classmates and they will judge how persuasive it is.
To help in preparing your speech, you have been given the Department of Justice crime statistics for 1999. You
should treat these statistics as the truth (i.e., assume the methodology is reasonable; dont spend your time in the
speech questioning these statistics).

Bureau of Justice Statistics

National Crime Victimization Survey

Criminal Victimization 1999

Changes 199899 with Trends 199399

August 2000, NCJ 182734

C H A P T E R

SIMPLE
CHAPTER SUMMARY

implicity is about finding your core message and sharing it in a compact way. The core message is the
single most important thing you have to communicate. The Army has a core message for its battle plans
called Commanders Intent. Smart companies like Southwest Airlines have core strategic messages, such as
THE low-fare airline. Journalists use the inverted pyramid model to write their stories, putting the most
important information at the top of the article.
Why is finding the core hard? Its painful to leave behind ideas that are interesting and important but that
arent the most important idea. Yet its critical to find the core, to prioritize ideas, because of decision paralysis.
Decision paralysis leads people to make bad choices when they are confronted with too many choices, and it
can be overcome via simplicity (as in the Southwest example).
Simple is about prioritization, and its also about saying a lot with a little. You can say a lot with a little by
using analogies. Think about Hollywood high-concept pitches (Speed is Die Hard on a bus). Rather than teaching people ideas from scratch, you can tap into what they already know by using schemas. (See pp. 5355 for
an illustration of schemas using the pomelo fruit.)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Someone complains, I hate simple ideas because theyre dumbed down. Respond. (Students could talk
about the value of simplicity in guiding actione.g., the cases of too much choice causing people to delay
choosing or not choosing at all, Commanders Intent in guiding decisions in a dynamic situation, etc.)
2. Is it harder to be simple or complex? Why does it hurt to be simple? Have you ever struggled to make
something simple for someone else?
3. Are sound bites good or bad? (Solicit examples of useful and oversimplified sound bites.)
4. In what sense is Hoover Adams concept of names, names, names simple? How does it help people
make decisions? What specific decisions might it influence?
5. Have you ever personally experienced decision paralysis? What was the situation?
6. [Refer to the PalmPilot visual proverb example, pp. 4850.] In what sense is a block of wood a visual proverb?
7. What is a generative analogy? How does Disney use one?
8. What is the most overcomplicated communication youve seen or heard recently? How would you go about
fixing it using some of the techniques from this chapter?

ACTIVITIES/EXERCISES
1. Finding the core idea.
a. The core idea of Southwest is to be THE low-fare airline. What do you think the core idea for Apple
might be? Disney? The United States? College?
2. The time travelers high-concept pitch.
a. Imagine that you are transported back in time to 1850. Find an analogy that might help someone in
1850 understand the following modern concepts: television, cars, a department store, Starbucks, the
phonograph, deodorant. For inspiration, think of the way cars were pitched as horseless carriages
thats a brilliant high-concept pitch!
10

3. Reverse-engineer high-concept pitches.

a. The book gives some examples of Hollywood high-concept pitches. Give some current movies and ask
the students to speculate what the high-concept pitch might have been.
4. Names, names, names.
a. Pick out a local business (a coffee shop or music store or boutique). If you were the manager of that
store, what would be the core message youd circulate to employees, la Hoover Adamss names,
names, names? Talk about some of the decisions theyd have to make every day and the way that your
idea would help them make those decisions.

E X P A N D E D

A C T I V I T Y

High concept pitch for a new product

This exercise works well for a number of audiences. It is a quick, 2025 minute exercise that fosters a lot of interesting insights and discussion, and students see a dramatic improvement in an idea very quickly.
Students are assigned to brainstorm a high-concept pitch for a CFL-light bulb (compact fluorescent
light bulb). These are the environmentally friendly light bulbs that look like the image to the right:
These light bulbs last much longer than standard light bulbs (7 years versus 1 for a standard bulb) and
they consume up to 75% less electricity when theyre operating. Nonetheless, they also cost substantially more than regular lightbulbs (say $5$6 apiece, versus $3 for a four-pack of standard bulbs).
Good ideas from previous groups:

Its the Prius of light bulbs. This analogy works if people know the Toyota Prius. If so, the message is simple
because the Prius has staked out the environmental high-ground in the car market, its concrete because people can picture the Prius, and its somewhat emotional because of the positive associations of the Prius.

Its like finally fixing that leaky faucet. This is highly emotional because of the feelings of frustration we get
from dealing with a leaky appliance. Its incredibly concrete, filled with visuals and built in audio (drip, drip,
drip). And, compared with other analogies such as the Prius that are only known by some audiences, its much
simpler because it relies on a common experience that all of us have had. Its also more unexpected because
the Prius is a known environmental product, but going for the plumbing is less predictable.

Its like buying dishes versus using plastic plates. This one is a simple analogy that everyone can relate to. We
do spend more to buy plates for our homes because they last longer and have aesthetic advantages over paper
plates. And the waste and concrete visuals associated with stacks of dirty paper plates makes the environmentally-friendly point in a nice emotional way.

Structure of the exercise: Give people about 2 minutes to brainstorm individually, then have them get together
with a group of three or four people around where they are sitting and give them another 7 minutes to come up with
their favorite idea for their group.
Call on each group and write their idea on the board. Generally there is a lot of laughter and oh sounds when
groups come up with good ideas (and nervous, embarrassed laughter when a groups idea is bizarre). After all the
ideas go up on the board, ask everyone to vote for one favorite idea (they cant vote for their own idea). Then spend
some time discussing the top two or three ideas. All of the top ideas will make use of some parts of the SUCCES
framework, but they will differ on:

Simple: Some ideas, like the Prius, may use an analogy that is powerful but only for a limited segment of people.

Emotional: Some ideas will do better at capturing the frustration of the waste of the old light bulbs (both in terms
of wasted electricity and the hassle of replacing them every year or so).
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C H A P T E R

UNEXPECTED
CHAPTER SUMMARY

nexpectedness is about grabbing peoples attention. You can grab peoples attention by surprising them,
and an easy way to surprise them is to break a pattern (the way car alarms get our attention by cycling
their annoying sound patterns). You can surprise people by violating their expectations or forcing their guessing machines to miss a guess. (For example, the way that Nordstrom employees are told stories about the
Nordie who ironed a shirt for a customer who needed to wear it that afternoon. That breaks the employees
schema of customer service.) Surprise is an emotion that forces us to pause to collect more information about
the world. Surprise can be gimmickythink of dot-com adsbut it is powerful when used in the service of a
core message. (See the Nora Ephron story There is no school next Thursday for an example, pp. 7576.)
Surprise gets peoples attention in the moment, and curiosity holds their attention over time. How do you
spark curiosity? The gap theory of curiosity holds that curiosity comes from a gap between what we know
and what we want to know. These gaps cause us a kind of painwe want to fill them. Hollywood screenplays
string us along in this way, but the same technique works in college classes, as when a teacher started his
class with the mystery, What are Saturns rings made of? Curiosity gaps can work in the long-term: Sonys
1950s quest for a pocketable radio kept its engineers busy for years, and JFKs man on the moon speech
kept a nation busy for a decade.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Why is surprise a useful emotion?
2. What does post-dictable mean? Can you think of any commercials or books that had unexpected endings
that were post-dictable (or not post-dictable)?
3. (This one builds on the ideas introduced in the book by the Journalism 101 example from Nora Ephron.)
Think of your best teacher and something you learned from him or her. How did this teacher get your
attention and get you to change your ideas about the world?
4. Whats an example youve seen recently of gimmicky surprise?
5. What is the gap theory of curiosity? Whats an example of a knowledge gap? Advanced question: Is the
gap theory the same thing as simply asking a question? (Answer: No. Lots of questions dont relate to
things that we know, for example, Who was the most effective president of Iceland? Others relate to
things we dont want to know, such as, Whats the keyboard shortcut for left-justifying a column of text in
Word?)
6. When was the last time a movie or television show had you hanging on the edge of your seat? What were
the knowledge gaps it set up?
7. What did Roone Arledge do to make sports broadcasts stickier?
8. What made the Nintendo WiiTM sticky? (If prompting is needed, ask, What schema was violated by the
Nintendo Wii? Answer: The schema that characters movements are controlled via a joystick, connected to
the console via a cord, etc.)

ACTIVITIES/EXERCISES
1. Violating schemas.
a. Lets say you are promoting an event, and you want to grab peoples attention. Youre going to do it by
12

violating peoples schemas. Lets take a series of possible events, talk about our schemas of those
events, and then figure out how to subvert them. Examples:
i.

A picnic. Our schema includes: Fried chicken, wine & cheese, crackers, potato salad, picnic
baskets, sitting on a red-and-white-checked picnic blanket, fear of ants, fear of rain, etc.
I.

Ideas for violating our picnic schema: A picnic where you eat ants. A picnic in the rain. An
indoor picnic. A picnic where you sit inside a giant basket. Etc.

ii. A movie. Our schema includes: The theater, big screen, rows of seats, popcorn, darkened lighting, etc.
I.

Ideas for violating the movie schema: Movies played backwards! Movies projected on the
ceilingpeople laying on mattresses staring upward. Movies where you can throw food at the
screen. The gong show movieyou can vote a movie off the screen by booing, etc.

2. Uncommon sense made common.

a. Take a series of unexpected/surprising messages and make them sound like common sense, e.g.,
You only use 10% of your brain turns into None of us make use of our brains entire capacity.
A medium-sized popcorn has as much fat as a days worth of gluttony (see Chapter 1) can be transformed into, A medium-sized popcorn has a lot of saturated fat due to the coconut oil.
3. Manufactured morals.
a. Ask for some of the silliest, gimmickiest advertisements people have seen. Have students describe
the ads. Make the point that the gimmicks do not reinforce the core message of the products/services
being advertised. Then, ask the class to speculate on the following question: Would these ads have
been brilliant if the core message had been
? For example, on p. 69,
we discuss the dot-com ads where a pack of wolves is unleashed on a marching band. That ad would
have been brilliant if the core message were, Our band uniforms are bite-proof. The famous ad
where Christopher Reeve is cured and stands up from his wheelchair would have been brilliant if it
advertised a new spinal-reconstruction therapy. (It was actually an ad for Nuveen Investments,
by the way.)

E X P A N D E D

A C T I V I T Y

The Curiosity Marketplace

This exercise takes 11.5 hours. Students work on pitching an idea so that their classmates become curious to know
more. The class votes to determine which pitches they want to hear more of, thus demonstrating that its possible to
make people want to know information. Heres a sample pitch from a clever student in one of our previous classes:
The secret muffin ingredient. How many of you have had one of those wonderful, large breakfast muffins from
a great bakery? (Smiles and nods, at this point the student took out a wonderful bakery-quality muffin and held it
up as a demo.) Well, you may have made muffins in your own home, but they never turn out that great. The top is
pretty much like the bottom and all of it is pretty soggy and uninspiring compared to what you get in the store. Well
what if I told you that theres one simple, secret ingredient, that you can add to your muffins to get those luscious
professional bakery tops? And furthermore, what if I told you that the ingredient is inexpensive, and may already be
in your home in your refrigerator? In fact, I baked this muffin, in my own oven, with that very ingredient. But if
you dont know the secret muffin ingredient, you have to pay more for your muffins and you can never have the
pleasure of taking out of your own oven a perfect, mouth-watering, crusty muffin that will please your stomach and
impress your friends. (At this point she took a bite of her home-baked muffin and everyone else in the class salivated.) Not surprisingly, this pitch collected lots of votes. [The answer, by the way, was to replace the oil in the muffin
recipe with yogurt.]
13

Setup
Initial pre-class assignment. Come to class prepared to make a knowledge gap pitch to your classmates. The
goal is to make your classmates want to hear some information you can talk about. Your message should be informational, not just a joke or a riddle or a brain-teaser. People should feel like theyve learned something useful after
they hear your message.
For example, heres a pitch you might deliver based on topics in the book:
People always say you cant make people pay attention, yet lots of people would love to understand how to make
people pay attentionranging from advertisers to teachers. It turns out that conventional wisdom is wrongyou can
make people pay attention. But to understand how, you need to know a little bit about the biology of surprise and
a little about uncommon sense . . .
In your message you could talk about breaking existing schemas and illustrate with the Nordie stories or There is
no school next Thursday.
Youll make a short pitch for your idea and people will vote how much they want to hear your message. If your pitch
collects enough votes, well let you deliver your message and fill the knowledge gap (your messages should be relatively shorttwo minutes or so max). Well take another vote about how satisfied people are with your overall message. Remember that its easy to make people curious but harder to close the curiosity gap in a way that leaves people satisfied with the experience. So dont create curiosity gaps that you wont be able to fill.
Class intro: I highlight at the beginning of class that We often think we cant make people pay attention. Cant make
people want to learn. But both are false. In this exercise some of your classmates will make you want to know some
information they have. Imagine the consequences if you could master this technique. Instead of working constantly to
keep peoples attention, everyone is hanging on your every word because they want to know what youre saying.
Procedure
Small group pitches. (About 25 minutes). Students number off and select into groups of 7 or 8. Each group
member presents their knowledge gap pitch (since this is not a memory exercise, students can be free to take notes).
After everyone has made their pitch, the group votes on who they would most like to hear. The top vote-getter is a
finalist and is promoted to the class super-round, but to maintain the knowledge gap they do not give their informational speech to their group. With whatever time the group has left before returning to class, the group can hear the
informational speech of the second-highest vote getter, third-highest, etc.
Class-wide pitches by finalists. (About 20 minutes). Once class is re-assembled, the finalist from each group gives
his or her knowledge gap pitch. The class then votes for their favorite. At this point, the expectation has been set based
on the first round that only the top vote-getter will give his or her informational speech. I make a show of looking at
my watch and thinking for a moment, then say I think well have enough time to hear the full speeches from each of
the finalists. At that point there is always a spontaneous eruption of glee and scattered applause. At that point, your
job as a teacher is done. I say, Notice what just happened. You were excited that you were going to get to learn from
each of these people. They each made you want to know something. Thats the main point for the day: If we think
hard about how to create knowledge gaps, we can make people want to hear what we have to say.
Discussion and debrief. (25 minutes). Ask people to reflect on what people did well at motivating curiosity. The
principles can be organized as follows:

Crystallize knowledge. You first need to highlight something that people already know. People want to know
more about things they already know something about. Remind them of things they have learned, seen, or
observed, e.g. in the secret muffin ingredient pitch above, the student highlighted the wonderful (concrete)
experience of that crusty muffin top from high-end bakeries.

Highlight the gap. Then point out to people what they do not know. Point out some puzzle, paradox, or contradiction in their knowledge. You dont know how to make crusty muffins on your own. But the secret ingredient
is probably already in your fridge!

14

(Optional) Highlight consequences of the gap. If you do the first two right, this one can be omitted but it adds
force. Highlight the costs of not knowing the information you are offering, and the potential benefits of having
it. You can increase the consequences of the gap by making the answer seem scarce, something that people
are only going to learn from you right now. If you dont know the secret muffin ingredient, youll never have great
muffins in your own home.

The mistakes that people make can also be organized around these principles.

Crystallize knowledge. People often fail in their pitches by referring to people, things, or experiences that their
audience wasnt familiar with.

Highlight the gap. As the book discusses, knowledge gaps are painful so people dont want to think about a
gap that is likely to remain unfilled.

Many people failed by making the gap so big that people dont think the gap will ever be closed. One low votegetter promised he had the solution to never being sick again and people werent convinced that he could
deliver. To address this, you could do things to increase credibility. You can build trust by opening one gap, filling it with some interesting information, then opening another, bigger gap. People also use tactics that increase
credibility, e.g., new studies have shown . . . One product designer who was pitching a new product that
sounded impossibly good said, Google ordered 10,000.

You can fail to highlight a gap by making the answer seem too well-known. One person promised to tell people how to avoid losing money in Vegas. He was pitching a strategy at Blackjack but people thought he was
going to tell them not to gamble.

Highlight consequences of the gap. Some students try to set up gaps based on a personal anecdote or story that
didnt have wide relevance.

Question: Was there anything you were disappointed by once you heard someones speech? Many times
students manage to set up compelling knowledge gaps, but then cant deliver an equally compelling message.

C H A P T E R

CONCRETE
CHAPTER SUMMARY

ticky ideas are usually concretethey are expressed in sensory language. A bathtub full of ice in the
Kidney Theft legend is a phrase you can visualize (and almost feel). Aesops Fables are great examples of
abstract moral truths made concrete (e.g., the abstract lesson to tell the truth becomes The Boy Who Cried
Wolf). The distinguishing trait of concrete ideas is that you can picture them in your head. For instance, an
accounting class was taught using a soap opera tracing the path of a startup company and its co-founders.
This grounded the concepts of accounting into the actions of specific people.
The Velcro theory of memory says that the more hooks we can put into an idea, the stickier it will be.
(See pp. 109111 for a summary of different types of memory.) The teacher Jane Elliott made her students experience prejudice with her simulation where she declared the blue-eyed kids to be superior (and later reversed it).
Concreteness not only helps people understand ideas, it helps them coordinate. The Boeing 727 was
designed to land on Runway 422 at LaGuardiathat ensures that all the engineers are working toward the
same goal. Concreteness allows people to share a common language.

15

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What does it mean to say that something is concrete? What are some examples of abstract and concrete
language?
2. Why does concrete information help people understand better? Remember better? Why are simulations so
powerful?
3. What are the abstract morals underlying some of Aesops Fables? (You can use The Boy Who Cried Wolf,
the Fox and the Grapes, the Tortoise and the Hare, or others.)
4. What is the Velcro Theory of Memory? Follow-up questions: What hooks did the professors at Georgia
State build into their Safe Night Out case study of Kris and Sandy? What hooks did Stone-Yamashita build
into their exhibit of the Ferraris go to Disney?
5. How could you make better use of the Velcro Theory of Memory in some of your classes? (Fish for examples of experiential learning.)
6. Why was it more effective for James Grant to show policymakers a packet of sugar and salt than for him to
talk about how Oral Rehydration Therapy can prevent life-threatening dehydration?
7. Should your rsum be abstract or concrete?
8. The book makes a big deal of the entrepreneur who throws a maroon portfolio on the table during his VC
pitch. What exactly did this accomplish? Do you buy that this was a smart thing to do?
9. Why does the Curse of Knowledge lead us to make arguments that are too abstract?

ACTIVITIES/EXERCISES
1. English-to-alien translation.
a. You have been visited by a space alien who is from a race of people who cant understand abstractions.
They can only understand things they can observe directly (whether in person or via video). Write down what
concrete images you could show them to help explain to the alien what is meant by the following terms:
i.

Democracy. Examples: Ballots, voting by raising hands, scenes from Congress, etc.

ii. Justice. Examples: Video of an assault, followed by video of the same offender being put behind bars.
iii. Friendship. Examples: One person carrying something heavy for another person. Two people
walking side by side.
2. Being Aesop.
a. Come up with an Aesop-esque story (i.e., involving foxes or hares or people) that illustrates one of the
following morals:
i.

Pay attention when people are talking to you.

ii. Dont drink too much.

iii. Respect your elders.
iv. Dont cheat.
3. Setting concrete goals.
a. Using the Boeing example in the book as inspiration, make the following goals more concrete:
i.

Goal: To get more fit. (Example: I want to be able to run 25 minutes on the elliptical trainer by
June 30th without exceeding 95% of my max heart rate. Or, I want to weigh 118 pounds or
less by August 1st while wearing my birthday suit.)

16

ii. Goal: To serve the best coffee in town. (Example: 2 out of 3 people picked at random will prefer our
coffee to the competition when served in a blind taste test. Or, our coffee will be served at
120 degrees, it will be no older than 30 minutes when served, and it will be made of
Colombian Arabica beans.)
iii. Goal: To be better at math.
iv. Goal: To be a better person.

C H A P T E R

CREDIBLE
CHAPTER SUMMARY

redibility makes people believe your ideas. When trying to establish our credibility, we instinctively reach
for authorities (Oprah, Dr. Koop). But sometimes antiauthorities work just as well (for example, Pam
Laffin, the heavy smoker who now appears in anti-smoking ads).
When trying to establish credibility we also tend to make heavy use of data (statistics, charts). But there are
lots of other ways to make ideas credible. We can use convincing details. We can find an example that passes
the Sinatra Test (if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere); for instance, an Indian shipping company that handled the Harry Potter book launch could be considered credible for any shipping job.
When you must use statistics, you should try to use the human-scale principle to make them easy to
understand. For instance, an anti-nuclear-weapons group used sound to represent the worlds nuclear arsenal:
The sound of one BB, dropped in a bucket, represented Hiroshima. The sound of 5,000 BBs, ricocheting
around in the bucket, symbolized the massive expansion in nuclear scale.
Finally, you can outsource your ideas credibility to the audience using a testable credential. For
instance, in the 1980 presidential debate, Ronald Reagan, instead of using statistics, asked, Are you better off
now than you were four years ago?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. When we want to convince someone of something, what techniques do we use to convince them? Why do
people often overuse appeals to authorities?
2. How did the CSPI make its argument against high-fat popcorn credible? (From the Intro chapter.)
3. Who would be an authority to reinforce the value of a college education? Who would be an anti-authority
to make the same point?
4. What is the Sinatra Test? What Sinatra Test could you provide to an employer to prove that youd make a
good employee? What would be your best Sinatra Test story if you were applying for a job as a lawyer? A
job in Hollywood? A job working for major league baseball? [This is to reinforce that different pieces of
evidence will be most relevant for different positions.]
5. How did the NBA get its rookie players to take AIDS seriously? What elements of the SUCCES framework
did that experience contain? (Answer: all of them. It can be useful to unpack each one as a review.)
6. How do urban legends manage to convince us that they are credible, even though they are false? More
broadly, why do we believe false ideas?

17

ACTIVITIES/EXERCISES
1. The Lonely Scientist.
a. Youve discovered a simple drink that cures the flu. How will you convince other people to believe your
discovery? What techniques could you use? Prepare a game plan for 3 different scenarios:
i.

You are meeting with 5 key scientists in a conference room for half a day.

ii. You are preparing a TV ad to announce your discovery.

iii. You are circulating an email that you hope will be forwarded around the web.
2. Using the Human-Scale Principle.
a. Take the following statistics and make them more easily graspable by using what you know about the
human-scale principle. (Dont forget that analogies are often a useful human-scale technique.)
i.

400,000 people die every year from cigarette smoking.

ii. $500 billion [check current figures] has been spent on the Iraq war.
iii. The distance between Moscow and Vladivostok in Russia is 3,985 miles.
iv. Americans spent about $8.4 billion on video games in 2005.
3. Using Testable Credentials.
a. Use a testable credential to make an argument about some change your school needs to makee.g.,
people should be safer riding their bicycles, or there should be more study-time built into the final
exam schedule. (E.g., if you were arguing about bicycle safety, Have you ever been walking and heard
that chain of a bicyclist rattle behind you and you flinched like there was a snake on the path? Thats a
sign the bicycle problem on our campus is out of control.)

C H A P T E R

E M OT I O N A L
CHAPTER SUMMARY

motional doesnt mean tearjerking or melodramaticit simply means that, for an idea to stick, it needs
to tap into something people care about. One technique is to talk about the consequences of ideas for
individuals (rather than their scale); as Mother Teresa said, If I look at the one, I will act. If I look at the mass,
I will not.
To make people care, you can use the power of associationthats what many ads do, by associating products with sex appeal or status. But semantic stretch can afflict associations, diluting them until they are
meaninglesstake the terms unique, which now means mildly different, or sportsmanship, which now
means didnt assault the referee.
Another way to make people care is to appeal to their self-interest. Tell your audience about the WIIFY
(Whats In It For You). But the WIIFY doesnt have to be simple economic self-interest. We can move up
Maslows hierarchy to more profound motivations, as with the Army mess-hall leader who says his mission
isnt to serve foodhes in charge of morale. Thats a powerful motivating mission.
There are two ways people make decisionsthe first is the consequence model, which is the standard
economics model of an individual who makes decisions based on rational self-interest. The other is the identity model, which says that people ask themselves three questions: Who am I? What kind of situation is this?
18

What does someone like me do in this kind of situation? The Dont Mess With Texas campaign achieved
huge success by convincing the Bubbas that littering the state violated their Texan identitylittering wasnt
the Texan thing to do.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Explain the findings of the Rokia study conducted by Carnegie Mellon researchers. What causes have
you seen that make use of the Mother Teresa principlethat people care about individuals rather than
masses?
2. Why is it so difficult to have an emotional reaction to an abstraction?
3. What are the approaches you can use to make people care about an idea? (See the Easy Reference section
for a summary of the approaches outlined in the chapter.)
4. What has happened to the word sportsmanship? What are your associations with the word? Do you agree
its been diluted? What do you think of the attempt to reclaim the concept with the phrase Honoring the
Game?
5. This chapter discusses three different ways of creating an emotional message: 1) Association, 2) Self-interest, 3) Identity. Rank order them in terms of how aware people are of using them. (The authors think that
awareness looks something like 2, 1, 3. Why are people likely to miss the power of identity? Perhaps it is
that we live in an individualistic culture so self-interest is obvious, but many forms of identity are collectivebased on the groups we belong to.)
6. What are the two models of decision-making? Give me an example of how you would choose a place to
have dinner using each one.
7. The copywriter Caples wrote some doozies: They laughed when I sat down at the pianobut when I
began to play . . . Would these lines work today? If not, why not? What has changed?
8. Why was it hard for the Murray Dranoff Duo Piano group to articulate why people should care about the
duo piano?

ACTIVITIES/EXERCISES
1. The Car Salesman & The Poverty Fighter.
a. Take volunteers to be a car salesman and a fundraiser for a charity that fights poverty. First ask the students to make an appeal using the consequence model.
i.

Example, consequence model, car salesman: I can give you a great price on this car. You are going
to look great in this thingit will definitely turn heads. The resale value is fantastic, and youll
never have a maintenance problem.

ii. Example, consequence model, charity fundraiser: The vast majority of the money we collect goes
directly to the poorwe dont spend much on administration, so your money will have more
impact with us than with other charities. You will get a tax benefit on your donation. And the
money that you give will make you feel greatyoull be helping people in need.
iii. Example, identity model, car salesman: I can see youre a person who appreciates design. Take a
look at the way theyve made the hood more aerodynamic. And you wont believe the interiorsee
the way theyve built everything around the drivers convenience. If you care about design and
engineering, this is the car for youeverything else looks clunky in comparison.
iv. Example, identity model, charity fundraiser: Weve got a duty to the other people in this world
who are less fortunate than us. People like us, weve got an obligation to lend a hand, because if we
were the ones in poverty, wed want someone to lend us a hand.
19

2. Semantic stretch.
a. List words that have become stretched and no longer have an emotional kick. The trick with this exercise is to steer students away from words that are just overly abstract (e.g., reengineering, ecosystem)
and toward words that once conveyed some emotional force but have lost it through overusee.g.,
quality, awesome, excellence, the best, etc.
b. Then, pick your favorite term that the students have identified as stretched and ask them to brainstorm
about a replacement for it that would restore some of its original meaning. (This is inspired by the
Honoring the Game anecdote in the book.) Note that if they use exaggeratorsfor example, if the
stretched word was awesome and someone suggests mega-awesome as the replacementthen you
should point out that this is a great example of semantic stretch in action. Cool becomes awesome
becomes mega-awesomeyou need more and more punch to sustain the original meaning.
3. Maslows Fashions.
a. Put students in the shoes of a fashion designer selling a new line of clothing. Sketch Maslows
Hierarchy up on the board. Then, starting at the bottom, ask them to market their line of clothes using
each level. For example, a pitch using basic needs might be My line of clothes will keep you protected from the elements. You wont be shivering in the winter. Work up to self-actualization: These
clothes are about helping you become the confident, sophisticated person you can be. Youll be at your
best wearing this shirt.

E X P A N D E D

A C T I V I T Y

Ta p p i n g E m o t i o n
Students write a mission statement that would inspire an employee of Taco Bell, the IRS, their local garbage collection service or other organizations. Each organization is selected because it has features that may make it tough to
find an emotional message that would make employees care: Some are disliked (IRS, insurance firms), some are not
respected (garbage collection, local community college), some may seem trivial (Taco Bell, the International Waltz
Society).
Procedure
Students are given the assignment before class (see below for wording). You can add to the drama by dividing students
into groups the class before, say by last name, and then having groups draw their assignments from a hat. There will
be groans when people draw tough assignments like the IRS.
Students bring several copies of their answers to class, one for each member of their group. They should not put
their name on their answers; it tends to inhibit discussion when students know who authored the statements they are
critiquing.
Small group discussion (1015 minutes). In groups, students will individually rank the mission statements from best
to worst and then take a group vote to establish the group ranking. Then ask them to discuss the following question:
Look across the best mission statements and write down, as a group, the phrases and concepts that work best. Also look
across the worst mission statements and write down the phrases and concepts that backfired or should be avoided.
General class discussion (2030 minutes). In a general class session you will move quickly through the groups
and ask them to report what they have discovered. Here are the kinds of insights that come from the exercise:

Its important to avoid over-claiming. People try to evoke emotions by using concepts and language with strong
emotional associations, but sometimes this isnt credible. Taco Bell is nourishing or tasty Tex-Mex food, but probably not nutritious and its not real Mexican food. The local garbage collection service can make for cleaner
and healthier communities, but its less credible that its saving nature or preserving the environment.
20

Emphasize why as well as what. Some students just describe what their organization does and thats typically not very inspiring. The IRS collects taxes but thats pretty negative until you emphasize why they do this:
They ensure that money is available for concrete things like preserving our National Parks, building Interstate
highways, feeding hungry children, and providing for our nations defense.

IRSSome students try to avoid negative associations by avoiding the word taxes but others think thats disingenuous. The IRS can also emphasize that it tries to justly or fairly administer the tax code that the legislature
has created.

Taco BellTaco Bell can legitimately claim to be bolder and spicier than the standard boring burgers and fries.
It can claim to be innovative because it is constantly developing new products, but that term has been stretched,
so it may be better to emphasize that its constantly bringing you new flavors. To avoid overclaiming for what
could be seen as trivial fast food, Taco Bell can use humor (e.g., Think outside the bun) or be self-deprecatory (e.g., think the old Avis campaign, Were #2 so we try harder).

State Farm InsuranceTheres a great challenge and connection plot here (see Stories chapter)as a State
Farm employee you can help people recover from hardships or disasters. It would be over-claiming to say that
State Farm protects people from problems but it can help people bounce back or overcome.

Local garbage collection service. Emphasize our neighborhoods and our community. Dont miss the challenge
plot: workers need to be strong (we do a tough job that others wouldnt).

International Waltz SocietyEmphasize the connections with history and people across cultures. Dance the
dance your grandparents danced, and their grandparents before them. Dance that is danced in many cultures.
Grace or elegance are good concepts to emphasize but are also shared by other art forms. Romance is a strong
feature of the waltz.

Since similar points come up for several of the organizations (e.g., avoiding overclaiming), its good to move faster
through the later groups as the class starts to recognize common issues.
Initial pre-class assignment. For the organization you have been assigned, come up with a brief two to three sentence mission statement that would inspire an employee of that organization. The mission statement should capture
the deep, idealistic principles that motivate people who work for an organization, and it should also inspire others
who might want to work for that organization.
Heres an example of a statement a student wrote for a local Community College: We open the gates of knowledge to everyone in our community irrespective of income level. We provide training that helps ease our students
transition to the world of work or to advanced forms of education. We strive to foster a community of learning and
respect, where everyone can better themselves, their families and our community.

C H A P T E R

S TO RY
CHAPTER SUMMARY

tories prompt people to act via simulationshowing people how to actand via inspirationproviding the
energy and motivation to act.
Research shows that when people swap storieswhether theyre emergency room nurses or Xerox copier
repairmenthey arent just entertaining their peers, theyre providing mental training. The audience is thinking, How would I have reacted if Id been in that situation? Furthermore, this ability to visualize oneself in the
situation is the next best thing to actually experiencing it. In short, stories are flight simulators for the brain.
21

Stories also have the power to inspire, as with the tale of Jared, the college student from the Subway campaign who lost hundreds of pounds eating low-fat sandwiches. There are three types of plots that inspire: (1)
The Challenge Plot, where a protagonist overcomes big obstacles to succeed. Think David and Goliath (or
Jared). (2) The Connection Plot, where two dissimilar people overcome social barriers to share a special
moment. Think the Mean Joe Greene Coke commercial. (3) The Creativity Plot, where an individual or team
use resourcefulness and gumption to solve a problem in a novel way. Think MacGyver.
A final kind of story, the springboard story, allows people to see how an existing problem might change.
Stephen Denning helped the World Bank understand how a knowledge-management system could help its
workers at the ground level do better work.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What does it mean to say that stories are like flight simulators for the brain?
2. Why do stories lead to action?
3. What are the three plots that inspire people to act? Give an example of each one.
4. Does a story have to be entertaining to be effective? (Answer: certainly notsee springboard stories.)
5. Why did the Jared campaign do so much better than the 7 under 6 campaign? What was missing from
7 under 6? (Dont forget the other elements of the framework here, such as Emotional and Concrete.)
6. What story inspires you?
7. At the end of the chapter, theres a story about some presenters at a conference who were furious when the
stories they told were plucked out and presented as the takeaway. Why were they furious? Do you empathize
with them? What would you say to them if you were Gary Kleins group who had captured the stories?

ACTIVITIES/EXERCISES
1. Plot-spotting.
a. Ask students to think of movies that fit the three fundamental plots of inspiring stories: Challenge,
Connection, Creativity.
i.

Challenge examples: almost any action or war or sports movie

ii. Connection examples: Titanic, Youve Got Mail, most romantic comedies and weepies
iii. Creativity examples: Apollo 13, lots of horror movies (figuring out how to thwart the evil beings)
2. Morals vs. Stories.
a. Take a powerful story (e.g., Aesops Fables, a founding story for a company, a story about a famous person) and have the class identify the moral of the story. Write the moral on the board. Ask which is
more powerful, the story or the moral. If the moral encapsulates the meaning of the story, why isnt
it enough simply to share the moral? (Hint: you are fishing for the flight simulator idea, as well as
other sticky traits like Emotional and Unexpected and Concrete.)
b. Why do teachers, parents, society so often default to telling the moral of the story without the story?
3. Story-collecting.
a. Ask students to come to class with a story that someone has told thema friend, a parent, another
teacher. Is it acting as a flight simulator? If so, what actions does it help people take? Is it inspiring (if
so, does it share one of the three plots described in the chapter)?

22

C H A P T E R

W H AT S T I C K S
CHAPTER SUMMARY

our audience will sometimes make your ideas stickierfor instance, Leo Durocher never said, Nice guys
finish last, but his actual, more complicated quote was whittled down into that stickier phrase. You
shouldnt fight this effect unless the idea is evolving away from the core of your message.
It will always be easier and more effective to spot a great idea than to generate one, since the worlds creativity will always dwarf yours.
Good public-speaking skills dont always translate into good stickiness skills. A speech experiment at
Stanford shows that the people rated as the best speakers did no better than anyone else at making their ideas
stick. Foreign students, rated poorly for their speaking skills, did just as well at making it stick.
The six elements of the SUCCES framework match up nicely with a common framework of communication: To communicate, you need people to Pay Attention (Unexpected), Understand and Remember It
(Concrete), Agree/Believe (Credible), Care (Emotional), and Be Able To Act (Story).
Making an idea stick is not about being charismatic, or having lots of resources behind you, or being a creative genius. The book is full of examples of normal people in normal situations who made a difference.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Were you surprised that Sherlock Holmes never said, Elementary, my dear Watson? How did we come to
circulate this fictitious quote?
2. What were your reactions to the Stanford public-speaking exercise? Is this a good thing or a bad thing for
you personally? Does this mean that charisma is irrelevant?
3. [Note that a good review exercise would be to talk through some of the Symptoms and Solutions on pages
247249. You can pose the symptoms and have the class respond with the solutions (preferably if they
arent staring at the books answers).]
4. If you had to make an idea stick, would you rather be super-charismatic, super-rich, or super-trained on
the principles of stickiness?
5. When would you want to be charismatic? When would you want to have a sticky idea? (Hint: You want to
be charismatic when you want people to feel good about you, when you are going to be in the room when
the decision is made, or when the decision will be made immediately. In other situations you may want to
focus on creating a sticky idea.)
6. What do you take away from the book? What will you do differently knowing what you know now?

ACTIVITIES/EXERCISES
1. The art of story-spotting.
a. Put the students in the role of a hotel manager. Its a new hotel, and you want your hotel to be known
for the way it frees guests from the real worldyou help them escape the burdens and hassles of
life. The hotel should feel like an oasis of comfort. Part of your job will be helping your staff internalize this vision so they can make it happen for the guests (ultimately, they will determine whether your
vision succeeds or notyou cant be everywhere).

23

b. What stories would you be on the lookout for? Make up an example of the kind of story youd hope to
spot. What plot type is it? (Hint: for this example, the story might be from any of the 3 plot types.)
How does your story act as a flight simulator?
2. Application: Avoiding power lines.
a. Tell the students they are responsible for designing a public-service announcement to warn young kids
to stay away from downed power lines. Write the SUCCES checklist on the board. Put them in groups
and have them design a 30-second ad that exhibits at least 4 of the 6 elements of the framework. Give
them about 20 minutes to come up with the ad concept, then take volunteers to share their ads. Make
sure they can explain how the ad stacks up against the framework.
3. Using the checklist.
a. Pick three anecdotes/stories from the book and revisit them using the SUCCES framework. Put the
SUCCES checklist on the board and assess the anecdotes against it, determining which of the sticky
traits each one exhibits. Note that even if an example came up in the Concrete chapter, its still likely
to have at least a couple of other qualities.
b. This is a great way to review the lessons from the book and have students apply the concepts.

Professors/Educators: For information on how to receive a desk or an exam copy of the book, please
go to: www.randomhouse.com/acmart

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