How to Create Messages that Stick

I recently read Made to Stick, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The central question that the authors attempted to answer in this book is, “Why do some ideas succeed while others fail?”

After spending hundreds of hours analyzing sticky ideas such as urban legends, proverbs, and jokes, the authors discovered that sticky messages follow a set of best practices. In Made to Stick, they lay out a framework for creating sticky messages.

In order for an idea to stick, an audience has to do the following with the message:

1. Pay attention
2. Understand and remember
3. Believe
4. Care
5. Act

The authors’ framework for creating sticky messages addresses these necessary actions from the audience. Although admittedly a bit corny, their framework is called “SUCCES.”

• S — Simple
• U — Unexpected
• C — Concrete
• C — Credible
• E — Emotional
• S — Stories

Mapping it back to the actions needed from an audience for the idea to become sticky, we see the following:

1. Pay attention → Unexpected
2. Understand and remember → Simple and Concrete
3. Believe → Credible
4. Care → Emotional
5. Act → Stories

Let’s go into a bit more detail into each component of the SUCCES framework.

S — Simple

It’s important for your message to be simple if you want your audience to quickly understand and remember it. Have you ever heard a speech or read a document by someone who presented you with 5-10 concepts? If you have, chances are that you didn’t grasp the central point of the author’s communication. And it’s unlikely that you remembered most (or even any) of the author’s points. The communication was too complex and unfocused.

If you want your idea to be remembered, your message has to be simple. You need to start with finding the core of your message. As the authors explain:

“‘Finding the core’ means stripping an idea down to its most critical essence. To get to the core, we’ve got to weed out superfluous and tangential elements. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is weeding out ideas that may be really important but just aren’t the most important idea… The value of the Intent comes from its singularity… It’s about discarding a lot of great insights in order to let the most important insight shine.”

You have to engage in an exercise of forced prioritization. Forget about the nuances and the complexity. What is the single most important point that you want your audience to take away? As the authors point out above, the power of simplicity comes from its singularity. This is hard work, but if you find the core of your message, it enables your audience to quickly grasp and remember your idea.

Some tools that the authors shared for creating simple messages:

• Commander’s Intent (CI): In the military, officers start an order with the CI. “CI is a crisp, plain-talk statement that appears at the top of every order, specifying the plan’s goal, the desired end-state of an operation.” Here’s an example: “Take the northwest hill from the enemy.” Simple enough to provide clear direction and alignment, not too many details to stifle the improvisation needed for unpredictable events.
• Don’t bury the lead: In journalism, the lead contains the most important elements of the story. Newspaper journalists are taught never to bury the lead — include so many details up front, where the lead slips too far down into the story. Instead, journalists are advised to use an inverted pyramid structure for their articles: make the lead the first sentence, then present supporting details in decreasing order of importance.
• Schemas: Use pre-existing schemas contained within the audience’s minds to make profound concepts simple. For example, I could describe a pomelo as “a large citrus fruit, with a thick but soft rind, whose fruit has a light yellow to coral pink flesh and can vary from juicy to slightly dry and from seductively spicy-sweet to tangy and tart.” Or, I could just describe a pomelo as “an oversized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind.” In the latter case, I’ve tapped into your schema of what a grapefruit is. This enables me to communicate a significant amount of information into a compact phrase (“oversized grapefruit”).

U — Unexpected

In a world where people are constantly bombarded with messages and ads (and distractions on their smartphones), it’s difficult to cut through the clutter. As the authors write:

“We can’t demand attention; we must attract it… We can’t succeed if our messages don’t break through the clutter to get people’s attention. Furthermore, our messages are usually complex enough that we won’t succeed if we can’t keep people’s attention.”

So how can you get and keep people’s attention long enough for them to absorb your message? You have to create both surprise and interest — surprise to get the audience’s attention, and interest to keep it.

• Surprise: Surprise acts as an emergency override, jolting us to attention when we experience something that breaks our mental models and longstanding patterns. It forces us to focus on the event that surprised us, and engages us in problem-solving. To add the element of surprise to your message, the authors provide the following advice:

“(1) Identify the central message you need to communicate — find the core; (2) Figure out what is counterintuitive about the message — i.e., What are the unexpected implications of your core message? Why isn’t it already happening naturally? (3) Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audience’s guessing machines along the critical, counterintuitive dimension.” [guessing machines are mental models]

• Interest: To generate interest in our message, we need to create and fill curiosity gaps. You should highlight some piece of information that the audience is missing. Present them with situations that have unknown resolutions — such as elections, sporting events, or mysteries. Ask them a question. Get them to make a prediction or publicly commit to an answer. (How many times have you seen speakers ask people in the audience to raise their hands in response to a question?) All of these are ways to create and fill curiosity gaps, and therefore generate interest.

C — Concrete

Similar to the maxim of simplicity, it’s important for your message to be concrete so that your audience can easily understand and remember your message. If your message is concrete, it is clear and easily understood. If your message is abstract, it is ambiguous and could spark confusion.

What makes something concrete? If you can examine it with your senses, it’s concrete. Solid is abstract; a rock is concrete. Dry is abstract; a desert is concrete. Soft is abstract; velvet is concrete. There’s a reason why authors don’t just provide adjectives, but include analogies, to make their descriptions concrete. Solid as a rock. Dry as a desert. Soft as velvet.

How can you make your message concrete? By using visual images and developing customer personas.

• Visual images: in a study in Japan, students who learned from math teachers who used physical tiles (3 rows of 10 tiles, take away 1 row of 10, you’re left with 2 rows of 10 tiles = 20) learned and retained the concepts more effectively than students who learned from teachers who used abstraction. Use visual images — photos — to show people what you mean.
• Develop customer personas: The authors shared the example of a brand manager for Hamburger Helper. The brand manager visited three dozen homes to get a first-hand view into the lives of her customers. Here’s what she had to say afterward:

“I’ll never forget one woman, who had a toddler on her hip while she was mixing up dinner on the stove. We know that ‘convenience’ is an important attribute of our product, but it’s a different thing to see the need for convenience firsthand… Now when I’ve got a decision to make about the brand, I think of the women I met. I wonder what they would do if they were in my shoes. And it’s amazing how helpful it is to think that way.”

C — Credible

So you’ve gotten the audience to pay attention, understand and even remember your message. Who says that they will believe it? That’s where credibility comes in.

There are two types of credibility that you can incorporate into your message: external and internal credibility. External credibility can come from experts, celebrities, or “anti-authorities.” Internal credibility is embedded within the message itself, and can come from specific details, statistics, and testable credentials.

• Experts, celebrities, and anti-authorities: There is a reason why brands want to sign on expert or celebrity spokespeople — because they lend credibility to the product. Think William Shatner for Priceline, Michael Jordan as a spokesperson for Hanes, or Tiger Woods as a spokesperson for Nike. But sometimes the stories of real people (anti-authorities) are even more effective than experts and celebrities. “What we’ve learned from previous campaigns is that telling stories using real people is the most compelling way,” said Greg Connolly, Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
• Specific details: By including specific, concrete details, speakers can convey depth and expertise. This in turns creates credibility for their message. As the authors write: “Concrete details don’t just lend credibility to the authorities who provide them; they lend credibility to the idea itself.”
• Statistics: Speakers and writers frequently include statistics in their message as a way to build credibility. However, it’s rare that the audience will recall the specific statistics themselves. Rather than fixating on the actual statistics, the authors advise us to highlight the relationship between concepts rather than the numbers themselves. Make the statistics relatable to the audience.
• Testable credentials: When is the last time you heard a speaker or an advertisement tell you to “see for yourself?” They are making use of testable credentials. This technique often gives a message a significant credibility boost, because the audience can test the claim themselves and “try before they buy.” A great example of testable credentials was in the 1980 US Presidential election, when Ronald Reagan asked people, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

E — Emotional

Even if someone pays attention, understands and believes your message — will they care? You need to make your message emotional. As the authors write:

“Belief counts for a lot, but belief isn’t enough. For people to take action, they have to care… Feelings inspire people to act.”

There are a few different ways to make your message more emotional:

• Empathy for individuals: If you only present the aggregate statistics, you will likely encounter eye-glazing. You have to create empathy for specific individuals. As Mother Teresa once said, “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” This is why many charities ask you to sponsor a particular child, rather than donating money to combat hunger in a developing country.
• Self-interest: People care about themselves. So when crafting our message, we should emphasize benefits over features, figure out the WIIFY (“What’s In It For You?”), and help people tangibly visualize themselves enjoying the benefits.
• Identity: The authors point out that there are two ways that people make decisions — by weighing consequences, or by identity. In the former case, people are more self-interested and rational. In the latter case, they think more about who they are, and what people like them would do in this situation? By appealing to identity, you can make a more emotional appeal.

S — Stories

The final component of the authors’ framework is Stories. Although the authors position stories as the final piece required to get your audience to act, I actually think about stories as the synthesis of many of the previous components. For example, stories can have

• Unexpected plot twists to grab and hold people’s attention
• Concrete descriptions that appeal viscerally to your senses
• Real people with specific details that build credibility
• Emotional appeal by building empathy for specific individuals

The authors argue that stories provide a mental simulation for your audience, which gives them the knowledge and motivation to act.

“When we read books, we have the sensation of being drawn into the author’s world. When friends tell us stories, we instinctively empathize. When we watch movies, we identify with the protagonists… The story’s power, then, is twofold: It provides simulation (knowledge about how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act).”

There are three basic types of stories you can include to strengthen your message:

• Challenge plot: In these stories, the protagonist overcomes significant obstacles to solve a problem or achieve a goal. These stories inspire us to persevere, work hard, and be courageous. Think “David and Goliath.”
• Connection plot: These stories showcase people “who develop a relationship that bridges a gap — racial, class, ethnic, religious, demographic, or otherwise.” Connection plot stories inspire us to help others, be more tolerant of each other, and work together.
• Creativity plot: In these stories, the main character achieves a significant breakthrough or attacks a problem in an innovative way. These stories inspire us to think creatively and to experiment with new approaches. Think “Isaac Newton and the apple tree” or “Ben Franklin flying a kite in a storm.”

The authors argue that we don’t need to make up stories to include in our messages — we just need to be good at spotting them.

“The goal of reviewing these plots is not to help us invent stories… The goal here is to learn how to spot the stories that have potential… Know what you’re looking for. You don’t need to make stuff up… You just need to recognize when life is giving you a gift… If you’re a great spotter, you’ll always trump a great creator. Why? Because the world will always produce more great ideas than any single individual, even the most creative one.”

In Made to Stick, authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath provide us with a framework for creating sticky messages. Any time we want an idea to stick, we need our audience to do the following with our message:

• Pay attention
• Understand and remember
• Believe
• Care
• Act

The authors’ framework to motivate our audience to take all of these actions is the “SUCCES” framework:

• S — Simple
• U — Unexpected
• C — Concrete
• C — Credible
• E — Emotional
• S — Stories

The most effective communicators incorporate much of this framework into their messages to make them sticky. In John F Kennedy’s 1962 “We Choose to Go to the Moon” speech, he does the following:

• Sets the Simple and Concrete goal of going to the moon by the end of the decade
• Creates interest in his audience by building up to the Unexpected goal of going to the moon
• Uses statistics to build Credibility, but puts the numbers in context (“50 cents a week for every man, woman, and child”)
• Evokes Emotion by appealing to the audience’s identity as Americans and world leaders
• Shares Challenge Plot Stories and quotes from the Pilgrim settlers, Lindbergh’s solo Atlantic flight, and George Mallory’s Everest expedition

We may not all be able to deliver speeches with the power and eloquence of John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill or the like. But by using the SUCCES framework, we can make our messages and ideas much more sticky. I plan to incorporate this framework into my communications moving forward. I hope you’re inspired to do the same!