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| Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die | 
 enlarge | Authors: Chip Heath, Dan Heath
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $13.91
You Save: $11.09 (44%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (230 reviews)
Sales Rank: 579
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.3
ISBN: 1400064287
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.13
EAN: 9781400064281
ASIN: 1400064287
Publication Date: January 2, 2007
Release Date: January 2, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Made for Success November 17, 2008
"Made to Stick" is one of those rare books that just makes you look at everything you write in a fresh light. After reading it, I went and immediately rewrote several fundraising documents on which I had been working. The authors give you a method to cut through the muck and present your case in the most persuasive way. I'm going to have everyone in my department read it.
 Get your communication to "stick" just like an urban legend November 8, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The authors try to identify what makes an idea "stick" and the learnings can be applied to most types of communication.
As a marketer, I didn't learn anything revolutionary new but it reminds you of what is important and I really like the checklist they came up with:
1. Simple
2. Unexpected
3. Concrete
4. Credible
5. Emotional
6. Story
The checklist comes to life by numerous examples in each category. For example, in the presidental campaign Ronald Reagan, instead of rambling of some economic stats, simply said: "ask yourself if you are better off today than 4 years ago". They recite a classic urban legend of the businessman who gets drugged and gets his kidney removed. They analyze this urban legend and it turns out it has all the ingredients that make something "stick".
The challenge in writing a book about sticky ideas is that it sets the readers' expectations very high about the book itself being written in a sticky way. In this respect, I think the authors are doing an OK job, but not great. At times, the book gets a bit slow (non-sticky!), but I would still recommend this book not only to marketers, but to anybody for whom communication is an important aspect of their work.
Veteran reviews Made to Stick by Heath. November 2, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Insightful take on timely marketing influences you may not have considered, or maybe not as focused as this book does. Good read for marketers who need to compete and marketers who seek the 'edge' needed to win in an ever more demanding market.
 Like Cotton Candy: Sticky But Nearly All Fluff. October 29, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I enjoyed reading this book. I enjoyed it so much I almost bought their 'argument' until I realized it was nothing but empty fluff and repackaged common sense, but avoids any in depth insights. Its like a book about how so succeed in business said 'work hard and be honest'. well that's good advice, but is that the whole story? Nor do they ever use an example of truly challenging idea (just politically correct, safe ones) that have broken boundaries and REALLY challenged the status quo.
the book is much like Malcolm Gladwell's book (whom the authors admire) - almost designed to bring the authors lucrative speaking fees from big corporations but avoiding anything really controversial or challenging. They just re-enforce ideas we're comfortable with.
I went to the books website and posted a couple of comments on some of the authors posts - nothing nasty or inflammatory - just challenging some of their ideas. The comments were quickly deleted. I suspect the same thing has happened here. So are the authors using the same tactics they advocate? Or other methods to spread their ideas? Like suppressing ones that challenge theirs?
A must-read for anyone involved in communication/presentation October 22, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is recommended reading for everyone who delivers presentations: it analyzes why certain stories "stick" in people's mind, and why others disappear, almost independent of the content: it's they way that they are told that matters.
- Keep them simple without creating silly sound bites
- Add unexpected twists to keep people interested
- Be specific and avoid fluffy hollow statements (Dilbert mission generator style)
- Be credible to get people to believe your idea
- Add emotion to make people care
- Tell stories
The book is written as a set of stories that are analyzed following the above framework. Sometimes this categorization can feel a bit forced (since most stories combine multiple elements), but generally it works well.
Framework or not, the stories inside the book are the real treasure. They are interesting and fun to read (many of them still stick in my head).
Besides the big idea of the book there are countless interesting bits of knowledge hidden in the stories. Some examples:
The brain stores stories in a "virtual 3D" space. Slightly absurd experiment: people read a sentence about a guy and a shirt slower when the shirt has just been taken off a few seconds ago. Your presentation structure and the structure used to absorb information is not the same
Being analytical, logical, thinking of numbers switches off your emotional mood: the mood in which you are most receptive to store information. Think about that when ordering slides
The curse of knowledge (actually this is a big idea in the book) prevents people from putting themselves in the shoes of an audience for which a concept that took you 3 years to understand might not sound as obvious as it seems to you
Another example of the curse of knowledge: when someone taps a song with his fingers on a table, he/she hears the entire performance including vocals, instruments, etc. A bystander just hears an irregular beat of taps...
70% of learning can happen by just imagining, anticipating, thinking about the task ahead of you (scientifically proven): rehearse, rehearse, rehearse your presentation.
Negative "don't", "avoid this", "don't fall in this trap"-type recommendations stick better than positive ones: people learn from mistakes. This goes a bit against my marketing theory in business school though.
This book shows again how important it is to decouple structures you use to solve/analyze a problem from the story you use to tell the solution. Scrap all your analysis, nuances, balanced insights you built up (sometimes over a long period of time) and start with a blank piece of paper to think about the best possible way to tell your message to your audience.
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