Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die | Chip Heath, Dan Heath

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die | Chip Heath, Dan Heath | A great read for leaders who need to sell ideas - an excellent read for anyone in the agency business

books:

Made to Stick: Why...

	Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die Chip Heath, Dan Heath Random House, 2007 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 238 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

A must-read for anyone involved in communication/presentation

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.

for more information click here

A great read for leaders who need to sell ideas - an excellent read for anyone in the agency business

I admit I work in an industry that loves simplicity, concrete messaging, stories, and recall: advertising. Yet it is rare to see an agency practice on itself what it does so well for its clients.

The truth is that ideas are hard and communicating ideas is even harder. Even for professionals!

Made To Stick manages to combine the "why" with the "how" of successful communications. Like their column in Fast Company, the Heath's Duct Tape Book successfully communicates ideas. Lots of them.

A great business read, with real value for communicators, Made to Stick is a must read for agency/ideas people and a top 5 business book recommendation for all of my colleagues and partners.

for more information click here

If you could make yourself significantly more powerful by reading 336 pages, wouldn't you?

Made to Stick is a book about making yourself a better, more influential person. How you use that power is ultimately up to you (although I recommend using it for good) but there's no doubt this book is of more practical value than anything I've read in years.

How's that possible? Chip and Dan Heath have laid out a practical guide to a skill that acts as a force multiplier for all of your ideas. They've found six ways to make you a better communicator.

The Brothers Heath came from different directions in the study of what makes some ideas influential and memorable while others float in one ear and out the other, leaving nary a trace of their existence behind. They've come together to with a clear idea of six specific characteristics that make some ideas hard to resist and hard to forget.

The six characteristics are easy to remember (as they better be in a book about making your ideas stick), easy to use and will truly improve your ability to communicate your ideas to others in written or verbal form.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who could benefit from learning to communicate their ideas more influentially to others. That means all of us.

for more information click here

Veteran reviews Made to Stick by Heath.

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.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

products you might be interested in