If you make it to the end of this post, I bet you’ll remember what I ate, but you won’t remember all six principles. For example, I’m sitting at my desk in my room typing this on my Dell laptop, sipping water and eating green curry chicken over rice. * Concreteness - explain ideas “in terms of human actions, in terms of sensory information” people think in pictures, so paint a picture. Oh, and you should send me money (see? that’s called “surprise”). * Unexpectedness - generate interest and curiosity by being counter-intuitive or using surprise/some other technique. * Simplicity - boil it all down to the core message you want people to walk away with….the one thing they should know/do…the key takeaway….the essence of your point…the singular (okay, I’ll stop). One(ish)-liners for each of the six principles:

If you’re never going to pick it up, at least read a breakdown of the six principles on the book’s website. It’s a quick, fun read full of interesting anecdotes and examples that make the book’s message more *concrete* (a-hem). If it sounds like too much work, these two concepts also work: Free, Sex (noooo, that’s not in the book…but it works I tell you!).

Summary: When marketing anything, keep these six concepts in mind if you want your message to shtick: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories yes, my friends, that spells SUCCESs. At the same time, by showing how we can all use such cleverly devised strategies as the 'Velcro Theory of Memory' and 'curiosity gaps', it offers superbly practical insights, setting out principles we all can adopt to make sure that we get our ideas across effectively. Entertaining and informative by turns, this is a fascinating and multi-faceted account of a key area of human behaviour.

Packed full of case histories and thought-provoking anecdotes, it shows, among other things, how one Australian scientist convinced the world he'd discovered the cause of stomach ulcers by drinking a glass filled with bacteria, how a gifted sports reporter got people to watch a football match by showing them the outside of the stadium, and how high-concept pitches such as 'Jaws on a spaceship' ('Alien') and 'Die Hard on a bus' ('Speed') convince movie executives to invest vast sums of money in a project on the basis of almost no information. What is that makes urban myths so persistent but many everyday truths so eminently forgettable? How do newspapers set about ensuring that their headlines make you want to read on? And why do we remember complicated stories but not complicated facts? In the course of over ten years of study, Chip and Dan Heath have established what it is that determines whether particular ideas or stories stick in our minds or not, and 'Made to Stick' is the fascinating outcome of their painstaking research.

Make it stick chip and dan heath