You’ve probably heard the one about the business traveler who wakes up in a bathtub full of ice, only to realize a kidney has been harvested. It’s a total lie. Yet, it spreads like wildfire. Compare that to your last corporate strategy memo. It was likely full of "synergistic paradigms" and "market-leading initiatives," and it was forgotten before the reader hit the bottom of page one.
The Made to Stick book, written by brothers Chip and Dan Heath, tackles this exact frustration. Why do some ideas—even the fake ones—stay lodged in our brains forever while the truth often slips away?
The Heaths aren't just guessing. They draw on decades of psychological research and real-world marketing failures to figure out the "stickiness" factor. Honestly, it's kinda embarrassing how often we get this wrong. We think being smart is enough. It isn’t. If you can’t communicate your idea in a way that survives the "telephone game," your brilliance is basically useless.
The Curse of Knowledge is Ruining Your Pitch
There’s a massive psychological hurdle that the Made to Stick book identifies as the "Curse of Knowledge." It’s the reason experts are often terrible teachers.
Once we know something, we find it almost impossible to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has "cursed" us. We start speaking in abstractions. We use jargon. We skip steps because they seem "obvious" to us, but they're a total mystery to everyone else.
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Think about the "Tappers and Listeners" study conducted by Stanford graduate student Elizabeth Newton in 1990. She divided people into two groups: tappers and listeners. Tappers were given a list of well-known songs, like "Happy Birthday," and asked to tap out the rhythm on a table. Listeners had to guess the song.
The tappers were confident. They predicted listeners would guess the song 50% of the time. The reality? Listeners guessed right only 2.5% of the time. To the tapper, the melody is playing loudly in their head. To the listener, it just sounds like a bunch of erratic knocks.
This is what happens when you talk about your business or your project. You hear the "melody" of your strategy. Everyone else just hears random knocking. To fix this, the Heaths developed the SUCCESs framework.
Simplicity Isn't About Being Dumb
When people hear "simple," they often think "dumbed down." That's a mistake. In the context of the Made to Stick book, simplicity is about finding the core of the idea.
It’s about the "Commander’s Intent." In the military, plans often go out the window the second the first bullet is fired. If a soldier has a 50-page manual on how to take a hill, they’re dead. But if the Commander’s Intent is simply "Take the south ridge so we can control the valley," the soldier can adapt.
The core is the most important thing. Period.
Southwest Airlines is the classic example here. They decided their core was being "THE low-fare airline." That simple idea guides every decision. If a marketing manager suggests serving a nice chicken Caesar salad on a flight from Houston to Las Vegas, the CEO doesn't need a committee. He just asks: "Will adding this salad help us be the low-fare airline?" The answer is no. No salad.
Unexpectedness Shakes the Brain Awake
Our brains are designed to ignore the mundane. You don't notice the hum of your refrigerator until it suddenly makes a loud clunk.
To make an idea stick, you have to break a pattern. You have to create a "gap" in people's knowledge and then fill it. The Heaths talk about "mystery stories." Why do people stay up until 3:00 AM reading a mediocre thriller? Because they want to close the gap.
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Nordstrom famously used stories of "Nordies" who went to extreme lengths, like gift-wrapping items bought at Macy's or even (legend has it) refunding money for tire chains even though Nordstrom doesn't sell tires. Whether that last one is 100% true doesn't even matter; it creates an unexpected image of customer service that sticks way better than a mission statement saying "we value our customers."
Concrete Details Beat Abstract Data
This is where most business writing goes to die. We love words like "optimal," "service-oriented," and "integrity." These are "Velcro" words with no hooks. They don't stick to anything.
Human beings are wired to remember concrete images.
If I tell you "The Apple laptop is very thin," you might forget. If I show Steve Jobs pulling the MacBook Air out of a standard manila office envelope, you’ll never forget it. The envelope is concrete. "Thin" is abstract.
The Made to Stick book references the "Proverb" as a peak example of stickiness. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." That phrase has survived for 2,500 years in dozens of languages. Why? Because it uses concrete imagery (birds, hands, bushes) to explain a complex psychological concept (loss aversion).
Why We Trust Ideas Without Seeing Data
Usually, we try to prove things with statistics. But statistics are rarely sticky. We tend to remember the "Sinatra Test"—if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
If you’re a startup and you land a contract with Amazon, you don't need to show a graph of your reliability. The fact that you survived Amazon's vetting process is a "Sinatra Test." It provides instant credibility.
Another way to build credibility is using "testable credentials."
Remember the 1980 presidential debate when Ronald Reagan asked, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" He didn't cite GDP growth or unemployment rates. He asked voters to look at their own lives. He gave them a credential they could test themselves. That is far more powerful than any white paper.
The Emotional Hook (It’s Not Just About Crying)
To make people care, you have to tap into emotion. But that doesn't always mean being "sad." It means moving away from the "analytical hat."
When we think analytically, we care less. Research shows that if you show people statistics about starving children in Africa, they donate a certain amount. If you show them a picture of one girl, Rokia, and tell her story, they donate significantly more. But here’s the kicker: if you show them the picture of Rokia and the statistics together, donations actually drop.
The math side of the brain crowds out the feeling side.
To get stickiness, you have to find the "WIIFY"—What’s In It For You. But go deeper than surface-level benefits. Don't just tell someone they'll save time; tell them they'll be able to put their kids to bed on time. That's an emotional hook.
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Stories are Flight Simulators for the Brain
Stories provide two things: stimulation (knowledge on how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act).
The Made to Stick book highlights the story of Jared Fogle (long before his later legal issues, back when he was just the "Subway Guy"). He lost hundreds of pounds eating sandwiches. It was a perfect story because it was simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, and emotional.
When we hear a story, we mentally rehearse the actions. It’s like a flight simulator. If you tell a story about a salesperson who handled a difficult client by doing X, Y, and Z, your team will remember those steps better than if you put them in a bulleted PowerPoint list.
Stories are the ultimate sticky vehicle because they usually contain all the other elements of the SUCCESs framework naturally.
Putting Stickiness Into Practice
If you want to apply the principles from the Made to Stick book tomorrow, don't try to overhaul your whole brand. Just pick one presentation or one email.
- Audit for abstractions. Delete every word that wouldn't make sense to a twelve-year-old or that doesn't evoke a physical object.
- Find the "gap." Before you give the answer, ask the question that makes the audience realize they don't know something important.
- Use the "Human Scale." Instead of saying "500 gigabytes," say "enough space for 100,000 photos."
- Find a "Springboard Story." Find a real-life example of someone using your product or service that illustrates your core message.
Most people fail to communicate not because their ideas are bad, but because they are "tappers." They have the music in their heads and can't understand why we only hear the thumping. Use these tools to stop tapping and start playing the music.
Actionable Steps:
- Identify the "Commander's Intent" of your next project—reduce it to one sentence.
- Replace one slide of data in your next deck with a "Sinatra Test" or a concrete story.
- Test your "Simple" message on someone outside your industry; if they can't repeat it back accurately after 10 minutes, it’s not simple enough.