Sticky ideas one’s that stay with readers, students

It was Kentucky fried rats that inspired brothers Chip and Dan Heath to write “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.”

Kentucky fried rats, kidney thieves and warnings of the bone-rotting properties of a popular cola product – urban legends all – sparked Chip Heath, a business professor at Stanford University, to ask what makes some ideas stand the test of time while others quickly fade. Why would these untruths be so easily relayed and remembered?

At the same time, Dan Heath, as editor-in-chief for textbook publisher Thinkwell, was concentrating on the best methods for conveying school lessons by studying truly successful high school teachers.

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It took many conversations about what they were working on before the brothers discovered they were headed down essentially the same path.

“I think what we realized was that we were looking at different facets of the same problem,” Dan Heath said in a telephone interview with the Business Report.

Heath will be in Fort Collins on May 6 as the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce’s 2008 Major Speaker to discuss what principles are shared by all “sticky” ideas – the principles that link conspiracy theories to great history lessons to lasting ad campaigns.

“What drove us (to write the book) was the nature of the problem,” he said. And the problem is how we communicate. “It doesn’t matter your industry, your title or your location. It’s a problem we all share.”

Finding sticky

The Heath brothers spent about five years researching the book, which was published in January 2007. In those five years, they tapped into many fields – psychology, organizational behavior, folklore, biology and anthropology – and looked across all industries in the search of what elements sticky ideas shared.

In “Made to Stick,” the Heaths identify and explain six traits of sticky ideas:

1. Simple

2. Unexpected

3. Concrete

4. Credible

5. Emotional

6. Stories

The book refers to it as the SUCCES checklist and follows its own advice by illustrating the principles through real-world stories. From the biblical David and Goliath to Jared’s Subway diet, sticky ideas are everywhere.

Heath said he gravitates to Jared, the weight-loss phenomenon, as a perfect example for businesses of how sticky ideas work.

Meet Jared

Everybody knows Jared Fogle. In the late ’90’s, the 425-pound college student started an all-Subway diet – sticking to a low-fat sandwich for lunch and dinner. Eventually, he lost enough weight to start a walking regimen as well. By 2000, when Subway began its first “Jared” ads, his weight had dropped to 180 pounds.

Subway had already been touting its healthful sandwich options with its “7 under 6” campaign – seven subs with under six grams of fat. Both campaigns had the same message that the sub shop offers healthful eating options, but one obviously outperformed the other.

The book points out that in 1999, before the Jared campaign, Subway sales were flat. In 2000, sales grew by 18 percent and 16 percent the following year. At the same time, other sandwich shops were experiencing 7 percent annual growth.

“It was a head-to-head horse race between ideas, and you see the story beats the statistics,” Heath said. “I think that happens every day in corporate America and is a huge opportunity for businesses to do better.”

What’s more, the Jared story almost didn’t get told. The book details how a franchise owner pursued the campaign, even after Subway’s corporate marketing department pooh-poohed the idea.

The book points out, as illustrated in the excerpt below, that it is often not the ad agency that presents the sticky idea:

“This book is filled with normal people facing normal problems who did amazing things simply by applying these principles (even if they weren’t aware that they were doing it). These people are so normal, you probably won’t even recognize their names when you see them. Their names aren’t sticky, but their stories are.”

A ‘how-to’

Practicality was the goal of “Made to Stick,” according to Heath, who feels there are very few things more practical than duct tape. The duct tape theme of the cover is to convey the message that the book is meant to be a “how-to.”

“What resonates for people is that for the first time they see there is something practical they can do to have more impact with their ideas.”

Ken Manning, an associate professor of marketing at Colorado State University, read the book and agrees.

“He’s done a good job of taking a lot of theory and boiling it down to a limited number of concepts,” Manning said. “They practice what they preach in the book.”

Manning said he doesn’t plan to assign the book to his students, but feels that the book is well suited for educators. The lessons on being simple and concrete translate well into teaching.

“Sometimes as teachers we tend to make those mistakes because we like theory,” he said.

Teachers were part of the focus when the book was written.

“We had two kind of symbolic readers as we wrote,” Heath said. One was a high school teacher who volunteers at a non-profit on the weekend, and the other was an entrepreneur attempting to generate interest in an innovation. “Those symbols became our mental focus group.”

It would seem that more than teachers and entrepreneurs are picking up “Made to Stick,” though. Heath is somewhat in awe of the book’s success.

“The response has been 10 times greater than expected,” he said. They didn’t anticipate being on the “Today Show” or in People magazine. The book has landed on New York Times, Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek bestseller lists and won several awards.

The Heath brothers are already hard at work on their next opus – a book that will explore how to affect change when change is hard.

“It is for those who have to create change but don’t have a lot of power or money or organizational clout,” he explained.

At his May 6 presentation, Heath hopes to affect change on the audience.

“In two hours, I’ll change the way they communicate,” he said.