Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

This book contains a number of intriguing elements. It successfully conveys that stories are better than lists of facts and statistics. Furthermore, it communicates the fact that structuring your message around concrete examples that are directly relevant to the needs of your audience is going to make your audience much more interested in what you have to say.

While the book has valuable elements it unfortunately does not follow its own advice.  The book can get mundane and uninteresting at times, making it forgettable. While there are definitely engaging stories and case studies within the book, it does not pass its own metric of stickiness. Moreover, the book is beginning to show its age as it hosts several outdated case studies which are no longer relevant.

Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas—entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists—struggle to make them “stick.”

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds—from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony—draw their power from the same six traits.

Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice.

Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas—and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

For aspiring marketers, or current marketing professionals this book can provide some interesting insights and useful case studies to work with when building your marketing campaigns. While we would not describe this a comprehensive guide to engaging your audience, it will provide you with a good starting point.