Silverman came up with a solution

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
by Chip Heath, Ph.D., Dan Heath

(Page 2 of 7)

CSPI called a press conference on September 27, 1992. Here's the message it presented: "A medium-sized 'butter' popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theater contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings-combined!" The folks at CSPI didn't neglect the visuals-they laid out the full buffet of greasy food for the television cameras. An entire day's worth of unhealthy eating, displayed on a table. All that saturated fat- stuffed into a single bag of popcorn.

The story was an immediate sensation, featured on CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN. It made the front pages of USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post's Style section. Leno and Letterman cracked jokes about fat-soaked popcorn, and headline writers trotted out some doozies: "Popcorn Gets an 'R' Rating," "Lights, Action, Cholesterol!" "Theater Popcorn is Double Feature of Fat."

The idea stuck. Moviegoers, repulsed by these findings, avoided popcorn in droves. Sales plunged. The service staff at movie houses grew accustomed to fielding questions about whether the popcorn was popped in the "bad" oil. Soon after, most of the nation's biggest theater chains-including United Artists, AMC, and Loews- announced that they would stop using coconut oil.

On Stickiness

This is an idea success story. Even better, it's a truthful idea success story. The people at CSPI knew something about the world that they needed to share. They figured out a way to communicate the idea so that people would listen and care. And the idea stuck-just like the Kidney Heist tale.

And, let's be honest, the odds were stacked against the CSPI. The "movie popcorn is fatty" story lacks the lurid appeal of an organthieving gang. No one woke up in an oil-filled bathtub. The story wasn't sensational, and it wasn't even particularly entertaining. Furthermore, there was no natural constituency for the news-few of us make an effort to "stay up to date with popcorn news." There were no celebrities, models, or adorable pets involved.

In short, the popcorn idea was a lot like the ideas that most of us traffic in every day-ideas that are interesting but not sensational, truthful but not mind-blowing, important but not "life-or-death." Unless you're in advertising or public relations, you probably don't have many resources to back your ideas. You don't have a multimilliondollar ad budget or a team of professional spinners. Your ideas need to stand on their own merits.

We wrote this book to help you make your ideas stick. By "stick," we mean that your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact-they change your audience's opinions or behavior. At this point, it's worth asking why you'd need to make your ideas stick. After all, the vast majority of our daily communication doesn't require stickiness. "Pass the gravy" doesn't have to be memorable. When we tell our friends about our relationship problems, we're not trying to have a "lasting impact."

So not every idea is stick-worthy. When we ask people how often they need to make an idea stick, they tell us that the need arises between once a month and once a week, twelve to fifty-two times per year. For managers, these are "big ideas" about new strategic directions and guidelines for behavior. Teachers try to convey themes and conflicts and trends to their students-the kinds of themes and ways of thinking that will endure long after the individual factoids have faded. Columnists try to change readers' opinions on policy issues. Religious leaders try to share spiritual wisdom with their congregants. Nonprofit organizations try to persuade volunteers to contribute their time and donors to contribute their money to a worthy cause.

Given the importance of making ideas stick, it's surprising how little attention is paid to the subject. When we get advice on communicating, it often concerns our delivery: "Stand up straight, make eye contact, use appropriate hand gestures. Practice, practice, practice (but don't sound canned)." Sometimes we get advice about structure: "Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em. Tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em." Or "Start by getting their attention-tell a joke or a story." Another genre concerns knowing your audience: "Know what your listeners care about, so you can tailor your communication to them." And, finally, there's the most common refrain in the realm of communication advice: Use repetition, repetition, repetition.

All of this advice has obvious merit, except, perhaps, for the emphasis on repetition. (If you have to tell someone the same thing ten times, the idea probably wasn't very well designed. No urban legend has to be repeated ten times.) But this set of advice has one glaring shortcoming: It doesn't help Art Silverman as he tries to figure out the best way to explain that movie popcorn is really unhealthful.

Silverman no doubt knows that he should make eye contact and practice. But what message is he supposed to practice? He knows his audience-they're people who like popcorn and don't realize how unhealthy it is. So what message does he share with them? Complicating matters, Silverman knew that he wouldn't have the luxury of repetition-he had only one shot to make the media care about his story.

Or think about an elementary-school teacher. She knows her goal: to teach the material mandated by the state curriculum committee. She knows her audience: third graders with a range of knowledge and skills. She knows how to speak effectively-she's a virtuoso of posture and diction and eye contact. So the goal is clear, the audience is clear, and the format is clear. But the design of the message itself is far from clear. The biology students need to understand mitosis- okay, now what? There are an infinite number of ways to teach mitosis. Which way will stick? And how do you know in advance?

Copyright © 2007 by Chip Heath & Dan Heath.

About the Author

Chip Heath is a Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He has taught courses on organizational behavior, negotiation, strategy and international strategy at the University of Chicago School of Business and The Fuqua School of Business at Duke. His research examines why certain ideas-ranging from urban legends to folk medical cures, from Chicken Soup for the Soul stories to business strategy myths, survive and prosper in the social marketplace of ideas. Chip designed a course at Stanford that examines the principles of naturally sticky ideas to design messages that would be more effective. Chip is the co-author of a book titled What Sticks - Why Some Ideas Work in the World and Others Don't. The book will be published by Random House in 2007. Chip has taught and consulted on the topic of making ideas stick at such companies as Nissan, Chronicle Books, Ideo, as well as West Point.

Dan Heath is a consultant at Duke Corporate Education. A former researcher at Harvard Business School, he is a co-founder of Thinkwell, an innovative new-media textbook company. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.