Chip Heath, co-author of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, talks about what makes certain ideas "naturally sticky."
Chip Heath is a Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. 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. These "naturally sticky" ideas spread without external help in the form of marketing dollars, PR assistance, or the attention of leaders.
A few years back Chip designed a course, now a popular elective at Stanford, that asked whether it would be possible to use the principles of naturally sticky ideas to design messages that would be more effective. That course, How to Make Ideas Stick, has now been taught to hundreds of students including managers, teachers, doctors, journalists, venture capitalists, product designers, and film producers.
Bio
Chip Heath
Professor, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
Chip Heath is a Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. 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. These "naturally sticky" ideas spread without external help in the form of marketing dollars, PR assistance, or the attention of leaders.
A few years back Chip designed a course, now a popular elective at Stanford, that asked whether it would be possible to use the principles of naturally sticky ideas to design messages that would be more effective. That course, How to Make Ideas Stick, has now been taught to hundreds of students including managers, teachers, doctors, journalists, venture capitalists, product designers, and film producers.
Activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producers to consumers. In advanced industrial economies, marketing considerations play a major role in determining corporate policy. Once primarily concerned with increasing sales through advertising and other promotional techniques, corporate marketing departments now focus on credit policies (seecredit), product development, customer support, distribution, and corporate communications. Marketers may look for outlets through which to sell the company's products, including retail stores, direct-mail marketing, and wholesaling. They may make psychological and demographic studies of a potential market, experiment with various marketing strategies, and conduct informal interviews with target audiences. Marketing is used both to increase sales of an existing product and to introduce new products. See alsomerchandising.
Just thought I'd update that remark from about a year ago - <i>Made to Stick</i> is, in fact, a much better book than <i>Tipping Point</i> if you're looking for a practical, comprehensive, and easy-to-use guide to getting your point across. <i>Tipping Point</i>, while well written, can pretty much be boiled down to a few fuzzy theories and several interesting anecdotes about how ideas spread. It's really more of a story than a work of solid research.
So yeah: both books are good reads, but if you're looking for a real meat-and-potatoes how-to book on improving your message, this is the one you want. IMHO, anyway.
A great book about communicating ideas. I could see this having huge benefit especially for business-types or educators, but could probably be of some use to just about everybody. Entertaining, easy-to-read, and extremely well-researched. I'm reading this back-to-back with Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point , and it's an interesting contrast between how ideas work at both micro and macro levels.