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What’s your favorite urban legend?  The Kidney Heist?  Bloody Mary?

If you’ve heard those stories before, you can probably recall them; maybe not all of the details, but the general concept, theme and/or idea.

Chip and Dan Heath explore why these stories stand out better than many in their book Made to Stick.  Released in 2007, this book breaks down what makes stories or speeches memorable into six principles: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Stories; or SUCCESs.

Simple

The book offers a variety of case studies that show the importance of keeping the core simple.  One of my favorite examples was with Southwest Airlines.  Known as the low-cost carrier that excels in customer service and employee retention, Southwest Airlines internal motto and core idea is “THE low-fare airline.”  Employees are encouraged to reference this during the decision making process.  The example presented in the book was with Chicken Caesar Salad.  Customers like Chicken Caesar Salad – so should they offer this snack on particular flights.  The response from one of the company leaders: Would offering Chicken Caesar Salad on this flight make Southwest “The low-fare airline?”  No. That is the single most important thing.  I haven’t been offered a Chicken Caesar Salad on Southwest flight, have you?

Or, how about the 1992 Clinton campaign motto: “It’s the economy, stupid”?  Simple and succinct.

Unexpected

There are two approaches to generating unexpectedness.  The first is getting attention by breaking a pattern or creating a surprise.  A great example of breaking the pattern comes again from the airline industry.  In this instance, a flight attendant revised the monotonous, repetitive safety announcements we hear whenever we fly a plane.  What did she do?  She broke up the announcement into interesting pieces: “If you haven’t been in an automobile since 1965, the proper way to fasten a seatbelt is…”

While surprise gets our attention, interest keeps out attention.  One approach described is the “gap theory of curiosity.”  It’s like the often heard news teasers: “Which local restaurant received a D on a recent inspection scores? Are you eating there?”

Concrete

Tangible ideas and concepts are easier to understand than abstract ones.  What does justice or loyalty look like?  That is a lot harder to grasp than say a bicycle or avocado.  The more hooks used in the story, the better.  One approach to teaching prejudice in elementary school was described as brown eyes vs. blue eyes.  One day the blue eyes were better, the next day the brown eyes.

A second example described was setting common goals in tangible terms:  Boeing’s 727 was developed with the goal of: seat 131 passengers, fly from Miami to New York nonstop and land on runway 4-22 at LaGuardia (a runway too short for existing passenger planes).

Credible

Credible helps people believe the story or statement.  Search snopes.com for spoof emails about medicine and you will often see references to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the Center for Disease Control (CDC).  References to these groups add credibility to those statements, even in the case when the statements are untrue.

The Heath’s outline two types of credibility:  External Credibility and Internal Credibility.  The above example is using external credibility.  Internal credibility is found when convincing details are used or statistics are made accessible (more visual or easier to grasp).  One test of credibility is called the Sinatra test, from the song New York, New York.  The lyrics: “if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”  If you safe guard the results of the Oscars, then you can probably safeguard or company documents.

Emotional

The Mother Teresa principle is a very interesting study.  Participants at University of Pennsylvania were given five $1 bills to take a survey about technology (completely unrelated to the purpose of the study).  Along with the $5, participants received:

1. A letter detailing the statistics of starving children in Africa
2. A letter detailing the specifics about a starving child in Africa, Rokia.
3. Both of the above to letters.

Mother Teresa once said, “If I look at the mass, I will never act.  If I look at one, I will.”  Participants that received the first letter donated $1.14, participants that received the second letter donated on average $2.38 and participants who received both letters donated, surprisingly, $1.43.  The second letter pulls more on our emotions than the first.

Another approach is to appeal to a person’s identity.  Texas addressed their litter problem by implementing a “Don’t mess with Texas” campaign.

Stories

The last principle in Made to Stick deals with stories.  Stories work as simulation – talking shop with co-workers so they know what to expect or “look out for” – or as inspiration, see Chicken Soup for the Soul.  The right story can help convey the message and a great story is often retold multiple times.

SUCCESs

Those are the six principles in Made to Stick.  The outline of these principles is very high level.  If you found these concepts and ideas interesting, I suggest reading the book and related case studies for each principle I didn’t mention.  It’s quite obvious that using these principles in your communications, formal and informal, will help the listeners retain your message.

If you give speeches, talks or presentations for fun or for work, I would strongly suggest reading this book and implementing a few of the SUCCESs principles.  Your speech doesn’t need every principle in it, but I would think at least three of the six.