Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

Ever since I left teaching, I've become more interested in the field of communication and marketing. Which, I admit, is strange because communication and marketing are pretty useful skills if you're a teacher. Except that, I think, a lot of teachers don't realize this. As an English teacher for almost 12 years, I wasn't provided with any kind of communications training, nor training on designing my message. We were given a lot of training on teaching strategies, teaching frameworks, philosophies, etc. Now, yes, some of the teaching strategy strategy training has to do with communication, but I don't recall any training or preparation that was meant for communication alone. Which, I think, is a pity. When I listen to my husband or my friends from corporate talk about communications training or how to market, I think, "Hey, these ideas are really useful to an educator." And I wonder why we don't talk about these things a lot. A lot of educators may know how to communicate and to market their ideas instinctively, but I think, for those who don't, the principles and strategies would be useful knowledge.

Anyway, this is why for the past few years, I've been extending my reading to non-fiction books of the marketing/communication variety. Well, I've read two. But, as far as my previous stats, go, two is a lot. Last year, I read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, which I honestly enjoyed. And now, I've finally finished reading Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Funnily, the Heath's book is strongly inspired by Gladwell's The Tipping Point.

Hubby actually gave me this book a year ago when I asked for it after a friend sent me a link to the first chapter. I can no longer find that first chapter now, but I hope this Publishers Weekly review suffices:

"The brothers Heath—Chip a professor at Stanford's business school, Dan a teacher and textbook publisher—offer an entertaining, practical guide to effective communication. Drawing extensively on psychosocial studies on memory, emotion and motivation, their study is couched in terms of "stickiness"—that is, the art of making ideas unforgettable. They start by relating the gruesome urban legend about a man who succumbs to a barroom flirtation only to wake up in a tub of ice, victim of an organ-harvesting ring. What makes such stories memorable and ensures their spread around the globe? The authors credit six key principles: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions and stories. (The initial letters spell out "success"—well, almost.) They illustrate these principles with a host of stories, some familiar (Kennedy's stirring call to "land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth" within a decade) and others very funny (Nora Ephron's anecdote of how her high school journalism teacher used a simple, embarrassing trick to teach her how not to "bury the lead"). Throughout the book, sidebars show how bland messages can be made intriguing. Fun to read and solidly researched."

I may not teach in a classroom anymore, but I do a lot of teacher training, so the stickiness of messages concerns me. And though sometimes I would like more information about Chip and Dan Heath's research sources, I find their suggestions solid. For instance, I'm totally in with their first principle for sticky messages: Simple. It's about finding the core of your message. That resonates a lot with me, as a former teacher and current trainer who might have to go through a mountain of content. To be honest, no one remembers a mountain of content delivered in a limited time frame of, let's say 1-3 hours. So, it's all the more important to identify and focus on the core of the message.

The 6 principles for making an idea sticky (img src)

I also liked the last S, which is Story. I'm mainly a fiction reader, so I'm big on Story. And yes, I do believe that stories make a message more memorable. 

I guess a lot of the things mentioned in the book aren't really big discoveries or earth-shattering insights, especially if you've been in the communications and marketing field for a while. But I do like how they present it and how they concretize it with examples AND clinics. The clinics are basically exercises or workshops for the reader. In fact, there's even a Teacher's Guide online on which you can base a workshop for helping people create sticky messages. And I think it's useful for both business and education.

Finally, I liked the voice of the writing. Chip and Dan Heath are down-to-earth, funny, and not above making fun of themselves. And, let me tell you, that helps a business/marketing/communications book go down easy.

So, if you're a person who deals with constructing and designing messages, be it in the classroom, in media, in business, or for companies, I would heartily recommend this book. Wouldn't it be fun to try out the principles (if you haven't yet) and see how well they work? 

Now I sit back and see how sticky this blog post is...:)