Made to Stick

The Heaths examined why some ideas are remembered and repeated while better ideas are forgotten, and found six properties the memorable ones share. An idea sticks when it is simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and told as a story. Each property gets a chapter with examples drawn from urban legends, public health campaigns and corporate strategy, and each chapter closes with a flat message rewritten to carry the property. The central argument is that clarity is a discipline and no talent, and that the main obstacle is the curse of knowledge, which is the difficulty an expert has in remembering what it was like not to know. Useful to anybody who has to make a case to people who were not in the room when the thinking happened.