Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observations rings true: urban legends, conspiracy theories and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile people with important ideas struggle to make ideas stick.

Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do you improve your chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. The brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier.

Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. Proactive, eye opening and often funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas – and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own message stick.

I liked this book because it is well organized and resonated with my common sense approach to marketing. There are six key “stickiness” principles which spell out the acronym SUCCESs (small s stands for six!), so it is easy to remember whenever you have a creative expression challenge. Here are the sticky principles…

 Principle #1 Simplicity – How do you find the essential core of an idea?
 Principle #2 Unexpectedness - How do we get people to pay attention to our ideas?
 Principle #3 Concreteness – How do we make our ideas clear?
 Principle #4 Credibility- How do we get people to believe our ideas?
 Principle #5 Emotions - How do we get people to care about our ideas?
 Principle #6 Stories – How do you get people to act on our ideas?

Like the Heath brothers taking a creative challenge and applying the rules will help you and guide you on determining if your creative expression can stick.

As a summary the SUCCESs approach helps people to remember…

 Pay attention Unexpected
 Understand & remember Concrete
 Believe and agree Credible
 Care Emotional
 Act Stories

At The Marketing Chefs we recently had a creative challenge with one of our client’s products – Zero-Tox cleaner. Now cleaning agents are a low interest category. However, consumers with children and pets are anxious to make sure that what they use is safe and won’t harm their families. We also have those consumers that are interested in being green and helping the environment. Zero-Tox is one of those cleaners that does it all – ultra safe, effective, green. We tried some public relations activities and we were very lucky to be able to piggy back on a Hertz going green as an organization editorial. Hertz was actually Zero-Tox’s client and part of the inspiration for the product being made available at retail. The Hertz employees use the product to clean all the cars you rent. There are absolutely no fumes or hazards to the skin or eyes and it is safe for them to use all day. What was interesting is that we were able to drive traffic to the Zero Tox website and consumers were reading 6-10 pages of the website information, but nobody was buying. We then tried a “get it free” campaign to get trial and interestingly enough this was even poorer in generating results for our client. Consumers told me “it was just too good to be true”.

As a creative online agency we now had a “stickiness challenge” how could we get consumers to

 Pay attention Unexpected
 Understand & remember Concrete
 Believe and agree Credible
 Care Emotional
 Act Stories

We are currently creating a viral campaign based upon the SUCCESs principles. But we also thought it would be fun to get your input.

How would you promote a great safe, green cleaner that works?

Check out the Zero Tox website, order your free sample and let me know what you think?

I look forward to your responses.

Until next week, I wish you prosperity and SUCCESs.

Tricia Ryan
Principal The Marketing Chefs