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Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath & Dan Heath.

When I first picked up this book, it reminded me a lot of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I don't know if it was the trompe-l'œil duct tape on the front cover, or just the overall tone of the book. Then immediately after having that thought, I encounter this in the introduction:

We adopted the "what sticks" terminology from one of our favorite authors, Malcom Gladwell. In 2000, Gladwell wrote a brilliant book called The Tipping Point, which examined the forces that cause social phenomena to "tip", or make the leap from small groups to big groups, the way contagious diseases spread rapidly once they infect a certain critical mass of people... This book is a complement to The Tipping Point in the sense that we will identify the traits that make ideas sticky, a subject that was beyond the scope of Gladwell's book. Gladwell was interested in what makes social epidemics epidemic. Our interest is in how effective ideas are constructed - what makes some ideas stick and others disappear.
The authors identify six key qualities of a "sticky" idea. These are:
1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotional
6. Stories
(or: SUCCESs - Simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional stories.)

This book is a must-read for anyone with a message. Anyone in marketing or advertising; anyone who teaches; anyone promoting a cause; anyone who wants to change the world.

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