The Bamboo Project Blog

Made to Stick Part Three: Sticky Ideas are Unexpected

Quick--which chair do you notice in this photo?

Odds are, it's the red chair. But why does it  stand out? Because in a sea of gray chairs, all the same size and shape, the larger red chair is unexpected. It violates the pattern set by the other chairs and our brain immediately notes that there's something different in the photo.

Our brains are wired to notice novelty, to take note when something is different than what we expect. If something fits into our general pattern of expectations, our brains will blip right over it, saying in effect "I've seen this before, no need to pay attention to this." But if something stands out, then our brains will immediately pick up on the change telling us to pay attention, this is something we need to consider.

Because we are wired to notice and record the unexpected, surprise is a key factor in making an idea "sticky." According to Chip and Dan Heath in Made to Stick, once we've honed an idea to its essential core, making it simple and profound, then we need to answer two important questions:

• How do I GET someone's attention?
• How do I KEEP their attention?

Getting Attention
To get someone's attention, you use the element of surprise, the violation of their pattern of expectations. As the Heath's explain:

"Common sense is the enemy of sticky ideas. When messages sound like common sense, the float gently in one ear and out the other. And why shouldn't they? If I already intuitively 'get' what you're trying to tell me, why should I obsess about remembering it? The danger of course is that what sounds like common sense often isn't. . . It's your job, as a communicator, to expose the parts of the idea that are uncommon sense."

So we need to look at the core idea and find the things that are counter-intuitive about it, the aspects of the idea that are NOT common sense.

Like, "Did you know that the "healthy" juice that you're giving your kid is actually nothing more than sugar water, with  juice used only as flavoring?" 

It's "common sense" that juice is healthy for you--that's our expectation. But if you tell someone that the juice they thought was healthy is nothing more than empty calories, that violates their expectation. That gets them to pay attention.

Keeping Their Attention

Getting attention is one thing, and if you're presenting a relatively simple idea, getting attention may be enough. But for more complex ideas, you have to look at how to engage people's curiosity for a longer period of time. You do this by exposing gaps in people's knowledge and then helping them close those gaps. You tease them to draw them into asking questions, wanting to solve a mystery, and then providing them with the information that helps them do that.

News teasers are a good example of this approach--"What if there was a drug that made you sexier AND could get you a raise? Watch Action News at 11 to find out about how one new medication may do both."  To make our ideas sticky, we need to do the same thing. Find the surprising information, the questions in the material, and ask those to create curiosity. Those questions should be relevant and engaging to the audience. And your "sticky idea" should help them answer those questions.

Think of the best teachers you've had. They asked important questions and then helped you solve the mystery behind those questions. And today, years later, you probably still remember the lessons that were taught. Those are some sticky ideas. That's where you want to be.

So . . . simple ideas presented in unexpected ways will get people's attention. The next time I write on this, we'll look at strategies for making ideas concrete.

Made to Stick--Interview with Chip Heath

Chip Heath, co-author of Made to Stick, was featured on this morning's Radio Times in Philadelphia. You can check out the podcast of his interview here. Very good summary of the book.

Made to Stick Part Two: To Make it Stick, Keep It Simple

Think about the last time you were reading e-mail and talking to your partner at the same time. If you're honest, you'll recognize that you were really only paying attention to either reading your e-mail or talking to your partner. The other activity was happening on auto pilot. Our brains simply can't apply full attention to more than one idea or activity at a time.

That's why Chip and Dan Heath's first rule of stickiness in Made to Stick is that the idea you want to make stick must be simple. It must be the core of an idea, it's very essence. Otherwise, people will be distracted and unable to make a decision. Since the point of a sticky idea is to ultimately move people to action, they must be able to identify your idea. When you say three things, you say nothing.

The problem for most people in getting to the core idea is that it forces us to radically prioritize. We must strip away all of the ideas that are important, but not essential until we are at the idea that is the most central and critical.

Let's use Southwest Airlines as an example of getting to the core. They are THE low-price airline. Their central idea is that they will be the lowest fare in any market in which they operate. This means that everything they do is evaluated against that idea. Herb Kelleher, the former CEO, tells a story about how they use the idea internally:

"Tracy from marketing comes into your office. She says her surveys indicate that the passengers might enjoy a light entree on the Houston to Las Vegas flight. All we offer is peanuts and she thinks a nice chicken Caesar salad would be popular. What do you say?  . . .

You say, 'Tracy, will adding that chicken caesar salad make us THE low-fare airline from Houston to Las Vegas? Because if it doesn't help us become the unchallenged low-fare airline, we're not serving any damn chicken salad.'"

In Southwest Airline's case, there are other important ideas about them--they are a fun place to work, for example--but fun is not the core. Low cost is their core. And everything they do is measured against that.

Finding the core idea is important because it helps people avoid decision paralysis. Studies show that when people are operating in an environment of uncertainty, they can become paralyzed by choices and will often make NO choice, even if their choice is between two good options. When we keep our idea simple, we can make the choice for them in the sense that they aren't paralyzed by having to figure out which is the most important idea out of several options.

Simple = Core + Compact
Getting to the core of the idea is one issue. But simple also means expressing the core idea in a compact way. The Golden Rule is a great example of this concept--"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." A simple idea, economically stated, but so profound you could spend a lifetime implementing it.

How to make your core idea compact? The Heaths suggest tapping into what your audience already knows by tapping into their "schemas." A schema is a psychological term for a collection of generic properties of a concept or category. When you hear the word "car," that calls up all sorts of associations for you. You see a picture of a car in your mind, but you may also have emotional connections to cars because you and your dad worked on them when you were a kid or you were in a bad car accident at one point.

When we tap into people's schemas, we shortcut the process of learning for them. People can make all sorts of connections between their schema and the new idea that you're presenting. That's why analogies and metaphors work so well--they help people understand a new concept or idea in light of one they already understand. The best analogies allow audiences to deepen their understanding of a new idea by delving deeply into what they know about the analogy and then applying it to the new concept.

The Enemy of Simplicity
Why do we have so much difficulty making an idea simple? Because we are under the "Curse of Knowledge." Once we know something, it's very difficult for us to return to what it felt like to NOT know something. Once I can play the piano, it's difficult for me to put myself back into the mind of someone who doesn't know how to read music or move their hands across the keyboard.

Techies are notorious for having this problem. You call with a computer question and the next thing you know you're knee deep in motherboards and processors and have no clue what they're talking about. Nonprofits are offenders in this area, too. We often have program-specific jargon that we all understand because we've been in the business. But outsiders are left completely confused by what we believe is perfectly comprehensible.

Somehow we have to remove the Curse of Knowledge and get back to the Zen practice of "beginner's mind." We have to be able to put ourselves into the shoes of someone who knows nothing about our idea and figure out how we can make our idea simple enough to appeal to them.

Talking to people outside of our normal circles is one way to test the simplicity of an idea. I also believe that you get an "aha!" feeling in your gut when you've finally hit on your central idea and stated it well. "Maximize shareholder value" isn't a core idea that gives me an aha. But "We're going to be the lowest-fare airline in every market," DOES give me that feeling. It's the difference between being able to see the path to clear concrete action and having that path obscured.

So the first test of stickiness is finding your central idea and stating it in a simple, profound way. Once you've done that, it's time to move on to how you present that idea to an audience. We'll take a look at how that works in several future posts.

Note--for more on schemas, read George Lakoff's tutorial on "Framing," which describes how conservatives have made phenomenally successful use of schemas.

Michele

Making Messages Stick Part One: Introduction to "Made to Stick'

Back in November I was doing some thinking on Malcolm Gladwell's notion of "sticky ideas"--those messages that are really memorable and spur people to action. While Gladwell did a great job of describing what happens when messages are sticky, he didn't spend a lot of time talking about how you can actually make your message sticky. Fortunately Dan and Chip Heath decided to dig into this topic a little more deeply in their new book, Made to Stick. 

I got this book around Christmas. Unlike poor Beth Kanter,  I actually got to finish my copy, and it's been on my mind for a few weeks now. As I'm working on some projects that require me to make my ideas VERY sticky, it seemed like this might be a good time to blog a bit and get my thoughts in order. I actually plan to do a series of posts on the book because it's pretty meaty and worth digging into more deeply. So here goes . . .

For an idea to stick, to be useful and lasting, it must get the audience to:

• Pay attention
• Understand and remember it
• Agree with and believe the idea
• Care
• Be able to act on it

Sounds pretty simple, right? Except that we often fail at getting audiences to do any of this--often from the get go.

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan help us remedy that. They outline six major principles that make an idea sticky:

Simple--Stickiness means focusing on an essential core idea. Ideally, the idea is profound AND simple, as simple doesn't mean simplistic. Proverbs are a good example of a simple, profound thought.

Unexpected--For people to pay attention to an idea, it must violate their expectations. The human brain is remarkably adaptable and will habituate itself to stimuli after surprisingly few exposures. Sticky ideas wake our brains up by jolting us out of our habits. When Southwest flight attendants began cracking jokes during the safety features review, that was unexpected. That got people's attention and got them talking about Southwest.

Concrete--Sticky ideas are concrete. They operate in the world of our senses and in human action. One of the problems with "experts" is that they tend to use more abstract language. This makes it harder for non-experts to understand what the expert is talking about. But when you're introducing an idea that's new, you must do so with concrete examples so that your audience can "see" or "feel" what you're talking about.

Credible--Of course people must believe in the idea for it to stick. Sadly, the idea doesn't actually have to BE true. It just has to APPEAR to be true because it's backed up by some sort of statistics or recommended by a reputable person. Urban legends, for example, are incredibly sticky because the SEEM like they could have happened to someone (in fact, in the stories they usually have). If your friend's cousin said it was so, then there MUST be people who are stealing your organs!

Emotional--While we like to believe we are rational creatures, acting on the basis of fact, the reality is that we are guided primarily by our emotions. Sticky ideas appeal to our emotional side, the side that wants to connect to other people, as we're wired to do.  That's why donors are drawn in by the idea of paying for a poor child in Africa, but NOT by the idea of paying for the nonprofit's electricity.

Stories--Humans have always told stories. We respond to them, see ourselves acting through them. Sticky ideas tell a story that allows us to mentally rehearse, to prepare for action.

Naturally our stickiest ideas will possess all of these characteristics. The fewer of these traits our idea has, the less sticky it is.

Now look back at the beginning--remember that there are several things we need an audience to do in order to have the idea stick? Well we can map these principles right back to each of those steps:

• Pay Attention (Unexpected)
• Understand and remember (Concrete)
• Agree/Believe (Credible)
• Care (Emotions)
• Be able to act on it (Stories)

All of this, of course, assumes that you've started with a simple idea. And simplicity may be the hardest part to get right. At least it is for me, because I possess the "Curse of Knowledge," as Chip and Dan call it.

But that's a post for another day. Tomorrow, in fact, when I want to talk about how knowledge can actually get in our way and what we need to do to make our ideas as simple as possible. 

Michele

Potential Donor Looking for Nonprofit Wish List

Sarah of Freedom for IP is looking for a way to create a "nonprofit wish list" similar to an Amazon Wish List that allows her to:

• Create a list that she could give to friends, family, etc. where they could donate money to support one of her favorite nonprofits, in lieu of giving her gifts. She's interested in unrestricted giving (and aren't all nonprofits looking for those opportunities?) so existing sites like Changing the Present aren't cutting it for her.

• Combine this nonprofit wish list with her list of the "material stuff" she would also like to receive.

A few Chip-In Widgets might get her toward her first goal, but I think a little API magic is required to get her toward her second one. Lacking that expertise, I'm opening this up to the nonprofit community to consider, because I'll tell you what--the first person who figures this one out may have a pretty killer app on their hands.

Michele

The Rise of Doing Good Among Youth

YPulse, which offers daily news for marketing to Generation Y, has published Part One of their Year 2006 in Review. At the top of the list is "Doing Good" and the rise in public/private partnerships for social change as part of youth marketing efforts. The article includes some links to other resources, which might be useful to nonprofits that do a lot work with and for youth.

Michele

Fidelity Report On Giving Offers Some Insights for Nonprofits

While I'm neither an expert on fundraising or marketing, I end up touching both at least a little in my work. So I was intrigued by a report from Fidelity indicating that Boomers are on track to give 20% more than the average donor in 2006. This amounts to an average donation of $6,000, which to many nonprofits is NOT chump change.

Other key findings include:

• "The 78 million Baby Boomers in the United States are on track to give approximately $100 billion to charity in 2006, a 25 percent increase over last year's estimated $79 billion in charitable donations by the Boomer generation."

• "While the greatest share of working donors (43 percent overall, and 47 percent of Baby Boomers) believe they will have to cut back their giving amounts after they retire, only 20 percent of retirees (age 60 and over) actually had to do so, and another 32 percent were able to donate more."

• "The Gift Fund's research also shows that more than half (52 percent) of younger donors (ages 25-39) are taking the time to carefully plan their giving each year. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of this group plan to give more of their paycheck to charity over their lifetimes than their parents did. Correspondingly, parental discussions on charitable giving were most common among younger donors, with almost half (46 percent) saying their parents spoke about it with them at least annually. And not surprisingly, younger donors report that their giving behavior is impacted most often by their parents (26 percent)."

Seems like there might be some opportunities for Boomer and Gen X marketing here.

Michele

Lessons from Starbucks

I'm not a marketer, but regular readers of this blog will have figured out that I'm always on the lookout for marketing information and techniques. To me, marketing is the power of persuasion and frankly, we can all use a little marketing savvy.

That's why I was pleased to find on this morning's visit to Slideshare that John Moore of Brand Autopsy had just uploaded the fabulous slideshow above, sharing some of his "tribal knowledge" from his years at Starbucks. (Be sure to check out the slides on the differences between marketing, advertising, PR and branding, slides 15-18. I've never seen a better description!)

I was even more pleased to read at John's blog that he's participating in an hour-long conference call this Friday where he'll review these slides and answer your questions. Looks like it's free (my favorite price!)--you just have to dial in to the call.

If I didn't have a training to do on Friday, you can bet I'd be on that call with my cup of Starbucks next to me!

 

P.S.--I'm going to have to tone down the caffeine--normally I'm not an exclamation point kind of person.

Michele

Monitoring the Blogosphere

Rallyfan at Random Thoughts on Life and Work has an interesting post on how Samaritan's Purse is monitoring  blogs to respond to both positive and negative postings. As Rallyfan notes, the organization did an excellent job of both reinforcing an already excited fan and doing damage control about negative messages spreading through the blogosphere.

This got me thinking about whether or not we're doing a good job of tracking what people are saying about our organizations. A few days ago I wrote about an article on MSNBC and the American crisis of faith in nonprofits. On the associated message forums, there were a lot of very negative comments from donors about how nonprofits do their fundraising and spend their dollars. If people read these things and there's no effective response from nonprofits, then the public is left with only one, unbalanced view of the situation.

Even if nonprofits don't have a strong web presence, this doesn't mean that their donor and constituent base isn't talking about them online. By not monitoring the talk, we lose opportunities to build positive brand images and to respond to negative messages. As more and more people use the Web as their primary information source, this will become a larger problem I suspect.

The Marketing Pilgrim has a great Online Reputation Monitoring Beginner's Guide that lays out some excellent strategies for keeping track of your organization's online reputation. They note:

Every single day, someone, somewhere is discussing something important to your business; your brand, your executives, your competitors, your industry. Are they hyping-up your company, building buzz for your products? Or, are they criticizing your service, complaining to others about your new product launch?

A great brand can take months, if not years, and millions of dollars to build. It should be the thing you hold most precious.

It can be destroyed in hours by a blogger upset with your company.

A new product launch could take hundreds of TV commercials, dozens of newspaper ads, and an expensive ad agency.

It can also spread like a virus with the praise of just one customer, at one message board.

A company can dominate market share, throttle competition and hold the #1 brand in the world.
It can also crash in months if it fails to listen to what its customers want.

Substitute the word "nonprofit" for "company" and think about this in the context of your organization and you can see how shaping your online reputation is as important as any other marketing or outreach you do. Given the time, energy and dollars you devote to building your image, it makes sense that you'd want to protect that investment in every way you can.

Michele

Sticky Ideas and the Tipping Point

Yesterday we talked about the three types of people necessary to move an idea from "that's interesting," to "I must HAVE it!" as it relates to helping nonprofits adopt new technologies. Today, I want to explore one more area from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point that's relevant to this conversation--the concept of "sticky ideas."

While we need the right kinds of people in an early adopter group engaged in "selling" technology, for individuals to adopt the tech,  we need to make the concepts "sticky."

"Stickiness is a specific quality of the message that makes it memorable and     spurs people into action. Big budget advertisers buy memory space with     incessant repetition – it takes at least six repetitions for people to     remember a brand name. Stickiness is a low-budget equalizer that grabs     people’s imagination on the first or second exposure. A seemingly small or     trivial property of the message – the gold box on a record club coupon, a     campus map on an informational pamphlet, the mixing of puppets and real     people in Sesame Street, the literal narrative format of Blues Clues –     resonates with the audience and grabs and holds their attention. The     stickiness factor is a simple way of packaging a message that makes it     irresistible in the right circumstances." (from Booktalk)

So it's not just about getting the right people talking, it's also about packaging the message in a way that's irresistible. This is where we get into what Seth Godin calls a "viral" message. Says Seth:

For an idea to spread, it needs to be sent and received.

No one "sends" an idea unless:
a. they understand it
b. they want it to spread
c. they believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or their peace of mind
d. the effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits

No one "gets" an idea unless:
a. the first impression demands further investigation
b. they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
c. they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time

So to me, here's the heart of what we need to do to help nonprofits  adopt those aspects of the new wave of technology that will benefit them:

1. Within both individual organizations and the industry itself, find the mavens and start communicating with them about the technology. They will be the initial "senders" of the message, so we need to help them:
   • Understand the features and benefits of the new technologies.
   • Provide ways for them to experiment and "play around" with the new technologies. Remember, mavens are all about deep learning, so they need the opportunities to do that.
   • Help mavens see "what's in it for me" to spread the ideas.
   • Give them tools and strategies for spreading ideas that are easy for them to use and that will make sense to the connectors and salespeople with whom they'll be communicating. This means making sure that we create a foundation for understanding these concepts that's concrete and easy for non-technical types to grasp.
2. Help the mavens connect with the connectors and salespeople so that the ideas can start germinating.
3. Support all three groups by providing ongoing information and technical support, as well as venues for sharing ideas and the results of their work.

Of course, all three of these things are going on in various ways through the work of groups like N-Ten  and NetSquared. What we may need to do is look at the nature of the messages we're sending--are they "sticky" enough?--as well as who we're focusing our efforts on. Have we in fact really identified these three types and are we targeting them specifically? Or are we taking a more "build it and they will come" approach?

I hesitate to take too much of a "marketing" approach with all of this--I've never wanted to be in the business of convincing people to buy something whether they need it or not. But what I do think is important is to think about how we can move good tools into wider circulation and acceptance for those organizations that can benefit. For me, it's helpful to consider who I need to be talking to and what kinds of messages I need to be sending to help move the wave along.

Michele