Simplicity - Find the core or your idea, don’t bury the lead of your story
Unexpectedness - Surprise will get people’s attention
Concreteness - Ideas that are concrete on more memorable than those that are abstract
Credibility - Authorities or details can be used to increase credibility
Emotions - People will remember what they care about
Stories - Stories are useful to get people to act on an idea
I find that I examine communication ideas now through the lens of these principles. A friend pointed out a good example of these principles in an ad from the American Lung Association. Kids know that cigarettes are bad for them but how can you truly get that message across in a way that is in this case simple, unexpected, concrete and emotional. One third of the people who smoke will die from it. That’s the statistic. How to communicate that? The American Lung Association made this ad that equated what it would be like if you had a one in three changes in dying by crossing the street. This is an idea that is made to stick.
I recently finished Punk Marketing by Richard Laermer and Mark Simmons. As the subtitle of the book is “Get Off Your Ass and Join the Revolution” it may come as no surprise that this is a marketing book dripping in attitude. Since the book was just published this year it is the best book I have seen to incorporate web 2.0 and social media into more traditional marketing methods. This book is a wonderful companion to Guerilla Marketing. It focuses on how to get more marketing done with less money and is filled with good examples of people doing just that.
Definition: The morbid fear of running out of reading material.
This was my word of the day today from Dictionary.com and when I saw it I suddenly had insight into Amazon’s new book reader the Kindle. I may simply not be the target market of the Kindle, nor for that matter all the technology pundits who have been panning the device. And yet Amazon says they sold out quickly on the device. So who is buying the Kindle? Abibliophobes.
To test my theory I talked to one of the two co-workers who first told me of the device. They were excited. It could hold 200 books and if you ran out you could quickly get more? Cool. Abibliophobia. These are the sort of people that Amazon should create a 100,000 page club like the airline’s 100,000 mile club. These are voracious readers who belong to multiple book clubs.
So it may be time to admit that the Kindle is a product targeted for a set of people who Amazon knows well. Maybe they aren’t crazy. So the question I am left with is how many abibliophobes are there and do they have $400 in their pocket?
Just finished reading the latest best seller and you are not sure what to read next. Tell this site a book that you have enjoyed and it will make suggestions of other books you may enjoy.
I am may be one of the only people in the United States who was disappointed with DaVinci Code but Loved Angels and Demons, both books by Dan Brown. I just recently finished reading another book by the same author called “Deception Point”. Like the first two books it follows a a twisty plot where you and never quite sure who are good guys and who are bad guys until the last few chapters. Political fortunes rise and fall. It all centers around an unusual discovery by NASA in the Arctic. I had some trouble putting this book down and read the whole thing in slightly more than 24 hours.
I just finished reading Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. In this wonderful book on communicating ideas so that people will remember them the author has 6 principles: 
