Inside Chris’s Head

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:

• 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.

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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.

Mr. Laermer also blogs at: Richard Laermer “Author, Full Frontal PR”’s Amazon Blog

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