Intro

Example – kidney heist tale – this is a story that sticks
Nurture idea so it sticks
Example – popcorn unhealthy, with 37 grams of saturated fat, compare it against (a lot of food – bacon+egg, big mac+fries + Steak dinner), also call “saturated fat” – “artery clogging fat”
- Also visuals
Six principles of sticky ideas
- Principle 1 – Simplicity
  - Ten points will be forgotten, one profound point is better
- Principle 2 – Unexpectedness
  - Suprirse first, then interest+curiosity
- Principle 3 – Concreteness
  - Concrete Image: Ice-filled bathtubs
- Principle 4 – Credibility
  - Either has authority or let idea has its own credential (Ronald Reagon – “ask yourself if you’re better off than you were four years ago)
- Principle 5 – Emotions
  - Ppl more likely to donate to single individual than a group of ppl
- Principle 6 – Stories
Natural tendency against sticky idea – “curse of knowledge”
Example – JFK: “put a man on the moon and get him back safely by the end of decade”
Successful Ad Template
- Extreme Consequences (Unexpectedness) – car stereo system moves the bridge / loose lips sink ships

Chap1 – Simple

Commander’s intent (CI) analogy
- You cannot have “five most important goals”
Finding the core
Southwest Airline
- “The Lowfare Airline” – capture the spirit
Newspaper – inverted pyramid structure
- No matter reader’s attention span, they would get some info
- Unlike dramatic story with crazy payoff only at the end
- Give ppl what they want fast
Bill Clinton’s Campaign in 1992 – sticky ideas
- “It’s the economy – Stupid”
Make the most important msg first
Example – local newspaper publisher get “local focus” to stick (Dunn Daily Record)
- Names,names,names
“A bird in hand” proverb is an sticky idea
Feature-creep
Schema – “default impression”
- i.e. schema: “great new sports car”
Accuracy vs. Accessibility
- i.e. “maximize shareholder value” vs. “THE low-fare airline”
- Analogy is good way to avoid useless accuracy
- Example: “high concept movie pitch” (for investors, very risky to invest in movie)
Generative Metaphor: some new perspectives
- Example: Disney – “Cast Member”
- Counter-example: Subway – “Sandwich Artist”
  - A lot of individual expression (not helpful for business!!)

Example: airline announcement for safety
How to get people’s attention and keep it?
- Surprise – get attention
- Interest – keep attention
Exaple: Enclave minivan
Our schema – guessing machine
Core Msg + Counterintuitive part of msg + break the guessing machine
Nordstrom
- Wrap a gift from Macy’s – unexpected
What creates interest – gap theory
- Create gap
- Make sure gap is reasonably sized (not abyss)
Sony’s pocket sized radio & JFK’s moon landing

Example: The Natural Conservatory avoid trap of abstraction – from 2 million acres per year into tangiable landscapes
Concrete: you can examine using your senses
- I.e. teach math with “compute in context”
Concrete makes it memorable
Memory is not a single filing cabinet, different memory summon is different region’s brain activity
Novice see concrete, Expert see the abstract pattern (bishop moving diagonally vs. chess strategy)
Curse of knowledge -> need to “dumb things down”
Kaplan’s pitch of “notepad sized personal computer” – concreteness
- Concreteness that makes the VC brainstorm themselves and end up investing
Example: saddleback church and their “target demographic – personalized” called “Saddleback Sam”

Ulcer story, scientists not believed until a decade later
Two kinds of authority: Expert + Celebrity
AntiAuthority – i.e. Smoking victim
Internal credibility vs. External authority – internal credibility -> i.e. Urban Legend
- Ample detail lends credibility to idea + person
- Level of details matter in jury experiment
Statistics – presented in a new way
- Stats as input not output
Human-Scale Principle
- Distance from LA to NY instead of distance from Sun to Earth
Sinatra test – if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere
- India “Safe Deliver” delivers movies / harry potter books on time
Testable credential – “see for yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago?”
- Other people’s story of being fooled vs. being fooled yourself

Giving stats making people in more analytical (less emotional) frame of mind, less donations
Truth Campaign – (anti-tabacco) anti-authority emotion of teens
Direct Mail Copywriter – target self-interest
- Imagine yourself doing something – also appeal to self-interest
People tend to think others live in Maslow’s basement while themselves live in the penthouse lol
- Cook for Iraq Army, for example, aim for “transcendence” – in charge of army morale
- Sometimes self-interest helps, sometimes it backfires

Story of nurse saving baby by her “experience”
Story will cause mind to “simulate”
- Simulation is the same area as “actual physical action in brain”
- Mental practice alone gives 2/3 benefit of physical practice
Subway story (that make people less fat) went viral
Spotting the story instead of creating it
Structure of story (plots like challenger/connection/Creativity)
- Fun: Good Samaritan’s historical context is the hostility between Jews and Samaritan at the time
- Familiarize with old story, to better spot new story with potential
Springboard – a story about possibilities