Six Principles of Stickiness

Chip and Dan Heath have written a book, Made to Stick. In it, they explore the importance of "stickiness". An idea is "sticky" if it tends to stick in the minds of people exposed to it. But the stickiness is not just a property of the idea itself, but of the presentation of the idea.

According to the Heath brothers, the six principles of stickiness are:

Simplicity. Strip your idea down to its core and relentlessly prioritize.
Unexpectedness. Violate people's expectations; be counterintuitive.
Concreteness. Express your idea in terms of concrete actions or sensory information, not jargon.
Credibility. Enable people to test, at least mentally, the idea for themselves.
Emotions. Tap into gut feelings.
Stories. Enable people to rehearse a situation or associate your idea with a story and retell it.

Your brand is an idea in the mind of the consumer. Make it stick.

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