Marketing Profs

With spring comes not only a new season but a "sticky" new segment. Book Club is back for "Round Three" with the hottest book of the year. Those of you new to our Book Club... welcome aboard (learn all here and definitely sign up here). As for those returning for another round... welcome back.

What's the book? None other than Made To Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. What's more? Instead of giving away 30 author-signed books, we're upping it to 50 free books. You want more? You'll receive a free bonus just for reading this article.

While Round 1 discussed "social media" and Round 2 focused on "branding," in Round 3 we're exploring "communications"—more to the point, we're learning how we marketers can do a far better job of making sure our brainy ideas stick. For good.

Made To Stick analyzes why some ideas survive while many others die. But that's not all; the authors have deconstructed why ideas that didn't have revenue incentives, like urban legends and fables, have amplified across social groups and through many generations... and then they developed a six-point "SUCCESs" system for how to get messages to stick. And stay that way.

Q&A With Chip and Dan Heath

To kick off this segment, my colleague Cam Beck held a Q&A with Made to Stick's authors, here are the highlights:

Q: For whom was the book written, and why?

A: All of us need to make our ideas stick from time to time. There are some people—teachers, ministers, politicians, and of course marketers—whose jobs depend on making ideas stick. Our book was written to help people make that happen. It's fiendishly difficult to take the light bulb that's in your head and recreate it in the minds of your audience. And that's where the traits of stickiness come in...to refine our most important ideas so that they'll endure.

Q: Why does your book use so many examples of advertising?

A: Advertising is a pure marketplace of ideas, so it's a great laboratory for studying stickiness. Great ad campaigns like Wendy's "Where's the Beef?" thrive on the principles of stickiness. Subway's Jared campaign, for instance, perfectly captures the power of a story to make an idea stick.