Ideas for profitable
communication
by Baruch ter Wal

Make it stick

Last night, Bart Simpson came to me in a dream. He said I needed to jump across a small chasm.

(“Small chasm” might be an oxymoron, but it was a dream, OK?) It was only 2 metres wide, but it was really, really deep. Parts of me shrunk with fear as I looked down. I could make it across. But the fear of slipping and falling kept me from attempting the jump.

I think that’s how we are with a lot of things in business. Once we’ve made the leap (invested in a new hire, switched to new systems, ditching a shrinking market) we kick ourselves for not doing it sooner.

What I actually want to talk about, though, is Chip and Dan Heath’s book, “Made to Stick”. It’s fabulous. They’ve got a great framework, under the acronym SUCCESs, for making messages memorable and impactful. We know most of it, but once again it’s about the discipline of applying what we know.

• The first S stands for Simple (a core idea: making the obvious leap can still be scary).
• The U is for Unexpected (Bart Simpson is an unusual way to start a blog post).
• The first C is for Concrete (2 metres wide, parts of me shrank).
• The E is for Emotional (fear).
• The last S is for Stories (Last night…).

The second C is for Credible. Maybe I’ll replace Bart Simpson with Yoda…