Messages That Stick
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Effective communication is essential to the success of any business organization. Since the world is becoming a global village it is of utmost importance to effectively communicate within and outside of an organization. However, due to large organizational sizes and tall organizational structures it becomes difficult to get any message across. This creates boundaries in the organization, internally in terms of various departments and externally in terms of customers.
To overcome this dilemma, in the video Messages that Stick, Professor Chip Heath emphasizes on the importance of making the point stick rather than just getting the message across and explains how to go about it. Professor Heath commences his lecture with focus on urban legends, that is, myths and stories. Urban legends have been stuck in peoples minds and have persisted over decades, spanning over cultural boundaries.
For instance, the story of the dead girl who appears on a dark eerie roadside is known almost world over, yet in different situations. In the American version, the man who finds the girl is in a car. In the European version, the car is replaced by a carriage. Whereas in the Chinese version, the mode of transport is believed to be a horse.
The professor explains that urban legends succeed even though they lack many advantages that organizational messages have. They do not have support from top management. They do not have advertising budgets, or public relation assistants. They often arouse negative feelings of fear and disgust due to which people do not often like them. Yet, they still spread.
In light of the above, Professor Heath tries to correlate organizational messages with urban legends through out the video. He identifies six elements as key in achieving success in organizational messages. If these elements are used effectively, organizations can get their points across and make them stick, thereby attaining overall business success. The elements that should be incorporated in a message are as follows:
Simple:
not to complicate
Unexpected:
surprise
Concrete:
use specific language
Credibility:
ideas that are testable
Emotional:
feeling attached to the message
Stories that stick
Firstly, the message should be simple as it is easier to remember. According to research, people can remember nearly seven bits of information, plus or minus two. For instance, phone numbers have seven digits making it easy for us to remember countless numbers.
Again, because of our limited brain capacity, ideas have to be simple in order to make them stick. As told by the professor, most urban legends incorporate this principle. An example was of The Great Wall of China. According to legend, it is believed to be the only man-made thing which is visible from outer space. Even though the Great Wall is very long, its also quite thin, and so if it was visible from space than even highways should be visible.
Another example from the video was of the movie Alien. There are actors, actresses, set designers, editors and all have to be put together to make a coherent artistic project. The movie business terms the idea of attracting attention and making the message stick as high concept. The high concept for this movie was Jaws on a spaceship. This basically means that Jaws was a huge hit in its time and thus relating Jaws to the movie Alien would most likely be attractive.
The second principle of making a message effective is making it unexpected. There should always be a surprise in the message as people tend to remember events that are unexpected. This can be linked to the first example of the dead girl. The point that the girl had died twenty years ago was unexpected. Unexpected things catch our attention and unconsciously cause us to think and discuss with others.
Many years ago radios were as big as sofas. Then one fine day more than fifty years ago, unexpectedly, a team at Sony launched a new product which not only attracted customers then but still sells today in many parts of the world, a small pocket radio. Another example is when Sputnik was sent to space by the Soviet Union causing Americans to feel discouraged. Consequently, President J. F. Kennedy announced that America would put man on the moon – in this decade. This idea was very out of the blue but people were stunned and still remember it today.
The next crucial point is concreteness. In case of urban legends, when stories are passed from generation to generation only the concrete part remains. For instance, in the myth about the dead girl, only the part that there was a girl in the dark and that she was dead remains, whereas other things are changed like the mode of transport or the place where the incident happened.
The same idea should be used while making a message so that the important material sticks. A very impactful example which is mentioned in the video also, is of Johnson and Johnson. On their mission statement there is no reference to customers. The reference is made only to doctors, nurses, and mothers who use their products. The message in Johnson and Johnsons mission statement could not have been more simple and concrete and yet meaningful. Moreover, a medicine called Tylenol of the same company was found to have cyanide in it and the whole lot of Tylenol was pulled off the shelves, thereby concretely showing that they were answerable to their customers.
There was an incident of a subway where the subs would have graffiti on them. The relevant authority came up with a concrete message, No Graffiti rather than