Made to Stick

Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

By Chip Heath, Dan Heath

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About the book

Chip Heath, a Stanford professor of organizational behavior, and his brother Dan Heath, a former Harvard researcher, study why some messages lodge in memory while others fade. They build on the idea of stickiness that Malcolm Gladwell popularized in The Tipping Point and organize the book around six traits captured in the acronym SUCCES: simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and stories. Examples run from the kidney theft hoax and Southwest Airlines to a mess hall manager named Floyd Lee and a Nobel Prize winner who drank bacteria to prove a point about ulcers. Each chapter includes a Clinic that applies its principle to a specific case or idea.

Bill Liao, general partner at SOSV's RebelBio, said that reading it alongside Aristotle's Poetics showed him the force of stories with surprises, which he now uses to improve start-up pitches. Direct response copywriter Cristian-Dragos Baciu singled it out as essential reading for marketers.

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This book has 5 recommendations

Raluca Radu (Owner/MTH Digital)

I work in digital marketing so I would [recommend]: [...] Made to stick by Chip and Dan Heath.

Recommended by Ola Olusoga (Co-founder/Populum)

Source: Interview with Ola Olusoga: How Books Have Guided His Path To Self-Discovery

Bill Liao (General Partner/RebelBio, SOSV.com)

The Book "Made to Stick" combined with "The Poetics" by Aristotle really helped me to see the power of telling great stories with surprises in them and every time I meet a start-up I can always make a contribution to their pitch.

Tudor Mihailescu (Finance and Business Enablement Manager)

First thing first, finance people need to be decent communicators, ideally awesome communicators. There is an art in building a case or in delivering a presentation and we need to treat this step as seriously as we have treated the other steps. I do believe this is a top priority for an aspiring or practicing CFO - There are plenty of books on this topic, I would recommend the works of Chip and Dan Health like Switch and Made to Stick.

Cristian-Dragos Baciu (Direct Response Copywriter)

I highly recommend all the books written by the Heath brothers, especially Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die. This one's a must-read for marketers. The reason I enjoyed their work so much is because they offer real-life stories and insights that makes it so much easier for the reader to imprint that information in his mind

This book is part of our collection:

Copywriting Books for Marketers, Managers, Writers & CEOs

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See more books recommended by

Raluca Radu, Ola Olusoga, Bill Liao, Tudor Mihailescu, Cristian-Dragos Baciu

See more books written by

Chip Heath, Dan Heath

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