Made to Stick (5 page)

A political campaign is a breeding ground of decision angst. If you think your organization has problems, imagine this challenge: You must build a nationwide organization from scratch, using primarily unpaid and largely unskilled workers. You’ve got about a year to pull the team together and line up an endless supply of doughnuts. Everyone in the organization needs to sing from the same hymnal, but you don’t have much time to rehearse the choir. And the media prod you to sing a new song every day. To make matters worse, you must constantly contend with opponents who will seize on every errant word.

Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign was a classic example of sticky ideas at work in a difficult environment. Not only did the campaign have the normal set of complexities, Clinton himself added a few new wrinkles. First, there were the “bimbo eruptions,” which need not be reexamined here. Second, Clinton was a policy wonk by nature, which meant that he was inclined to pontificate on virtually every issue that he was asked about, instead of staying focused on a few key principles.

As his key political adviser, James Carville had to cope with this complexity. One day, struggling to maintain his focus, he wrote three phrases on a whiteboard for all the campaign workers to see. One of the phrases on the impromptu list was “It’s the economy, stupid.” This message would become the core of Clinton’s successful campaign.

The word “stupid” was added as a taunt to the campaign workers
themselves, reminding them not to lose focus on what was important. “It was simple and it was self-effacing,” Carville explained. “I was trying to say, ‘Let’s don’t be too clever here, don’t come down here thinking we’re too smart. Let’s just remember the basics.’”

The need for focus extended to Bill Clinton himself, perhaps especially to Clinton himself. At one point, Clinton was frustrated that he’d been advised to stop talking about balanced budgets despite the fact that Ross Perot, the third-party candidate for president in 1992, was getting positive attention for his stand on the balanced budget. Clinton said, “I’ve been talking about these things for two years, why should I stop talking about them now because Perot is in?” Clinton’s advisers had to tell him, “There has to be message triage. If you say three things, you don’t say anything.”

“It’s the economy, stupid” was the lead of the Clinton story—and it was a good one, because in 1992 the U.S. economy was mired in a recession. But if “It’s the economy, stupid” is the lead, then the need for a balanced budget can’t also be the lead. Carville had to stop Clinton from burying the lead.

Why is prioritizing so difficult? In the abstract, it doesn’t sound so tough. You prioritize important goals over less important goals. You prioritize goals that are “critical” ahead of goals that are “beneficial.”

But what if we can’t tell what’s “critical” and what’s “beneficial”? Sometimes it’s not obvious. We often have to make decisions between one “unknown” and another. This kind of complexity can be paralyzing. In fact, psychologists have found that people can be driven to irrational decisions by too much complexity and uncertainty.

In 1954, the economist L. J. Savage described what he perceived as a basic rule of human decision-making. He called it the “sure-thing principle.” He illustrated it with this example: A businessman is
thinking about buying a piece of property. There’s an election coming up soon, and he initially thinks that its outcome could be relevant to the attractiveness of the purchase. So, to clarify his decision, he thinks through both scenarios. If the Republican wins, he decides, he’ll buy. If the Democrat wins, he’ll do the same. Seeing that he’d buy in either scenario, he goes forward with the purchase, despite not knowing the outcome. This decision seems sensible—not many people would quibble with Savage’s logic.

Two psychologists quibbled. Amos Tversky and Eldar Shafir later published a paper proving that the “sure-thing principle” wasn’t always a sure thing. They uncovered situations where the mere existence of uncertainty seemed to alter how people made decisions—even when the uncertainty was irrelevant to the outcome, as with the businessman’s purchase. For instance, imagine that you’re in college and you’ve just completed an important final exam a couple of weeks before the Christmas holidays. You’d been studying for this exam for weeks, because it’s in a subject that’s important to your future career.

You’ve got to wait two days to get the exam results back. Meanwhile, you see an opportunity to purchase a vacation during the holidays to Hawaii at a bargain-basement price. Here are your three options: You can buy the vacation today, pass on it today, or pay a five-dollar fee to lock in the price for two days, which would allow you to make your decision
after
you got your grade. What would you do?

You may feel some desire to know the outcome of your exam before you decide, as did the students who faced this choice in the original experiment. So Tversky and Shafir simply removed this uncertainty for two groups of participants. These groups were told up front how they did on the exam. Some students were told that they passed the exam, and 57 percent of them chose to go on the trip (after all, it makes for a good celebration). Other students were told that they failed the exam, and 54 percent of them chose to go on the trip (after all, it makes for
good recuperation). Both those who passed and those who failed wanted to go to Hawaii, pronto.

Here’s the twist: The group of students who, like you, didn’t know their final exam results behaved completely differently. The majority of them (61 percent) paid five dollars to wait for two days. Think about that! If you pass, you want to go to Hawaii. If you fail, you want to go to Hawaii. If you don’t know whether you passed or failed, you … wait and see? This is not the way the “sure-thing principle” is supposed to behave. It’s as if our businessman had decided to wait until after the election to buy his property, despite being willing to make the purchase regardless of the outcome.

Tversky and Shafir’s study shows us that uncertainty—even irrelevant uncertainty—can paralyze us. Another study, conducted by Shafir and a colleague, Donald Redelmeier, demonstrates that paralysis can also be caused by
choice
. Imagine, for example, that you are in college and you face the following choice one evening. What would you do?

1. Attend a lecture by an author you admire who is visiting just for the evening, or
   

2. Go to the library and study.
   

Studying doesn’t look so attractive compared with a once in a lifetime lecture. When this choice was given to actual college students, only 21 percent decided to study.

Suppose, instead, you had been given three choices:

1. Attend the lecture.
   

2. Go to the library and study.
   

3. Watch a foreign film that you’ve been wanting to see.
   

Does your answer differ? Remarkably, when a different group of students were given the three choices, 40 percent decided to study—
double the number who did before. Giving students two good alternatives to studying, rather than one, paradoxically makes them less likely to choose either. This behavior isn’t “rational,” but it is human.

Prioritization rescues people from the quicksand of decision angst, and that’s why finding the core is so valuable. The people who listen to us will be constantly making decisions in an environment of uncertainty. They will suffer anxiety from the need to choose—even when the choice is between two good options, like the lecture and the foreign film.

Core messages help people avoid bad choices by reminding them of what’s important. In Herb Kelleher’s parable, for instance, someone had to choose between chicken salad and no chicken salad—and the message “THE low-fare airline” led her to abandon the chicken salad.

The goal of this book is to help you make your ideas stick. So, periodically throughout the book, we will present “Idea Clinics,” which illustrate, in practical terms, how an idea can be made stickier. The Clinics were inspired by the classic “before and after” photos used by weight-loss centers—visible evidence that the diet works. Like patients trying a new diet, the initial ideas in the Clinics vary in their need for change; some need dramatic help, like a stomach-stapling and liposuction, and some only need to lose a few pounds around the waistline.

The point of the Clinics is not to wow you with our creative genius, and it’s fortunate for readers and authors alike that this is not the goal, because we are not creative geniuses. The point is simply to model
the process
of making ideas stickier. In contrast to traditional disclaimers, this
is
something you should try at home. Think about each message and consider how you would improve it using the principles in the book.

You can safely skip the Clinics—they are intended as sidebars to the text, rather than as building blocks—but we hope you’ll find them useful.

CLINIC

Warning: Sun Exposure Is Dangerous

THE SITUATION:
Health educators at Ohio State University want to inform the academic community about the risks of sun exposure
.

• • •

MESSAGE 1:
Here’s a Web page with facts about sun exposure from Ohio State University. We’ve added numbers to each paragraph so that we can analyze the message later:

Sun Exposure: Precautions and Protection

(1) A golden, bronze tan is often considered a status symbol. Perhaps this supports the idea that people who have time to lie in the sun long enough to develop a deep tan, or who can travel to warm climates during winter, have more money or leisure time than “common folk.” Nevertheless, the goal of many is a deep tan early in spring or to return from vacation with that hearty, healthy glow. Whether a tan suggests status or not, careless exposure to the sun can be harmful. Ultraviolet rays from the sun will damage skin but can also create vision problems, allergic reactions, and depressed immune systems.

(2) Tanning and burning are caused by ultraviolet rays from the sun. These rays cannot be seen or felt, but penetrate the skin and stimulate cells containing a brownish pigment called melanin. Melanin protects the skin by absorbing and scattering ultraviolet rays. People with dark skins have high amounts of melanin, have greater natural protection from ultraviolet rays, and tan more easily. Blondes, redheads, and people with fair skins have less melanin and, therefore, burn more quickly.

(3) As melanin is stimulated by ultraviolet rays, it rises to the skin’s surface as a tan and provides protection against future sun exposure. Individuals with dark skins such as olive, brown, or black are not immune to burning and skin damage caused by careless exposure to the sun.

(4) Two types of ultraviolet rays (UV) from the sun exist: UVA and UVB. UVB cause burning of the skin or the red associated with sunburn, skin cancer, and premature aging of skin. UVA rays stimulate tanning but are also linked to other problems such as impaired vision, skin rashes, and allergic or other reactions to drugs.

(5) Skin damage from overexposure to the sun is cumulative over the years and cannot be reversed. Once damage occurs, it cannot be undone. Most serious and lasting damage occurs before age 18. Protection should start early, particularly with children who enjoy outdoor play on sunny days.

Before you read our comments below, go back and reread Message 1. What can you do to improve it?

COMMENTS ON MESSAGE 1:
What’s the lead here? What’s the core? The first paragraph dives into tanned skin as a status symbol, which is simply an interesting red herring. (In fact, the text acknowledges as
much when it says, “Whether a tan suggests status or not …”) To us, Paragraph 5 flashes in neon lights as the core:
Skin damage … is cumulative over the years and cannot be reversed
. Wow. Isn’t that the single most important thing we’d want to tell sun-worshippers? By contrast, Paragraphs 2-4 provide superfluous mechanics. As an analogy, do smokers really need to understand the workings of the lungs in order to appreciate the dangers of smoking?

• • •

MESSAGE 2:
In the text below, we have reordered the points and tinkered with the prose a bit in the hope of unburying the lead.

Sun Exposure: How to Get Old Prematurely

(5) Skin damage from overexposure to the sun is like getting older: It is cumulative over the years and cannot be reversed. Once damage occurs, it cannot be undone. Most serious and lasting damage occurs before age 18. Fortunately, unlike aging, skin damage can be prevented. Sun protection should start early, particularly with children who enjoy playing outdoors on sunny days.

(2, 3, 4) Tanning and burning are caused by ultraviolet rays from the sun. Ultraviolet rays cause sunburn, which is a temporary sign of deeper underlying skin damage. Sunburns eventually disappear, but the underlying damage persists and may eventually cause premature aging or skin cancer.

(1) Ironically, a golden, bronze tan is often considered a sign of good health. But ultraviolet rays not only damage skin, they can also create vision problems, allergic reactions, and depressed immune systems. So instead of a “healthy tan,” perhaps we should call it a “sickly tan.”

COMMENTS ON MESSAGE
2: The core of this message is that skin damage is cumulative and irreversible. So we’ve rewritten the message to stress that point and eliminate nonessential information. We’ve done this to illustrate the process of forced prioritization; we’ve had to eliminate some interesting stuff (such as the references to melanin) in order to let the core shine through.

We’ve tried to emphasize the core in a couple of ways. First, we’ve unburied the lead—putting the core right up front. Second, we’ve added the analogy to aging to hammer home the idea that damage is irreversible. Third, we’ve added a concrete and perhaps unexpected image: Sunburns are a signal of damage; they may disappear, but the underlying damage does not.

SCORECARD
Checklist	Message 1	Message 2
Simple	-
Unexpected	-
Concrete	-
Credible	-	-
Emotional	-	-
Story	-	-

PUNCH LINE:
Avoid burying the lead. Don’t start with something interesting but irrelevant in hopes of entertaining the audience. Instead, work to make the core message itself more interesting.