Jan. 31, 2008 at 2:38pm

Made to stick

Posted by Shari Campbell in Advertising, Care Line Marketing, Planning and Strategy
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Sorting through a week’s worth of mail from my post office box got me thinking about this week’s blog post.

Consider all the junk mail you get. If you’re like me, you quickly locate the bills and the rest is dumped into recycle. But early this morning, well before the first few ounces of caffeine had reached my brain, a random piece of mail caught my attention. In red type, the envelope screamed:

half half half half half half half half

Curious, I opened the envelope.

The outside of the giving appeal from ArtsFund proclaimed:

Tickets pay for only (in small black type)

     Half (in a huge dye cut that revealed glimpses of artists behind it)

A simple fact reinforced the message: On average, the ticket you buy pays just half the cost of presenting the art you enjoy.

I’ve received dozens of ArtsFund appeals over the years, and yet none of them “stuck” with me the way this one did.

Why? Maybe the ArtsFund folks read one of my favorite business books, “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.”

I highly recommend the book - we have referred to it in a previous post. But if the 257-page treatise is too much for you, I’ll simplify.

Ideas that stick, according to authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath, have six basic traits:

1. Simplicity. How do you strip an idea to its core? ArtsFund truly did that. They could’ve given me hundreds of reasons why I should donate, but they told me in simple and effective ways that my ticket only covers half the cost of the performance.

2. Unexpectedness.  How do you capture people’s attention and hold it? When our firm worked with the (Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce County to help them on a multiyear initiative to end the needless euthanasia of pets, they wanted the outdoor and print ads to feature cuddly kittens and puppy dog eyes – the “expected.” After many discussions – and some courage on the part of the Humane Society – they agreed to a concept that used stark red-and-black billboards with powerful numbers:

        2,453 Killed
        14,571 Abandoned

   This captured people’s attention and made the ugly side of pet overpopulation stick.

3. Concreteness. How do you get people to understand your idea and remember it?  Facts, percentages and numbers can be confusing, so the ArtsFund took a simple fact and made it concrete: half.

4. Credibility. How do you get people to believe your idea? Sometimes a simple statement drives the point home.

5. Emotional. How do you get people to care about your idea? For the Humane Society, the emotional appeal of their simple, unexpected message led to increased donations, new volunteers and a city council willing to consider additional license fees for unaltered pets.

6. Stories. How do you get people to act on your idea? I still today remember the press conference when the Humane Society announced their ambitious goal to end euthanasia. When they unveiled the outdoor board with the statistic showing how many pets were needlessly euthanized, the organization’s fundraising director told a hushed crowed about the emotional toll euthanasia takes on the staff. “It’s heartbreaking,” she told the audience, “when we take a perfectly healthy, vibrant dog or kitten, lay it on a surgical table and inject it with a drug that ends its life for absolutely no good reason.”

   Does that story stick with you?

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