What Causes an Idea or Trend to “Tip?”
Back in 2000, Malcolm Gladwell wrote The Tipping Point; a fascinating book that became more then a national bestseller, it became a phenomenon. The Tipping Point examined what causes an idea or trend to “tip;” to start an epidemic and spread like wildfire.
For business people, and in particular marketing professionals, insight into why some ideas (products and services) start epidemics while others don’t was a very compelling read. After all, any hints into how one could deliberately start and control a positive epidemic is the holy grail of marketing.
The three rules of The Tipping Point, each of which were discussed at length in the book, were the Law of the Few, The Power of Context and the Stickiness Factor. Yes, it was Gladwell who first used the word “stickiness” to mean “the packaging of information that under the right circumstances, could make an idea or product irresistible.”
The Keys to Creating Sticky Ideas
In 2007, brothers Chip and Dan Heath, who had both spent years studying “sticky” ideas and trying to understand what made some messages naturally stick co-wrote the New York Times Bestseller, Made to Stick, Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.
As the brothers Heath pointed out in the introduction to their book, Made to Stick is a complement to The Tipping Point in the sense that their book focussed on traits that make an idea sticky, a subject that was beyond the scope of Gladwell’s book.
In Made to Stick, the Six Principles of Sticky Ideas were examined; the sixth of which was Stories, the primary subject of this article.
“How do you get people to act on our ideas? – We Tell Stories. Stories act out as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.”
Learning to Write Sticky Stories
As many people were, I was absolutely fascinated by these two books, so I’m compelled to share with you my delight at coming across The Precision Marketing System from Conxentric.
The Precision Marketing System is not another book, but rather it’s a comprehensive kit of multi-media content designed to train people (from professional marketers to laymen like myself) how to write sticky stories that compel people to act now and buy.
There are three main components to The Precision Marketing System:
- The video course and related presentation materials,
- The story-based marketing playbook, and the
- Campaign creation tools; instructions, templates and examples.
Because I like to take notes while listening to course materials, I downloaded and printed out the more then 70 pages of course presentation materials before starting to listen to and watch the course online. For those preferring to work offline, this material can also be downloaded to (and viewed from) your PC, iPod or iPhone; that’s cool!
The actual course material is anything but skimpy. It took me a couple of days to get through the 13 chapters and more then 2 hours of content. I must say though, I did not find the material to be difficult or technical. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of the Neuro-Linguistic-Programming (NLP) concepts of Maps, Frames and Anchors as well as the presentation of why stories work so well for marketing; the AIDA model, (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action).
What I liked best about The Precision Marketing System is that unlike most books, there’s a set of materials and tools that help you to put what you’ve learned into practice. The Story-based Marketing Playbook thoroughly covers the 7 steps that you need to go through to actually launch a story-based marketing campaign. While the Story Campaign instructions, template and case study examples made the process of actually developing a sticky story very straightforward indeed.
The Bottom Line: After going through The Precision Marketing System myself, I do concur with its developers that targeted, well-developed sticky stories can be highly effective in today’s noisy ad environment at gaining listener attention, increasing marketing engagement and ultimately closing more business during these challenging economic times. And friends, The Precision Marketing System has everything you need to begin to succeed at doing just that! Check it out now.
