Make your Cause Sticky

In Made to Stick brothers Chip and Dan Heath tell the story of Art Silverman with the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a group that educates the public about nutrition issues. CSPI had discovered through lab testing that because of coconut oil the average bag of popcorn at a movie theatre contained almost two days worth of unhealthy saturated fat. Silverman knew that people would not avoid the popcorn because of a message about “37 grams of saturated fat.” It was too scientific. So he took a different approach:

CSPI called a press conference on September 27, 1992. Here’s the message it presented: “A medium-sized ‘butter’ popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theatre contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries fro lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings—combined!”

The folks at CSPI didn’t neglect the visuals—they laid out the full buffet of greasy food for the television cameras. An entire day’s worth of unhealthy eating, displayed on a table. All that saturated fat—stuffed into a single bag of popcorn.

The story was an immediate sensation featured on CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN. It made he front pages of USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post’s style section. Leno and Letterman cracked jokes about fat-soaked popcorn, and headline writers trotted out some doozies: “Popcorn Gets an ‘R’ Rating,” “Lights, Action, Cholesterol!” “Theatre Popcorn is Double Feature of Fat.”

The idea stuck. Moviegoers, repulsed by these findings, avoided popcorn in droves. Sales plunged. The service staff at movie houses grew accustomed to fielding questions about whether the popcorn was popped in the “bad” oil. Soon after, most of the nation’s biggest chains… announced that they would stop using coconut oil.

In their book the Heath brothers identified six elements (making the acronym SUCCESs with no final S) that help make something sticky:

• Simple. Find the core idea and share it
• Unexpected. Grab and hold people’s attention through surprise
• Concrete. Make the abstract real to help people understand and remember
• Credible. Help people believe. Use details, compelling statistics and examples
• Emotional. Make people care about the idea
• Stories. Use stories to inspire people to action

Every day people in the United States are bombarded with somewhere between several hundred and 5,000 messages, depending on how you count. Each one wants something from us. In this overwhelming clutter, odds are that no one will notice your cause, much less remember it. To stand out, you’ll have to do something different. How do you grab some attention so the right people will remember it? Start by finding an arresting way to present your message.

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Photo: Vikiçizer, Creative Commons.