Why this idea means business : We explore how to craft a sticky idea. Learn how the SUCCES creative thinking technique makes your idea more memorable. Read this to learn how to make your ideas stickier.
How much is this idea worth?
Idea : To use the SUCCES model to make your ideas more memorable. Based on our standard business case assumptions, the value of this idea is :-
- Source of business – Innovation
- Skill area – Psychology | Creativity
- Commercial hypothesis :-
- # customers = 1,000
- Spend/month = $100
- Est. monthly purchases from innovation adoption = +70
- Est. sales increase = +$7k (monthly) | +$84k (annual)
Most idea generation sessions deliver a bunch of scribbled ideas on Post-its. This is innovation‘s fun bit. You don’t judge in that session. Anyone can suggest anything, good or bad. Ideas from wonderful to woeful and all points in between.
These early ideas are the raw materials for your innovation process. However, you still have to bring them to life. To craft and commercialise them into business plans. As long as some idea killer doesn’t get to them first that is.
These ideas eventually become your new products, services, advertising campaigns, websites and e-Commerce stores. Ideas that solve your business problems.
But how does this process work? What makes some ideas stick while others stink? This article explores one creative thinking approach that shares how to create a sticky idea.
Introduction to the "sticky idea"
The idea of “sticky ideas” was popularised in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.
He explored what makes some ideas take off, while others never get off the ground. He argued that 3 factors make an idea sticky.
First, certain types of people have to be involved in the idea. He called these idea spreaders :-
- mavens – experts in the subject of the idea.
- connectors – those with diverse social networks.
- salesmen – persuasive people who can easily “sell” an idea.
In marketing planning, this thinking connects with using influencer marketing and your sales team to spread the idea behind your brand.
He also stresses the role of context. Where, when and from whom you hear an idea has a big impact.
In marketing planning, this links to your communications and media plan.
But it’s his last idea, what he calls the stickiness factor, that stands out. His view is that being highly engaging (and repeating an idea in a variety of ways) makes it stickier.
Taking the sticky idea even further
In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath take this idea of stickiness even further.
Their view is that a sticky idea fulfils one or more of six criteria to make it more memorable :-
- Simple – Sticky ideas can be expressed in easy-to-understand terms.
- Unexpected – Sticky ideas usually contain an element of surprise.
- Concrete – Sticky ideas appeal to the senses and make abstract concepts concrete.
- Credible – Sticky ideas are authoritative and authentic.
- Emotional – Sticky ideas provoke an emotional reaction which makes people care more about them.
- Story-based – Sticky ideas tell a story to help people visualise what they mean and better understand what to do with them.
These spell out SUCCES to make the terms even easier to remember. (Although they could have added “Sticky” as an extra “S” so they could correctly spell the word success!).
They explain each of these criteria with stories and examples to bring them to life. It’s a thought-provoking read for anyone trying to launch or communicate new ideas.
Why the SUCCES model helps with creating a sticky idea
A big challenge to getting buy-in to your ideas is that most businesses look at ideas logically.
Their normal operations are based on routines and processes that focus on improving how they currently do things. So they prioritise evolutionary ideas that deliver predictable but minor improvements. Logic drives them to reject revolutionary ones which take more risks but have bigger potential rewards.
The challenge is that most breakthrough ideas make little logical sense to start with.
For example, logically you can make good coffee at home for a fraction of the cost you’d pay in a cafe. And that a keyboard on a phone gives you more control than a touchscreen. And that the idea of sharing your personal photos with random strangers is just weird. Yet companies like Starbucks, Apple and Instagram came up with breakthrough ideas that smashed through these “logical” objections.
The lesson here isn’t to ignore logic. It’s that our brains work on more than logic. The SUCCES model helps us tap into these other parts of the brain like our instincts and emotions. Crack those parts of an idea, and the logic starts to magically fall into place behind it. The idea becomes more sticky.
Example - Sydney Pineapple Pizza Company Innovation
Let’s show how you might create a sticky idea by working through an example. We’ll use the Sydney Pineapple Pizza Company, a fictitious business we’ve used as a case study in previous articles.
Our Ansoff Matrix article showed how this company might look for growth ideas via existing and new products and markets.
One of the ideas suggested in that article was to extend their offer from being solely a pizza restaurant to offering other Italian food. This is how the idea was pitched in that session :-
“We could also start selling other products beyond pizza. For example, pasta and sauces.
We’d do product development to create these new products and advertise them to existing customers.
They’d obviously have to be of similar quality to our pizzas. But existing customers would get the connection between pizza and other Italian food. It’s not much of a stretch.”
All well and good. You mostly get what the “idea” is, right? But is it sticky? If you had to make this come to life, would you know where to start? Is the actual offer clear? Will people remember it?
This type of broad, high-level idea usually needs crafting to make it stick. To make it more actionable. Let’s see how the SUCCES criteria can help make it stickier.
Simple
The first challenge is that our original idea is very broad. “Other Italian food” could mean anything from a Caprese salad to a Cappuccino-infused dessert. It has to be clearer.
“Pasta and sauces” is better, but it’s still quite broad. In fact, there are over 350 different shapes of pasta and over 1000 types of pasta once you add in different types of flour and extra ingredients to add flavour and colour. That’s before you consider the different types of sauces and regional variations.
So “pasta and sauces” is not simple enough.
For one thing, it would be hard for the kitchen to gather all the ingredients needed to make all those varieties. For another, you’d run the risk of giving customers choice overload. This is when too much choice overwhelms customers so much they instinctively avoid making any choice at all. (See our why brands matter article for more on this).
To make this idea simpler and stickier, let’s narrow down the types and number of pasta dishes. Let’s say we’ll only make dishes with long, thin pasta e.g. spaghetti, linguine or fettuccine. And that we’ll start with 3-6 dishes, so we don’t overload the kitchen or customer.
Much simpler. A good start.
Unexpected
However, on its own, simplicity can be unexciting. Any competitor could also offer thin pasta dishes. To make the idea sticky, our offer has to do something different to stand out. Something unexpected.
In this case, given the restaurant’s pizzas focus on pineapple, we could create surprise by stretching that into our new pasta dishes.
Ever had pineapple in pasta? No, nor us. But Google it and pineapple sauce recipes for pasta are a thing.
Apparently, the acid from the pineapple works well with creamy sauces as it cuts through the richness. Who knew? There’s a surprising fact to make our idea stickier.
So, already we’ve narrowed down our original broad idea to a range of 3 – 6 thin pasta-based dishes with pineapple-based sauces.
Concrete
At this point, the chef would likely start experimenting with these new dish ideas. To see what they look, smell and taste like.
Making the dishes helps turn them from an abstract concept into something tangible and concrete. This also helps the idea stick.
The idea here would be to start giving the dishes names and specifying what’s in them. Naming and specifying help make an idea stickier.
Let’s say the chef creates a sauce with Abacaxi pineapples that goes well with linguine. (We’ve no idea how this would taste by the way, but it sounds interesting).
Now, the Italian for pineapple is ananas. So this dish would be linguine con ananas Abacaxi. A freshly made linguine marinated in a sweet, sharp and rich spicy pineapple sauce.
Now you can picture that dish, right? Probably sense what it would smell and taste like. The idea is becoming stickier than “pasta and sauces” when we started.
Credible
Of course, you might think that pineapple isn’t a common ingredient in Italian cooking. That might be a challenge. Traditionalists say it should never go near a pizza, for example.
But given our fictitious restaurant has already connected pineapple and Italian cuisine, that shouldn’t be a problem. It has already made a point of zagging while others zig.
However, to strengthen this sticky idea, we could explore ways to make the idea come across as more credible to help persuade the doubters.
For example, we could ask food critics from local newspapers to try it and give their opinion. We could invite our most regular diners to a special dinner to try it. We could even ask the chef to go back through their nonna’s cookbook to find twists on the recipe to make it even more delicious.
The idea here is that ideas get stickier when authoritative voices support them. A food critic, regular customers, the chef’s nonna. These are all credible voices whose support will make the idea stickier.
Emotional
The “stickiness” in an idea refers to how it sticks in people’s memory. Memory is part of our brain’s emotional (limbic) system. So if you can stir emotions with your idea, it’s more likely to stick.
For example, someone says something that makes you feel happy. You’re more likely to remember feeling happy than their actual words. Same thing if they made you angry or fearful.
How would that work in terms of making our sticky idea sticker? Well, luckily with food, it’s relatively easy to stir emotions.
For example, you might use emotional words as you describe the dish. Made with love by our chef based on one of nonna’s old family recipes.
Or you could describe the sensual sensations of eating the dish. Savour the mouth-watering combination of a rich creamy sauce combined with sweet, sharp, sour and spicy pineapple that will leave your taste buds tingling. These types of emotional descriptions bring an idea to life and make it stickier.
Story-based
The last of the sticky idea SUCCES criteria is to use storytelling to make the idea stick. Stories are an important communication tool. They’re something we all use every day, and they’re purpose-built to be easy to remember and share.
Looking back over the 5 previous SUCCES criteria, a lot of story elements are already there. We just need to join them up.
In brand stories, the customer is always the hero.
So, here we’d start by saying our customers love our pineapple pizzas but don’t always want to eat pizza. That’s their “problem”. They sometimes want something other than pizza.
Our “solution” was to explore how pineapple works with pasta dishes. That’s what led to our new special menu of speciality pasta dishes with creamy pineapple sauces.
We tested out different types of pineapple. Sought the opinion of critics, our best customers and nonna. Created dishes that are unique and delicious for anyone who wants pineapple with their pasta.
Stories help bring ideas to life. They help customers understand why and how your idea exists and why they should care. This is the ultimate goal for a sticky idea. Customers both get it and get what’s in it for them.
Conclusion - A sticky idea leads to more success
Of course, this is just a quick example to show how an idea can evolve from being broad and abstract into something much more specific and sticky.
If this was in a real business, you’d do more research and refine it every further. You want your sticky idea to be clear, compelling and creative.
You’d also apply more logical tests to it such as competitor reactions, specific requirements and initial thoughts on the price and costs. (See the idea screener in our innovation guide for more on these).
There are many other models you can use to craft an idea. However, the SUCCES model is a great starting point as it helps you tackle the instinctive and emotional elements of an idea before you dive into its logic.
Check out our creative thinking guide and easy creative thinking article for more on this. Or get in touch if you need help with how to craft a sticky idea.
Photo credits
Person sheeting dough : Photo by Jorge Zapata on UnsplashPhoto by Jorge Zapata on Unsplash
Simple Scrabble Tile : Photo by Pablo Arroyo on Unsplash
Surprised Monkey : Photo by Jamie Haughton on Unsplash
Glasses : Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash
Person reading with sparkly lights : Photo by Nong V on Unsplash
Food preparation : Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash
Woman reading storytelling book : Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
