Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Chapter 2 explores how to grab and keep people’s attention. Sticky ideas are initially engaging, which means they should be designed to provoke surprise and interest. Surprise conditions people to pay attention while interest allows people to remain engaged. “The Surprise Brow” points out that surprise is universal and biologically activating since being surprised forces people to open their eyes wider to take in more information.

The easiest way to grab attention is to break a pattern since the human brain focuses on disruptions. For example, an ad created by the US Department of Transportation to promote child car safety begins like a typical car commercial, with a family going on a drive, but it abruptly ends when they are killed in a roadside accident. The message is unexpected in that it defies people’s existing schemas about car commercials, and it challenges people’s tendency to become complacent while driving since most trips end safely.

“Avoiding Gimmickry” warns that surprise must be related to the core of the message for the idea to stick. Surprise must be post-predictable—shocking at first but eventually seen to be logical and relevant. For example, when Hoover Adams declared that getting names into the Daily Record took precedence even over profit, he used surprising