We've been passing Make to Stick around the office for quite a while now. It's a great look at an important question: why is it easier to remember things like urban legends than things like mission statements?

To show that it's not just content, the authors give the example of an ad campaign about the amount of saturated fat in movie popcorn. Pretty unlikely to interest people and be remembered, especially the details of how much saturated fat it was. However, the ad campaign showed high-fat daily fare: an omelette, Big Mac, and steak and then told viewers that a small tub of movie popcorn had more saturated fat than those meals combined! If you can make the amount of saturated fat in popcorn memorable, you can make pretty much anything memorable. The rest of the book talks about specific strategies for making messages as remarkable as urban legends (without having to be about stolen kidneys).

Although Made to Stick talks exclusively about informational messages, most of the advice is applicable to story as well. In fact, several of the book's suggestions involve creating a story, since people are much better at remembering a narrative than disconnected facts. If you're interested in making memorable stories, you owe it to yourself to read through this book.