Why Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck
What is that makes urban myths so persistent but many everyday truths so
eminently forgettable?
How do newspapers set about ensuring that their
headlines make you want to read on?
And why do we remember complicated
stories but not complicated facts?
In the course of over ten years of
study, Chip and Dan Heath have established what it is that determines
whether particular ideas or stories stick in our minds or not, and "Made
to Stick" is the fascinating outcome of their painstaking
research.
Packed full of case histories and thought-provoking anecdotes,
it shows, among other things, how one Australian scientist convinced the
world he'd discovered the cause of stomach ulcers by drinking a glass
filled with bacteria, how a gifted sports reporter got people to watch a
football match by showing them the outside of the stadium, and how
high-concept pitches such as 'Jaws on a spaceship' ("Alien") and 'Die
Hard on a bus' ("Speed") convince movie executives to invest vast sums
of money in a project on the basis of almost no information.
Entertaining and informative by turns, this is a fascinating and
multi-faceted account of a key area of human behavior.
At the same
time, by showing how we can all use such cleverly devised strategies as
the 'Velcro Theory of Memory' and 'curiosity gaps', it offers superbly
practical insights, setting out principles we all can adopt to make sure
that we get our ideas across effectively.
[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ]
Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.97 out of 5 ( 47,747 Ratings , 1954 Reviews - As on July 18 2017)
My Rating: 3 out of 5
My Comments:Interesting content and narrative that bring awareness regarding what to do to make our ideas and messages stick. But it falls short of describing how to make them stick through Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional Stories. The book has more of anecdotal content than specific techniques. However it provides a fairly decent launchpad to develop sticky communications.
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Synopsis
- Describes cutting edge developments in the power and possibilities of the Web
- Explains how Google and other leading companies have developed ever smarter searching and advert placement
- Shows how 'Web intelligence' is emerging
from increasingly smart algorithms that can sift, select, aggregate, and
weigh up relevant information
- Explains the principles of logic and computer science behind these apparently intelligent procedures
- Considers possible similarities with how the human brain handles data
- Looks at new applications such as self-driving cars
As
we use the Web for social networking, shopping, and news, we leave a
personal trail.
These days, linger over a Web page selling lamps, and
they will turn up at the advertising margins as you move around the
Internet, reminding you, tempting you to make that purchase. Search
engines such as Google can now look deep into the data on the Web to
pull out instances of the words you are looking for.
And there are pages
that collect and assess information to give you a snapshot of changing
political opinion.
These are just basic examples of the growth of "Web
intelligence", as increasingly sophisticated algorithms operate on the
vast and growing amount of data on the
Web, sifting, selecting, comparing, aggregating, correcting; following
simple but powerful rules to decide what matters.
While original
optimism for Artificial Intelligence declined, this new kind of machine
intelligence is emerging as the Web grows ever larger and more
interconnected.
Gautam Shroff takes us on a journey through the
computer science of search, natural language, text mining, machine
learning, swarm computing, and semantic reasoning, from Watson to
self-driving cars.
This machine intelligence may even mimic at a basic
level what happens in the brain.
Readership: Popular science and mathematics readers interested in computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as
students of these courses.
[Source: Oxford University Press website.]
My Comments:
I completed an online course "Web Intelligence and Big Data" taught by the author a few months back. This book was released towards the ending of the course and I bought a Kindle edition to understand the topics better.
Gautam Shroff has taken a very logical and systematic approach to explain the fascinating area of Web Intelligence.
While the topics in this book are really interesting, the verbose explanations given by the author on many of the concepts were quite confusing. More illustrations would have helped. The book has just about half-a-dozen pictures, which for a content of 300 odd pages on technical topics is quite less.
It will take another reading of the book for me to fully grasp the explanations.
But overall this book is quite a good introduction to Web Intelligence, though not a very light read.
Links:
Goodreads Rating - 4.2 out of 5 ( 5 Ratings)
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Author: Martin Lindstrom
Published: 2009
Publisher: Random House Business Books
Paperback: 256 pages
Buy from Flipkart
The sales figures are indicators of the effectiveness of an advertising campaign or a brand. But they don't tell us why they are effective. Market surveys are also not reliable in answering this question since the buyer responses and their buying patterns don't match. The terabytes of consumer demographics and buying pattern data collected and mined using sophisticated software at the best will spew out correlations like for e.g. a young man aged between 30 and 35, driving a SUV and living in a suburb is twice likely to prefer brand X over brand Y. This may help in identifying a target market but the question what is it that triggers the buying decision remains unanswered.
Neuromarketing is an emerging field where sophisticated techniques like fMRI and EEG are used to study the responses of the brain cells to the marketing stimuli. This will help us to learn why a buyer bought what he bought and what part of the brain told him to take that decision. Thus neuromarketing may help in creation of Purple Cow (remarkable) products and services and advertisements that will entice the buyers and make money for the producers.
This book describes the author's pioneering three‐year, $7 million dollar neuromarketing study conducted on over 2000 people from around the world using fMRI and EEG. The results of this study reveals why so much of what we thought we knew about why we buy is wrong. It shatters several advertising myths and unearths some interesting facts.
A very interesting read with lots of fascinating examples !
Visit the author's website for more stuff.
Key Takeaways:
- Product placements in TV shows and movies will be effective only if they form an integral part of the storyline.
- Everything we observe (or read about) someone else (especially a celebrity) buying or using, we want to imitate as well. This is due to mirror neurons firing up in our brain.
- Purchasing decisions are driven by dopamine one of the chemicals in brain which produces short spurts of seductive pleasure sensation.
- Subliminal advertising which are designed to appeal to our dreams, fears, wants and desires, are more effective as compared to logo or brand images in stimulating our interest in a product or compelling us to buy.
- Rituals, superstitions and religion can exert a potent influence on how and what we buy.
- Impulse buying is in reality built on a lifetime of associations - some positive, some negative - that we are not consciously aware of. When we make an instinctive decision about what to buy our brain summons and scans incredible amount of memories, facts and emotions and squeezes them into a rapid response (called somatic marker) that dictates what you put inside your shopping cart.
- Visual images are far more effective and more memorable when they are coupled with another sense - like sound or smell. (Sensory Branding)
- Sex, beauty and celebrities do not necessarily sell products since they hijack the consumer's attention away from the informative content in the advertisements.
