Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Here’s another book that walks the talk by grabbing you at the book shelf before you even view a single page. The bright orange/gold cover catches your eye and directs you to five key elements on the cover alone.

1. Bold color
2. Catchy title
3. Intriguing subtitle that peaks your curiosity
4. Authored by brothers which is rare
5. At first glance you would swear there was an authentic piece of wrinkled duct tape slapped across the cover of the book. It’s not a photo, you can feel the ridges.

Why are these things so important? They tell you that the authors have accomplished more on their book cover alone than many others can claim within hundreds of pages. It tells you that they know what they’re talking about and they practice what they preach. Of course, you’ll continue to explore further. And I can promise you that you’re going to discover even greater value within the text.

This book has taken a few shots from critics as being nothing more than “Advertising 101.” While the content may very well prove those critics to be correct, I can assure you that the tips, tools, strategies, research, case studies, and principles have been expertly repackaged in such a way as they will “stick” with readers and prove extremely beneficial in the future.

In what will certainly become a classic, the brothers Heath—Chip, a professor at Stanford’s business school, and Dan, a teacher and textbook publisher—offer an entertaining, practical guide to effective communication. Drawing extensively on psychosocial studies on memory, emotion and motivation, their study is couched in terms of “stickiness”—that is, the art of making ideas unforgettable.

At one time or another, we all have a message we hope will “stick” with our targeted audience. It doesn’t matter if we’re selling products, services, ideas, organizations, locations, change, theories, or any one of dozens of other possibilities. It all boils down to how well we communicate our message. The authors prove this point at they share so many examples that will immediately trigger your memory and result in a mental “ah-ha!”

• They’ll answer the question of why certain commercials “stick” in your mind forever while others are quickly forgotten.
• They’ll explain how President Kennedy’s stirring call to “land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth” within a decade “stuck” with so many citizens from coast to coast.
• You’ll learn the inside story of Subway’s Jared campaign―quite a dramatic behind-the-scenes story besides being a near-perfect example of storytelling in marketing.
• You’ll hear the gruesome urban legend about a man who succumbs to a barroom flirtation only to wake up in a tub of ice, victim of an organ-harvesting ring. What makes such stories memorable and ensures their spread around the globe?

The authors credit six key principles and illustrate each with a host of stories:

simplicity
unexpectedness
concreteness
credibility
emotions
stories.

(Please note that the initial letters spell out “success”—well, almost.)

Although these six elements seem like common sense, they are woefully under-applied in today’s business communication. We see daily examples of this fact in most every industry.

Throughout the book, sidebars show how bland messages can be made intriguing. The book is a fast-read peppered with exercises to test the techniques proposed. Some examples act as pop quizzes and engage readers in moments of self-reflection.

It’s not often that a business book is well-written, well-organized, and drives home a critical message. Made to Stick should be required reading for executives who need to get their message across. If you are someone who needs to persuade, lead, or just communicate, you owe it to yourself to buy this book. It’s well researched, easy to read and hard to forget.

(This book review was originally published in 2008 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 17.)

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home
by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe

The world’s first e-mail message was sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson.

171 billion e-mails are sent each day, meaning almost 2 million e-mails are sent every second!

The New York Times reports that 62% of all e-mail is spam and about 10% contains viruses.

Unsolicited e-mail earned the name “spam” because it resembled a Monty Python skit where a chorus of Vikings drowned out other sounds by singing “spam, spam, spam.”

The time spent deleting spam costs United States businesses $21.6 billion annually.

The Productivity Institute of Stratford, Connecticut, reports that the average person today receives around 150 communications each day via e-mail, phone, hard mail, memos, circulars, faxes, etc.

Communication consists of 55% facial expression and body language.

Communication consists of 38% voice inflection.

Communication consists of 7% words.

Therefore, when communicating by e-mail, you lose 93% of your effectiveness.

Add those stats to the fact that the majority of us learned how to e-mail through osmosis at home or on the job, and it becomes quite evident why e-mail can cause major problems, misunderstandings, and hard feelings on a regular basis. This book will most likely be your first introduction to the do’s and don’ts of proper e-mail etiquette.

The name of this book is actually an acronym derived from an easy, four-question checklist designed to help you determine whether you should hit the Send key after composing your e-mail.

S stands for Simple.
E stands for Effective.
N stands for Necessary.
D stands for Done.

In the spirit of revealing how little we actually know about the fine art of proper e-mailing, take a look at some of what you’ll learn within a mere 228 pages:

• A Brief History of E-mail
• The Anatomy of an E-mail
• The Six Essential Types of E-mail
• How to Write (the Perfect) E-mail
• The Emotional E-mail
• The Eight Deadly Sins of E-mail
• The Seven Big Reasons to Love E-mail
• Eight Reasons You May Not Want to E-mail
• Six Reasons to Send a Letter Instead of an E-mail
• Three Reasons to Send a Fax Instead of an E-mail
• The Seven Reasons to Use the Telephone Instead of E-mail
• The Five Reasons to IM and Text Instead of E-mail
• Big Moments in E-mail History
• The Anatomy of an E-mail
• The Politics of Cc
• The ABC’s of Cc’s and Bcc’s
• The Eleven Most Common Types of Attachments
• The Six Essential Types of E-mail
• The E-mail That Can Land You in Jail

(This book review was originally published in 2007 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 16.)