A guy named Cabot Phillips recently went onto the campus of Florida International University and asked students:
“What is your opinion of socialism?”
Many students, at least in the edited video I saw, were all for it:
“I support it.”
“Socialism is more geared toward helping the governed.”
“I have family in Europe, they go to college for free. Their health care is paid for, they don’t have to worry about it at all.”
Next, Cabot Phillips asked those same students:
“So if there’s a GPA disparity on campus, would you support a policy where people at the top spread the wealth and give some of their GPA to people at the bottom?”
Uh.
Hem.
Haw.
The same people now said:
“Give? Like help them? I’m all for helping. I’m not about giving.”
“No one’s gonna work for it.”
“I sacrificed a lot to get my GPA, and I wouldn’t want to help people who didn’t make those same sacrifices.”
Now, I’m not here to poke at pro-socialist college students.
And I’m not even sure this anti-socialist “gotcha” really changed anybody’s mind.
But I thought it was a great illustration of a sticky message, as defined in Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick.
By my count, this “socialist GPA” idea satisfies all but 1 of the 6 SUCCES principles that the Heaths say lie behind most sticky messages.
I won’t spell those SUCCES principles out here. I recommend Made to Stick for that.
However, if you want some concrete examples of how to write sticky, SUCCES-ful sales emails, check out the following: