My take
The enemy of memory is the Curse of Knowledge, you cannot un-know what you know. Every brief, tagline, and tutorial I write now gets checked against SUCCESs.
What is Made to Stick about?
Sticky messages share six traits, Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories, and most corporate communication fails all six at once.
Who should read Made to Stick?
Anyone whose ideas must survive transmission: teachers, writers, founders, strategists.
Key ideas from Made to Stick
- Find the lead, don't bury it
- Concrete beats abstract every time
- The Curse of Knowledge is the default failure mode
- Stories simulate and inspire
- Test ideas against SUCCESs, not taste.
Is Made to Stick worth reading?
The definitive craft book for the retention half of messaging, the vault's other marketing picks cover persuasion and sharing; this one makes the idea survive the trip.
Best for
Writers, educators, and strategists fighting abstraction and jargon in their communication.
Not ideal for
Readers wanting distribution mechanics, this is about what stays in the head, not how it travels.
What materially matters
- The SUCCESs checklist applied to real messages with before/after rewrites.
- The Curse of Knowledge and its antidotes, concrete language and testing.
- The story types that make audiences simulate and care.
Practical use cases
- Rewrite one core message of yours through all six SUCCESs letters and compare comprehension.
- Run a curse audit on onboarding docs: flag every abstraction a newcomer cannot picture.
Pros
- A memorable framework you will actually use years later.
- Pairs craft advice with concrete rewrites, not just analysis.
Limitations
- Business-book case pacing may feel dated.
- Retention is its single lens, sharing and persuasion live in other books.
Made to Stick FAQ
Is this the same idea as Contagious?
Deliberately distinct, Stick optimizes memory, Contagious optimizes sharing; read one and you will want the other.
Which edition does this entry reference?
The 2007 Random House hardcover (ISBN 1400064287); the SUCCESs framework is unchanged across printings.
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