“The enemy is noise. The goal is clarity.”

—Jon Stewart^[1]

“The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads.

People read what interests them and sometimes it’s an ad.”

—Howard Gossage^[2]

First, a Story…

In 2018, a question was posed and answered in a single social media post:

“Why are so many young people flocking to brands on social media for love, guidance, and attention? i’ll tell you why. they’re isolated from real communities, working service jobs they hate while barely making ends meat, and are living w/unchecked personal/mental health problems”^[3],^[4]

It was a relatable message from an unexpected messenger: Steak-umm, a purveyor of frozen sliced meat. People called the company wondering if its account had been hacked.^[5] The post resulted in nearly 40,000 likes and 10,000 reposts.

The next half-dozen posts from @Steak_umm took on topics ranging from student debt to homelessness and mental health. The brand even took on marketing culture itself, observing that Millennials: “grew up through the dawn of internet culture and mass advertising drilled into their media adoption, now they’re being resold their childhoods by remakes, spinoffs, and other cheap nostalgia, making them more cynical to growth or authenticity.”^[6]

During the early months of COVID, the company’s account offered suggestions regarding media literacy: a “friendly reminder in times of uncertainty and misinformation: anecdotes are not data. Good data is carefully measured and collected information based on a range of subject-dependent factors, including, but not limited to controlled variables, meta-analysis, and randomization.”^[7] That single tweet again went viral and resulted in write-ups in media outlets like AdAge, Fast Company, Forbes, CBS, and the Washington Post.

In turn, the account acknowledged that “we’re a frozen meat brand posting ads inevitably to misdirect people and generate sales, so this is peak irony, but hey we live in a society so please make informed decisions to the best of your ability and don’t let anecdotes dictate your worldview ok.”^[8]

And in case its approach wasn’t transparent enough, Steak-umm clarified “as a company, our end goal will always be selling product, but rather than promoting ads overtly crafted to sell during this crisis, we are committed to: 1) providing factual, helpful information 2) bridging our cultural polarization 3) helping people who are helping people.”^[9]

The Takeaway

It’s difficult to stand apart from the crowd on social platforms in a way that garners positive attention.

Steak-umm’s management initially set a goal of reaching a younger demographic.

One formidable obstacle was the product it was selling. Surveys indicated that younger audiences prefer food that is free of antibiotics and hormones, all natural, sustainable and low in sodium—and Steak-umm “is decidedly none of these things.”^[10] Rather, it’s a “brick of ‘homogenized meat,’” that’s formed of what’s left after “all of the primary cuts … are removed. The emulsified meat is pressed into a loaf and sliced, frozen and packaged.”^[11] That’s not something many people find appetizing. As one food-based publication put it in 2012, “the world’s grossest meat product is probably Steak-umms.”^[12]

That’s a tough sell.

There were other ways to highlight the product, such as framing it in terms of convenience. The company did just that with this 1982 advertisement. But such messaging would almost certainly be lost in a sea of similar pitches from similar companies selling similar products.

Where most companies would zig, Steak-umm chose to zag.

And it worked. Steak-umm found its voice, and it was seen as original enough that it couldn’t easily be copied. The good feelings people had from interacting with the brand’s online content transferred to the product itself. Even though the company hadn’t done any additional marketing beyond social posts, sales were “up double digits across the board.”^[13] And in terms of online metrics, the effort was “pretty much everything a social media manager could hope for,” as Steak-umm “grew its audience, built community around its social presence, had overwhelmingly positive public reactions, and even raised money for a nonprofit organization aimed at addressing hunger.”^[14]

The company didn’t shy away from its identity as a frozen meat product. It humanized itself, and was authentic and transparent in such a way that the product itself was interesting but irrelevant. The unexpected incongruity between the messenger and the message made the content more intriguing. Minimizing the product certainly isn’t a goal of most companies, but in the case of “the world’s grossest meat product,” that vanishing act and the traction gained on social media was remarkable.

That exact social strategy won’t work for every organization, so this chapter illuminates a few other viable paths. As a practitioner, you’ll have to determine the needs of your client and their audience, and then take the necessary steps to strengthen those connections.

Introduction to Message Development

This chapter emerges from the chapters that came before it, as successful message development requires a working knowledge of various topics, including how to build relationships, frame messages, and craft a brand’s personality.

The study of communication has always been about the study of messages—their production, the messages themselves, and how they are interpreted.^[15] Messages shape and are shaped by context. The negotiated process of sharing and creating meaning occurs within that broader context.^[16]

Developing the message is the first step in that process, and focuses on crafting clear, consistent, and compelling messages for a specific audience, delivered in a specific way. A long-term creative strategy should be sustainable. Remember, we’re in the business of building bonfires rather than shooting off bottle rockets. So, gather ‘round, and let’s get into it.

Information & Attention

Each day, we attempt to wade across a flowing stream of ideas, information, and entertainment—each bit of which is vying for our attention. The notion of feeling inundated by different messages has been around for decades, with Nobel award-winning economist Herbert Simon arguing the balance between information and attention was a simple equation of supply and demand.

Fast-forward a few decades and the imbalance in the supply and demand of information and attention has only become more pronounced. This was recognized at the turn of the 21st century, as the term Attention Economy was used to describe how “Attention is the real currency of businesses and individuals” and “understanding and managing attention is now the single most important determinant of business success.”^[18]

Message development matters because in a competitive attention economy, an average message is perceived as background noise, if it’s even perceived at all. As Howard Gossage, a legend of advertising known as “The Socrates of San Francisco” once put it: “The buying of time or space is not the taking out of a hunting license on someone else’s private preserve, but is the renting of a stage on which we may perform.”^[19] In the era of social media, there are a lot more eyeballs watching a lot more onstage performances — so it’s worth learning a couple of fancy dance moves.

Individual & Group Psychology

There are times when the modern era seems to exist in isolation relative to everything that preceded it. For goodness’ sake, we’re getting deep thoughts and life tips from a frozen meat company. So it goes.

But as quickly as tactics and social platforms change, other elements of human nature are enduring and slower to evolve. In the late 19th century, Queen Victoria was used to sell Cadbury’s Cocoa,^[20] while Pope Leo XIII and Thomas Edison endorsed Vin Mariani, which was a “potent mix of Bordeaux wine and cocaine.”^[21] A theory of consumer behavior developed around that time posited that people look to the social class immediately above their own for behavioral cues on what to like or pay attention to.^[22]

Bernays and Fleischman understood that a “fundamental study of group and individual psychology is required [to]…determine how readily individuals or groups will accept modifications of their viewpoints.”^[23] They believed that the primary contribution from PR practitioners was the ability “to understand and analyze obscure tendencies of the public mind,” using “personal experience and knowledge,” to “appeal to…instincts and universal desires.”^[24] And, in an observation that could have been uttered last week rather than 1923: “People accept the facts which come to them through existing channels. They like to hear new things in accustomed ways.”^[25]

Therefore, it becomes important to understand not only where the audience is, but also where—and who—they want to be. In this way, a brand can reinforce a consumer’s Aspirational Identity, which is based in part on how the consumer views themselves, but is also primarily who they want to be. To that end, the brand helps the consumer on their journey. Companies such as Nike and Harley-Davidson “became iconic not by making sneakers or motorcycles, but because they helped consumers see themselves as who they want to be.”^[26]

Fun & Games Part One: Gamification

Throughout the day, the desire to be a better version of ourselves is often suspended for a moment, and we’d be just as happy with a quick laugh or nugget of entertainment. Strategic Communication approaches that understand this must also appreciate the potential drawbacks of using gamification, humor, and memes—because it’s all fun and games until a brand gets hurt.

Gamification is the application of game designs, mechanics, and thinking to non-game contexts.^[27] Perhaps you’ve experienced gamification in the classroom, where an instructor doled out gold stars or pieces of candy for correct answers. Maybe you’ve used a rewards card at a favorite coffee shop or restaurant. Or perhaps you set a timer to see how many household chores you could do in a certain timeframe. That last example may not be very fun, but it applies game thinking to a non-game context, so it still counts as gamification. The idea is to first determine a desired outcome, and then find creative ways to incentivize certain actions and behaviors.

Gamification is a booming industry. Estimates vary, but the global gamification market was estimated between $10 billion and $15 billion in 2022, and is projected to increase to as much as $95 billion by 2030.^[28],^[29] That expansion is due in part to technological advances as well as consumer preferences and the effectiveness of gamification.

There are at least a couple of reasons why gamification is effective, including internal motivation and social comparison. In other words, we enjoy achieving things, and we also care about our performance in relation to others.^[30] It also works because it engages people. Engaging people “creates fans, and fans are more valuable than a catchy tagline that makes people take one action, one time” and is particularly “effective in campaigns designed to change behavior.^[31]

Gamification may be used by organizations in a variety of ways, depending on the desired outcome. Common examples include incentivizing social followers to interact with posts by offering contests, as well as various programs and badges designed to enhance customer loyalty. For event planning, gamification may include things like contests and giveaways, as well as other reward systems that offer guests status and access.^[32] In addition to the benefits of engagement on the front end, gamification can also lend key insights on the back end regarding customer attitudes and behavior.^[33] Finally, gamification can also be used internally within an organization to spur employee learning and productivity.

There are a couple of caveats. First, the service and product need to be good enough to interest people, otherwise they simply won’t care to play, regardless of how creative and compelling the game might be. Second, the gamification needs to be done well. In other words, it needs to be a fun game that someone wants to play rather than “a game” built on a flimsy premise.^[34]

Fun & Games Part Two: Humor & Memes

Humor is difficult to execute. Done right, it appears natural and effortless. When done “almost right,” it can appear as though a brand is trying too hard to fit in. Done wrong, and it can have lasting negative consequences. It should be deployed with care.

There are four basic types of humor: self-enhancing, affiliative, aggressive, and self-defeating.^[37] Understanding how each is likely to be perceived can help determine whether a response may be appropriate.

The first two types of humor are generally positive in nature. Self-enhancing humor is the benign use of humor to enhance the self, where someone has a humorous outlook on life even in the face of adversity, and includes the use of humor to cope with stress. Affiliative humor is the benign use of humor to enhance one’s relationship with others through the use of jokes and spontaneous banter. It’s a non-hostile, tolerant use of humor that brings people together. It affirms the self and others, and can include inside jokes with gentle teasing of in-group members and making fun of disliked groups.

The last two types of humor are generally negative in nature. Aggressive humor is what we’d typically associate with bullies who have little regard for its impact on others. Here, humor is used to enhance the self at the expense of others, typically through sarcasm, teasing, and put-downs. Self-defeating humor is the use of humor to enhance relationships at the expense of the self. It can include self-deprecating humor, and laughing along while being disparaged as the butt of the joke. It can work in small doses but becomes psychologically unhealthy over time.^[38]

And it’s tough to discuss humor in an online context without devoting a paragraph or two to memetic communication, or memes. The term meme comes from the Greek word “mimeme,” or “imitated thing,” and was popularized by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to discuss evolutionary principles. The idea is that in evolution, genes replicate—and ideas and cultural phenomena ranging from fashion to slang and architecture—replicate in a similar way.^[39] In the early 1990s, Wired magazine adapted the term to describe an infectious idea in an online context, but it took another 20 years or so for it to enter common use.^[40] While memes can be image macros, or pictures with clever phrases, it should be noted that the term can be applied in a number of other contexts. Memes themselves are tiny pieces of culture that can be attached to other texts. For example, a meme could be an image, phrase, or song.

There are four essential characteristics of memes: message, evolution, malleability, and effect. First, a key message is understood through commonly shared knowledge and experiences—and that message may take the form of an image, text, audio, or video—or some combination of those forms. Evolution simply means that the meme isn’t static, but is adopted and remixed online. Malleability refers to how characteristics of the original meme are changed, while still retaining enough traces of the initial message to be understood. Because memes are malleable, audiences have the ability to alter how they are understood and spread. As such, memes provide audiences an outlet to “play” with culture or the ability to clash a meme with another text for comedic purposes. Finally, effect refers to the need to attain a certain level of common understanding, as “the most important part of the meme is its virality,” and without such popularity, “the message won’t matter.”^[41] The acronym produced by those four characteristics (MEME) may be a helpful mnemonic device. Websites like KnowYourMeme offer background details regarding many popular memes.

Messages that are Made to Stick

It’s one thing to understand online culture. It’s another thing to contribute to online culture by creating content that goes viral. And it’s even more difficult to craft messages that are both popular and enduring.

To go back to our favorite metaphor, we’ve covered the basics of bottle rockets, and will now turn to building a bonfire. For help on that front, we’ll fall back on six basic principles of messages that are built to last.

In the best-selling book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath—professors, brothers, and co-authors—outline six characteristics of messages that stick with the audience: simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and stories (which they refer to as the SUCCESs model).^[42] A sticky message has at least one of those qualities, and messages that are “stickier” tend to feature two or more of those qualities.

Simple describes how something is simple and profound. The challenge is to find “the core” of an idea, and — not “dumb it down,” but distill it down to its essence. It’s the key message you want to convey. It should be concise and memorable, similar to the discussion of taglines in Chapter 7. Proverbs like “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” or “The grass is always greener on the other side” have stuck around for hundreds of years because they are succinct, easily remembered, and impart a larger truth. As Heath & Heath put it, “Simple = Core + Compact.”^[44]

When something is unexpected, it violates our expectations. A cheap version of this is to surprise someone — think of a jump scare in a movie or video game. A more enduring iteration of the unexpected involves arousing someone’s interest and curiosity. When something is unexpected, it can compel someone to pay attention.

Concrete is the opposite of an abstract idea. Mission and vision statements are often filled with abstract thoughts that sound nice for a moment and are forgotten as quickly as they were read. Ideas should be absolutely clear and explained “in terms of sensory information” as that is “the only way to ensure that our idea will mean the same thing to everyone in our audience.”^[45] Concrete messages help audiences to understand and remember.

Credible messages are believable. Sometimes authority, status, or expertise can provide credibility on a topic—like on a projected path of a hurricane, for example. For many other things, however, credibility is a matter of honesty and trustworthiness.^[46] If a person or brand is perceived as telling the truth, and has the appearance of being a reliable source, they are viewed as credible, regardless of their authority, status, or expertise on the matter. Of course, this also explains why some brands lean on influencers for messaging, while others may rely on vivid details or statistics to enhance their own credibility. Credible messages help audiences to believe and agree.

A message must have an emotional component, as people tend to only care about a message if they feel something from it. (Be sure to read the interview with Dan Heath in the next section, especially the portion in which he discusses “the rider and the elephant.”) Emotional messages enhance the likelihood someone will care. Using statistics, which may enhance credibility, activates the analytical part of our brains, making it less likely the target audience will feel a sense of emotion.

Those emotions have to resonate with the target audience, too. Texas had a littering problem, and found that “Please don’t litter” signs didn’t work, because “the typical litterer in Texas was an 18- to 35-year-old, pickup-driving male who liked sports and country music” and didn’t care for most emotional appeals.^[47] What followed was an immensely successful campaign: “Don’t mess with Texas.” And rather than a host of random celebrities, the state partnered with famous Texans including members of the Dallas Cowboys, guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, and actor Matthew McConaughey. The campaign worked, not only in terms of recall, but also in curbing littering throughout the state.^[48]

The importance of stories has been discussed throughout the text, notably in the Brand Storytelling chapter. A good story contains many of the other elements of stickiness. The moral of a story may be simple. Many stories feature unexpected elements or plot twists. They often involve vivid, concrete descriptions of people, places, and events. They can conjure up emotions in the storyteller as well as the listener. Stories and storytelling are often what cause people to act.

Experts Talk Back:

Three questions with Dan Heath, New York Times best-selling author and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University.

Dan and his brother Chip co-authored Made to Stick, which has been translated into dozens of languages, made several “best of” lists, and was named one of the top 100 business books of all time

Not really, to be honest. For better and worse, it was designed to be an evergreen book. It was designed to be a set of observations about what makes ideas sticky that is independent of the content of those messages, and is independent of the vessel or format of those messages.

I think social media has changed a lot of things. It certainly pioneered new vessels for communication. It certainly has a lot of psychological ramifications, like the addictive aspects and the arms race for attention. But in terms of “How do you make a message stick?” I’m not really sure anything has changed.

And a corollary matter is: I’m not really sure how much of social media is intended to stick in the way that we mean it in the book. Like, you watch a great TikTok—a new dance craze—and it’s awesome. It holds your attention. It’s entertaining. But three months later, are you really thinking—I mean, you might recall having seen it if someone mentioned it to you, but it’s not really a vessel of persuasion or influence—it’s just entertainment. Or if your cousin posts a picture of himself or herself in Cairo, you might enjoy seeing that, but it doesn’t really mean it’s a sticky message. The point being that it’s not like I believe Made to Stick explains or corralled all of social media. I just think that making messages stick is a subset of all the different reasons why people communicate.

And for the second question, I think the one trait where I sense a real difference is unexpectedness—that, and maybe emotion for the same reason. I think that so much of social media is about those two, especially with everyone’s desire to go viral. There’s a kind of arms race that happens where what was surprising 20 years ago might be less surprising in the era of TikTok when everything is dramatic and special, and 30 seconds born from six weeks of hard work. And there is an arms race aspect to that. And it’s not saying unexpectedness is unimportant, it’s saying it’s harder to become unexpected because of the competition.

And I think that emotion has a similar flavor where we’ve had our emotions manipulated in so many different ways. Political stuff is heavy on appeals to anger and tribal responses, and there’s certainly a lot of heartstring-pulling from social causes, and that, too, can have a numbing effect with time. So, I don’t know exactly what that means for communicators, other than it probably means it’s harder in a public, competitive message environment like social media or advertising.

I’m really not sure it’s changed that much on others, though. In the classroom, I’m not sure really anything meaningful has changed in 20 years in terms of—if I could be a teacher’s co-pilot, I’m not sure my advice to them would be different than it was 20 years ago. It’s just a function of the competition, perhaps.

One of the major themes throughout our books is change, and how do you create change against all odds? That’s a sub-theme in Made to Stick, and it’s the master theme in some of our other books like Switch. The importance of emotion as a necessary element of communication is something that pops up in our other books, especially Switch, and The Power of Moments.

In Switch, we get into this distinction between what we call “The Rider and The Elephant,” coined by Jonathan Hite, and it’s a metaphor for the two independent systems in our brains that psychologists call the rational system and the emotional system. Let me back up one stage …

I think we’ve all had this experience in life where we know what the right thing to do is: We shouldn’t smoke; we shouldn’t binge on Oreos; we should have that hard conversation with our partner; we should stand up for ourselves with the boss—and then we don’t do any of that.

And so, it’s kind of a puzzle that we live in these brains where we often believe two things at once. Like, I believe I should not eat the Oreos even as I am eating them. Psychologists explain that it’s because of the two systems that we have this rational system that’s good at planning and pontificating and analyzing, and then we have this emotional system that is more visceral and more auto-pilot oriented that can easily dismiss the fancy thinking of the rational system.

So anyway, Jonathan Hite coined the analogy of The Rider and The Elephant to capture those two systems where the elephant is a powerful emotional system. And then the rider is the little rational system that sits on its back. And the significance of the analogy is that when those two disagree about a direction, you can predict who’s going to win that tug of war, and I think that analogy is really important for change, especially in corporations and organizations.

Because so often in organizations when we want people to do something different, we come at them with analysis, memos, charts and graphs, and financial models and so forth. And all of that stuff may be convincing to the rider in the analogy, but meanwhile, there’s an elephant in the brain of every person we’re trying to reach and recruit to our side that is pretty comfortable with the way things were working last week. So, one of the big themes in Switch is that if we want change, we have to motivate the elephant, which requires a very different kind of communication. And that’s a direct point of overlap with the emotion chapter from Made to Stick.

In many ways, the messages are similar in that there needs to be a heart of a message — there needs to be some emotion that provides the fuel for why I should go through the effort of understanding or remembering what you’re saying if it sparks no discernible emotional response whatsoever. And the emotion can be different. You might be fascinated or you might be depressed or you might be angry, or you might be excited or you might be curious — there’s lots of emotions in the world. But the point is, if we don’t know the answer to the question of why—“Why is this worth bothering to remember and to ponder?” then we need to go back to the drawing board.

If I had one piece of advice for anyone in a communication role, it would be to tell stories—full stop.

Stories have this beautiful quality where they encompass almost all of the other traits of sticky ideas. Stories have at least a relative simplicity. Stories almost always have an unexpected component—there’s a plot twist or a surprise. Stories are concrete by definition: There’s real people, or depending on the story, creatures or animals that are doing things that you can imagine or see. They’re not always credible, but if they’re fantastical, you sort of go along with the rules of that world. But as a story, you tell the story of a particular citizen who’s struggling with something in the real world as a way of shedding light on a political issue. Stories have emotion—they make us feel things.

So when in doubt, tell a story.

Summary: Putting it all Together

The task for practitioners is to capture someone’s attention by crafting messages that will be remembered and acted upon—that’s it.

Of course, it’s easier said than done.

The ideas mentioned in the fun and games sections may be appropriate as tactics to convey those messages, but only as part of a larger strategy.

There must first be a solid understanding of the client and audience, and the situation in which the client finds itself. From there, messages should be constructed with purpose, and in a way that exemplifies the principles of simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotion, and stories.

That’s a strategic approach to message development.