By Darren Gilbert

Speaking at the 2016 Marketing Indaba, Rita Doherty, chief strategic officer of FCB Africa set out her six principles that will help you to make ‘stickier’ content that is both easy to notice and difficult to forget. Using the book, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, the principles are based on the acronym – SUCCES.

S is for Simple

Brands have a lot to say. As Doherty points out, in the past she would ask clients what the one thing they’d want to say was, and they’d come back with at least 10 different things. However, if you want your work to be remembered, you can only say one thing.

Sounds simple enough, but it’s where many marketers fall, believes Doherty.

“It is very difficult and can be painful to come down to a core idea,” says Doherty. “But if you do not reduce execution to a core idea, your chances of getting any message through drops dramatically.”

However, making things simple doesn’t mean dumbing it down. It just means finding one idea and expressing it. “Most advertising is going out to pull people in,” she adds. “To pull people in that are not interested, you need one idea.”

U is for Unexpected

If you want to grab someone’s attention, you need to be and act different. The same goes for your advertising. Do something unexpected.

Unexpected is important because we see countless things every day. We filter out everything that is familiar, focusing instead on what breaks the norm.

Doherty explains: “We are programmed to pay attention to anything that is disruptive. Our minds are programmed to look at anything that is unusual.” Don’t go overboard, though, and disruption is not about going ballistic. But you have to do something surprising.

Look at a category that your business is in and see how it behaves. Then ask yourself how it can be done differently. Then go out and do it.

C is for Concrete

According to Doherty, marketing messages can fail because the strategic language hasn’t been properly translated into consumer language.

For example – Meet your business objectives. It’s a sales pitch. No consumer talks like that. Instead, you need to transform your message and make it tangible for your audience to grasp.

One way of doing that is through rhymes and alliteration, says Doherty. “You put something into some kind of rhyme and it sticks more,” she says. “That’s how our minds find it easier to remember.”

Another way is through puns. Working on Savanna, Doherty expressed her surprise at the success. “We found that people had fun around these silly little puns.” They aren’t complicated. They work well because they speak directly to the consumer; including them in on the joke and giving them something to remember.

C is for Credible

Marketers are obsessed with giving people reasons to believe. And while there are a number of strategies around infusing credibility into your message, Doherty’s favourite is the Frank Sinatra principle.

“If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere”. Essentially, as Tam Pham writes for The Hustle, “This works because people are more willing to take small chances on you.” But you’re leveraging your credibility to further yourself.

Anyone remember the Volvo Trucks advert with Jean Claude van Damme doing the splits? It works well because it’s a big brand, pulling his name on the line for the sake of a product.

“If you want to add credibility, you have to give it oomph,” says Doherty. Also, don’t tell people you’re credible. Show them.

E is for Emotion

As advertisers, you can forget everything else, but if you forget to place emotion in your content, your idea is dead.

“We have this thing – the mirror neuron system. It’s our physiological brain locking people together,” says Doherty. “It allows us to feel something in response to what someone else is feeling.”

This is because our need to belong, according to Doherty who sites behavioural economics, is the biggest behaviour driver. “We do most things in an attempt to connect or fit in with others.”

This actually makes it simple to judge how good your content is. If you’re sitting with a piece of content and you want to see if it’s going to work, ask yourself this: does it make you feel something?

“The stronger it makes you feel something, the better it’s going to work at cutting through [the clutter],” points out Doherty.

S is for Stories

As human beings, stories are our preferred way of receiving and retaining information.

Not convinced? Do you enjoy every advert on TV? What about those pop up ads on YouTube before you watch a video? “I struggle to give those 10 seconds to those ads that interrupt me on YouTube,” says Doherty. “Even 5 seconds is painful. And yet I will give two hours to a movie because I want to watch it.”

The difference is that one is a story.

Similar to the ‘Concrete’ principle, it’s about taking your information and transforming it into something people can understand, says Doherty. And stories humanise information.

The aim of creating a sticky idea isn’t to tick every available box. However, the more principles that you can incorporate, the sticker your idea will be.