The third point to making messages and ideas stick, is the idea of concreteness. The important point here is show, don't tell. Urban legends tend to be very concrete. You might have heard of famous urban legend that a friend of yours might have told you about a business traveler. They were on a long trip and they were at a particular airport hotel. They were having drinks in the lobby. They were by themselves. No one was really talking to them. Suddenly are very attractive woman comes up and says, "I've been watching you all night. Can I buy you a drink?" Your friend was very flattered. He's a normal looking guy. He doesn't get that much attention. This beautiful woman asked him to buy a drink. He says sure. They had a great conversation. They enjoyed chatting, and the next thing he knew, he woke up in the morning in a bathtub full of ice. Groggily couldn't figure out what was going on. He turned to the side and on the mirror was written, call 911, I've stolen your kidney. Now, you've probably heard that urban legend. It's circulated around the world many times. But think about the details of that that you remember that you've heard. You always remember the kidneys. You always remember the bathtub full of ice, and you always remember the lipstick written on the mirror. In fact, if you had to think about it, what color was that lipstick? You can probably see it. It's red. How did that ice feel? It was probably very cold. What does that bathtub look like? You probably have a mental image in your mind. Urban legends use concrete details to help us remember the key points. But often when we communicate, we don't always use such concrete details. Business language, for example, tends not to be very concrete. There's a great online resource called a business buzzword generator, which asks you to pick a word from three columns. Column 1, for example, has words like strategic, interactive, and responsive. Column 2 has words like cost-based, logistical and discretionary. Column 3 has words like vision, paradigm, and re-engineering. If you picked one from each column, you might come up with strategic cost-based vision. You've probably heard something like that before. Our company's strategic cost-based vision allows you to cut cost to the core and see beyond market fluctuations to help you achieve what you want to achieve. Sounds pretty good. Or interactive logistical paradigm are interactive logistical paradigm takes care of the backend so you don't have to worry about it. These things sound pretty good when you hear them. In fact, you probably have a friend or no accompany whose mission statement uses a couple of these words. If I asked you to remember what I said a couple of minutes later, you probably would have no clue what it was. Part of that reason is because these words aren't very concrete. They're extremely abstract. We can't get a picture of what these words look like. For example, if I said the word cost-based, I asked you to close your eyes and think about the word cost-based. What comes to mind? What do you see when I say the phrase cost-based? You probably don't see anything. There's no picture that comes to mind when I say the word vision, for example. Do you have a picture that comes to mind? Maybe you see someone sitting on the edge of a cliff staring off into the distance. But no real picture comes to mind where a bathtub full of ice, we can all see that lipstick written on the mirror, we can all see. To effectively make ideas stick, we have to be more concrete. Let me give you another example. There's a local construction firm that says building is a series of conversations, interactions and collaborations with a focus on creating the synergy that produces extraordinary results. Now that's a dead giveaway by the way, when you see the word synergy, you know, it's not going to be very memorable. But let's compare that abstract language with much more concrete language. Let's take an event planner for example, who says, well, who designs it, arranges it, brings it, loads it, drapes it, pins it, hangs it, lights it, and then takes it all down so you don't have to. We do. Now think for a moment, that's much more concrete. Think about when you would want to call that local construction firm that was so abstract if you can even remember their message. Well, you might call them when you want to have a series of conversations. Not very useful. With the event planner. You know exactly when you're going to want to call them and you will know exactly what they do because they told you in very concrete language. You can see them hanging the lighting. You can see them taking it all down. You can see them pinning it up. You can remember exactly what they do, exactly what their value proposition is, and how to deliver that value proposition. The key question when we think about applying this idea of concreteness is can you see it or can you visualize it? When people close their eyes, will they be able to imagine, see a picture of what you're saying? Imagine, for example, you want people to care about property crime. You want them to think that property crime is a big problem. Don't just use lots of statistics. Use language that will help them see that. Talk about shattered glass for example. Or help them feel something and see that picture you're talking about. The door was ajar when I came home, for example, versus property crime is a big problem. We can all see that shattered glass. We all know the feeling what it's like if we came home and our door was ajar, because we can see it, we're much more likely to remember it. One more fun example, but wary makes ski helmets. They want to help people see that their helmets are really effective, really good and unlikely to break when you crash on a big hill. Well, they could say something like our helmets can withstand thousands of pounds per square inch of pressure. But that's not what they do. Very simply, they show an ad with this picture and it's got a chicken on a conveyor belt. It's got a number of packages of chicken that have gone through the chicken processing plant and have been turned into chicken parts. Then they've got one chicken sitting there with a boy or a helmet on and a woman staring at the chicken. What that says is wow, concretely, it must be a really powerful, effective helmet. It must be really safe. It must be really hard to break because it made this chicken not get turned into chicken pieces. By turning that abstract into concrete, by helping people see how good that helmet was in protecting people's heads, it made it much more concrete and much more memorable as a result.
