After reading ‘6 tips on how to get people talking about your business’ of marketing professor at the Wharton School, Jonah Berger, I decided to make a brand-case study around these tips.

Recently I read the book Made to Stick by brothers Chip and Dan Heath. Just like Jonah they write about how you can make an idea, or in this case your business, to stick into a customers mind. They mention the Success factors: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Stories. Some of Berger’s principles overlap with Health’s:

1) Emotions. This will make people see the importance of a certain idea. Negative emotions are not certainly bad. They can drive people to action.

2) Stories. Create stories that relate your brand or product. Heath mentions in his book that you need to create stories to give people a simulation of usage of a product or service. This in turn overlaps with Berg’s tip:

3) Triggers. Tie a product into behaviour.

4) Social Proof. Let people see your clientele using your products or service in public. This point is similar to Heath’s point to be concrete, making sure an idea can be grasped and remembered. Give a context and make it human. This also corresponds with Heath’s advice to be credible. By showing social proof you make your product advantages more believable.

5) Share Practical Value. Help your clientele by giving advice. This strengthens a social bond. Make sure this practical value is short, simple and straightforward. This in turn corresponds with Heath’s success factor, simple.

6) Make Your Customers Look Good. Now this advice is not mentioned in “Made to Stick”.  They rather talk about making your idea unexpected. In my opinion these two can be combined, I will show you how by giving an example.

Let’s see whether successful brand live up to the advices. Let me the extremely strong brand Dove.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Lrx2bKJLUy0&feature=youtu.be/

While looking at this commercial we can see they did several things right: A simple story is being told that evokes the emotion of feeling beautiful again. It makes customers look good as they message that everyone is beautiful.

What lacks in this campaign? The trigger to use Dove’s beauty products, the concrete social proof that people use dove products, the practical value of giving customer advise and the commercial could be more unexpected.

However as this campaign combines both Berger’s and Heath’s points of parity, I believe Dove did a pretty good job. This video is meant to communicate its social mission, and so it does. As long as dove also creates product promotion campaigns, it will definitely be Made to Stick.