Why do some marketing ideas drift off into the ether while others stick (as my mother would say) like shit to a blanket?

Grabbing someone’s attention and getting cut-through is just the start. The next thing is to create something that sticks in people’s memory. If you want top-of-mind awareness, you need to STAY in the top of people’s minds.

As it turns out, creating something that sticks in people’s memories is not something that happens by chance. While some creatives have a “knack” for achieving stickiness, others have researched what the brain is doing behind the scenes while the knack is, well, knacking. Note that a knack is, according to my trusty Macquarie, “a power of doing something with ease as from some special skill”. I like that definition because while you’re born with certain talents, skills can be learned. Here’s how you can learn to make your marketing stick.

Make it simple

Not only are most advertisements short, so are attention spans. If your message contains three ideas or more, there’s a good chance your audience will remember none of them. To increase effectiveness, you will need to focus on one message and accept that chasing more “value for your money” by trying to get two messages across will actual result in less value for money. As an incentive to distil your message, consider the power of three-word slogans. They are everywhere: Heinz Means Beans, Spirit of Australia, The Real Thing, Burgers are Better, Just Do It, We Try Harder, Yes We Can, I’m Lovin’ It, Higher Stronger Faster, Diamonds are Forever. Even the concept of a three-word slogan is a three-word slogan. When so many people are searching for what they want online, it’s worth noting that what many people type into Google resembles a three-word slogan. If your advertisement focuses on one simple message, it can include other elements that help build and reinforce the central message. But less is more.

TIP: Write out what you think your message needs to be – use as many words as you want (we just gonna chop them out later, though). Next, highlighted the six words (maybe more, hopefully less) that absolutely must be included. Now use the minimal amount of extra words to connect those key words. Then look at ways you might be able to tighten it up even further. When you’re done, review just how important each of those six key words are to your message and aim to cut them in half. Join them together with minimal extra words and then review. Now take a careful review of every single word of your, hopefully, already short sentence. Is every single word absolutely necessary? What would you have to do to remove it. With any luck, by now you have reduced your message to something resembling a phrase or, better still, a three-word slogan.

Make it easy to picture

If we can picture something in our mind, we are more likely to remember it. Ask someone to remember two words: “apple” and “behaviour”. When you ask them to recall the words a week later, which one is more likely to be remembered? The apple is something solid and easy to picture whereas “behaviour” is a concept that doesn’t easily create a picture – it would help to remember the word if you associate it with something more concrete, like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Businesses often need to sell concepts, even if they do have physical products, but the trick is convert that concept back into something solid. For instance, selling a block of land is a physical product but if the benefit of your particular block of land is the size and the concept you need to get across is “space” then you can convert it to something more concrete like “room for a big boat” or “room for a big shed” or “room for a pool”. Or you can do what Nabilla Riverlink Estate did and take it to the next level by creating the visual of a cat on a child’s swing (photoshopped) to get across the concept of there being “enough room to swing a cat”.

Make it believable

If your message makes a claim that could be questioned in any way, the brain will put up a defence and stop it from taking up valuable storage space. One way to make your message more believable is to start with what you know people already believe. Then add more information to shift that belief toward a favourable message. For instance, people think fast food makes you fat. Rather than try to argue the opposite of people’s belief to sell your fast food, you could accept and acknowledge that belief by using it to highlight the benefits of a healthier option. Combine with a three-word slogan and you would have “half the fat” of a burger and fries.

Make them feel

People might research purchases with their head, but they buy on emotion. The two key emotions that most advertising leads to are making people feel happy or making them feel scared (of not being happy). There’s a whole raft of other emotions (like disgust, nostalgia, etc) that will create a feeling and anchor your message in their minds so you don’t have to settle for the first one you come up with. Explore. And remember that humans are hard-wired to feel emotions about people rather than things or concepts.

Make it a story

If you really want people to remember your message, wrap it all up in a story. People can remember stories very easily. A list of three things can be harder to remember than a story that has 25 elements in it. This is because there is a logical connection between the elements in the story, making the story into a single element. You will have no problem remembering the stories of three fairy tales, decades after you first heard them. But you will probably forget a list of simple book titles by tomorrow. You can probably remember the plot of a great movie better than the two-word title.

Simple exercise: Talk the kids into a game of “I went shopping” and use this method of “cheating”. For those who don’t know how to play, everyone takes a turn at reciting a shopping list and then adding another item at the end. When the first person lists an item (like a telephone, for example), create a detailed mental image of a telephone, including style and colour. When the second person adds an item (like a chair, for example), make a short story connecting those two. For example, a telephone falling off a chair (remember to create detailed pictures in your mind and include activities so there is action in your story). When it is your turn, use your creativity to turn the story in a useful direction. By useful, I mean something that pulls it together and opens the door for what might still come.

If you are the only one using this technique, you are pretty much guaranteed to win the game. In fact, I still remember sequences from a game I played in the car more than 15 years ago using this technique.

EXAMPLE: Flat Cat Marketing’s message is simple: More results for less money. But it is still hard to remember. When that message is wrapped up in a story, it becomes more “sticky”.

RESULT: A very clever cat delivers a wheelbarrow of extra cash and then discounts the overjoyed manager’s delivery fee.

You might notice that while it is a story, it is also very short. The original story was cut down, then reduced, then boiled down, then halved, the trimmed etc – as per the method above under “Make it simple”.