Billions of dollars are spent each year on advertising as companies try to make an impact on consumers.

In business a lot of time and money is spent trying to get potential clients to remember a product or service when it comes time to make a buying decision. Billions of dollars are spent each year on advertising as companies try to make an impact on consumers. In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes this as “the stickiness factor”. In writing about this Gladwell says:

“…messengers are what make something spread. But the content of the message matters too. And the specific quality that a message needs to be successful is the quality of stickiness. Is the message- or the food, or the movie or the product memorable? Is it so memorable, in fact, that it can create change, that it can spur someone into action?”

In order to achieve this stickiness people often try to resort to being loud, repetitive or obnoxious; however, this is rarely an effective strategy. It is often the simplest little changes that can make a world of difference. Gladwell talks about a study done by the social psychologist Howard Levanthal at Yale University in the 1960s. The purpose of the experiment was to get a group of college seniors to get a tetanus shot.

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In the study Levanthal divided the students into groups and gave each student a booklet explaining the dangers of tetanus, the importance of inoculation and the fact the school was offering a free shot at the campus clinic. The booklets came in many forms, for the purposes of the experiment. One group was given a “high fear” version that included graphic pictures of people suffering from the disease. Another group was given a “low fear” version with pictures omitted.

The groups were surveyed afterwards and not surprisingly the “high fear” group was convinced at a much higher rate the need for the shot in comparison to the low fear group. However, when surveyed a month later neither group had really gone so far as to get the shot, a mere 3% of the students actually went to receive their free tetanus shot. There was obviously no stickiness to this message.

Interestingly though, another group had a much higher rate of success. One minor change was made to the booklet showing a campus map with the campus clinic circled and a schedule of times the shot was available. Of the Students who received this version of the booklet 28% of them went to receive their free shot. This was over 9 times the results as the other methods.