Made to Stick

role.
•
When they are walking around the park, they are onstage.
•
People visiting Disney are guests, not customers.
•
Jobs are performances; uniforms are costumes.
The theater metaphor is immensely useful for Disney employees.
It is so useful that just by reading the last few paragraphs you can
probably predict how cast members should behave in situations we
haven’t discussed. For instance, you can probably guess that employ-
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ees are not allowed to be on break while in costume and in a public
area. (An actor would never have a chat and a cigarette in mid-scene.)
You might guess that street sweepers are evaluated on criteria other
than the cleanliness of their sidewalks. Indeed, street sweepers are
some of the most highly trained cast members, since their very visible
public presence—coupled with the fact that they are clearly Disney
employees—makes them an obvious target for customers’ questions
about rides, parades, and restroom locations. Having them think of
their role as performance, rather than maintenance, is a key part of
the park’s success. “Employees as cast members” is a generative
metaphor that has worked for Disney for more than fifty years.
Contrast Disney with Subway. Like Disney, Subway has created a
metaphor for its frontline employees. They are “sandwich artists.”
This metaphor is the evil twin of Disney’s “cast members.” It is utterly
useless as a guide to how the employee should act. Disney expects its
cast members to behave like actors, but Subway does not expect its
counter help to behave like artists. The defining trait of an “artist” is
individual expression. We wonder how long an employee would last
at Subway if she exhibited a lot of individual expression—in dress, in
interaction, in the presentation of sandwiches. No doubt Subway’s
sandwich artists are trusted to place a handful of onions on a twelve-
inch sub, and it’s true that this is a certain kind of liberty. But one sus-
pects that the counter person’s “artistry” can’t extend to adding an
extra slice of turkey.
T h e   Po w e r   o f   S i m p l i c i t y
Generative metaphors and proverbs both derive their power from a
clever substitution: They substitute something easy to think about for
something difficult. The proverb “A bird in hand is worth two in the
bush” gives us a tangible, easily processed statement that we can use
for guidance in complex, emotionally fraught situations. Generative
metaphors perform a similar role. The “cast members” at Disney
S I M P L E
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might find it easier to tackle a new situation from the perspective of a
hired actor than from their own unique individual perspective.
Proverbs are the Holy Grail of simplicity. Coming up with a short,
compact phrase is easy. Anybody can do it. On the other hand, com-
ing up with a profound compact phrase is incredibly difficult. What
we’ve tried to show in this chapter is that the effort is worth it—that
“finding the core,” and expressing it in the form of a compact idea,
can be enduringly powerful. 
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C H A P T E R   2
U N E X P E C T E D
B
y FAA edict, a flight attendant must make a safety announce-
ment before a passenger plane takes off. We’ve all heard it:
where the exits are, what to do in case of a “sudden change in
cabin pressure,” how to use your seat as a flotation device, and why you
shouldn’t smoke in the lavatories (or tinker with the smoke alarm).
Flight-safety announcements might be labeled a tough message
environment. No one cares about what’s being communicated. The
flight attendant doesn’t care. The passengers don’t care. Filibusters
are fascinating by comparison.
What if you were asked to make the safety announcement? Worse,
what if you actually needed people to listen to you? How would you
handle it?
A flight attendant named Karen Wood faced exactly this situation
and solved it with creativity. On a flight from Dallas to San Diego,
she made the following announcement:
If I could have your attention for a few moments, we sure would
love to point out these safety features. If you haven’t been in an
automobile since 1965, the proper way to fasten your seat belt is

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to slide the flat end into the buckle. To unfasten, lift up on the
buckle and it will release.
And as the song goes, there might be fifty ways to leave your
lover, but there are only six ways to leave this aircraft: two forward
exit doors, two over-wing removable window exits, and two aft exit
doors. The location of each exit is clearly marked with signs over-
head, as well as red and white disco lights along the floor of the
aisle.
Made ya look!
It didn’t take long for passengers to tune into Wood’s comic spiel.
When she wrapped up her announcement, scattered applause broke
out. (And if a well-designed message can make people applaud for a
safety announcement there’s hope for all of us.)
The first problem of communication is getting people’s attention.
Some communicators have the authority to demand attention. Par-
ents are good at this: “Bobby, look at me!” Most of the time, though,
we can’t demand attention; we must attract it. This is a tougher chal-
lenge. People say, “You can’t make people pay attention,” and there is
a commonsense ring to that. But wait a minute: That’s exactly what
Karen Wood did. She made people pay attention, and she didn’t even
need to raise her voice.
The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pat-
tern. Humans adapt incredibly quickly to consistent patterns. Consis-
tent sensory stimulation makes us tune out: Think of the hum of an
air conditioner, or traffic noise, or the smell of a candle, or the sight of
a bookshelf. We may become consciously aware of these things only
when something changes: The air conditioner shuts off. Your spouse
rearranges the books.
Wood got people’s attention in a message-hostile environment by
avoiding the same generic safety spiel that her passengers had heard
many times. She told jokes, which not only got people’s attention but
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kept it. But if getting attention had been Wood’s only concern, she
wouldn’t have needed to be so entertaining. She could have gotten
passengers’ attention just as easily by starting the announcement and
then suddenly pausing in midsentence. Or switching to Russian for a
few seconds.
Our brain is designed to be keenly aware of changes. Smart prod-
uct designers are well aware of this tendency. They make sure that,
when products require users to pay attention, something changes.
Warning lights blink on and off because we would tune out a light
that was constantly on. Old emergency sirens wailed in a two-note
pattern, but modern sirens wail in a more complex pattern that’s even
more attention-grabbing. Car alarms make diabolical use of our
change sensitivity.
This chapter focuses on two essential questions: How do I get peo-