Creepy Clowns: The Secret Behind Sticky Messages

What’s up with those creepy clowns? In the past few months, creepy clown sightings have been made in at least 10 different states. These clowns have reportedly tried to lure women and children into the woods, chased people with knives and machetes and screamed at people from cars.

As strange as it sounds, this actually happened before— in Boston during the 1980’s. That led Loren Coleman, a cryptozoologist who studies folklore around mythical creatures like the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, to come up with what he called “The Phantom Clown Theory” about how mass hysteria leads to a bunch of clown sightings.

This reminded me of how Halloween traditions changed in the 1960’s and ’70’s when rumors circulated about strangers putting razor blades in apples and candy. Halloween events were held at schools and parents warned children not to eat snacks that weren’t pre-packaged.

In 1985, researchers studied every reported Halloween incident since 1958 and found no instances where strangers caused children harm by tampering with their candy.

How did the candy tampering story spread across the country despite a lack of evidence? Why was it remembered and believed by millions? The story had what Chip and Dan Heath call stickiness. In their book Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, the authors detail the formula for sticky messages:

S implicity—Strip an idea to its core
U nexpectedness—Capture people’s attention
C oncreteness—Explain ideas in human terms
C redibility—Make ideas believable
E motions—Get people to feel something
S tories—People remember and act on stories
S ix Principles of Stickiness

The principles make sense and we have all probably heard similar suggestions before. Yet most of our messages aren’t remembered and communication problems impact organizations, teams and families on a regular basis.

Why? It could be because we rarely apply the Six Principles of Stickiness. Cut the BS or in this case stop clowning around and start making your messages stick.