To my mind, the most memorable slogan in New York City — perhaps in the world — belongs to a ramshackle bar in lower Manhattan that I often pass on the way to Chinatown. You can be sure its motto wasn't the product of branding experts or marketing consultants, but in four words it perfectly captures the ambience, clientele, and mission of the establishment — "Day Care for Drunks." I don't think I'll ever forget that slogan, and I bet you won't, either.

On the other hand, it's a struggle for me to remember the slogans of most of my past employers — noble enterprises all. What's more embarrassing, I can't recite their mission statements, either. But ask me to sing the theme song to "Gilligan's Island," and I won't forget a word.

Why is that? Why is the tagline of a seedy bar or the theme song of a cheesy sitcom more memorable than the brand messages of far worthier enterprises? Why do some ideas stick in our heads and others vanish into thin air?

That is the conundrum tackled by Chip Heath, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and Dan Heath, consultant at Duke Corporate Education, in Made to Stick, a book inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell used "stickiness" to describe a key characteristic of memorable ideas. In Made to Stick, the brothers Heath endeavor to identify the traits of stickiness and demonstrate how they can be used to generate unforgettable messages.

The authors make it clear why this is important: while everybody agrees that some ideas are memorable and others are not, what is truly disturbing is the fact that the stickiness of a message has little to do with its value. Urban myths, sleazy scams, and conspiracy theories spread like wildfire, while charitable appeals fall on deaf ears and important public service announcements are quickly forgotten. Businesses can't even communicate their purpose to their own workers; in a recent poll of 23,000 employees, only 37 percent had a clear understanding of their employer's mission.

So what are the characteristics of sticky ideas? The authors employ a somewhat awkward acronym, SUCCESs, to enumerate them: Simple (they rely on core ideas); Unexpected (they're capable of sparking interest); Concrete (they're grounded in experience); Credible (they draw on believable sources); Emotional (they appeal to self-interest and -identity); and Story (the best form for conveying them). Most important, sticky ideas steer clear of what the authors call the Curse of Knowledge — the tendency to forget what it was like not to know an idea. As the authors point out, this can be especially dangerous for charities, where the worthiness of a cause is often taken for granted by those who support it.

SUCCESs may seem like a gimmicky collection of bullet points, but what makes this book more than a glib PowerPoint presentation is the authors' skillful use of stories to illustrate their thesis. Using anecdotes, fables, advertising campaigns, psychological studies, screenplays, and a variety of other sources, the authors present a body of evidence for SUCCESs that is both entertaining and compelling, and in doing so they convincingly demonstrate their core idea that stories are far more effective than abstractions in conveying a message. (In fact, one story alone, the tale of Nora Ephron's first journalism class, is easily worth the price of the book and richly deserves a place, as the authors contend, in the Sticky Hall of Fame.)

Many of the stories focus on the efforts of nonprofit organizations to solicit public and financial support for their causes. For example, the authors describe how the Nature Conservancy (TNC) approached the problem of convincing donors to protect a parcel of scrubby, nondescript hills in California. Unable to "sell" the unattractive landscape as ecologically important with abstract arguments, TNC instead gave it a concrete identity (and therefore its own story) by designating it "the Mount Hamilton Wilderness." With a new name, the landscape became real to environmentalists, a tangible "eco-celebrity" suddenly worth preserving.

In similar fashion, a nonprofit devoted to preserving duo piano performances was unable to spark enthusiasm with its mission statement ("We exist to protect, preserve, and promote the music of duo piano") until it realized that many people equated duo piano with Vegas-style dueling piano acts, not serious chamber music. The Curse of Knowledge had prevented the fundraisers from telling the storyof "duo piano," a message they thought the public was already familiar with.

Other examples in the book explore topics as diverse as racial prejudice, weight loss, roadside litter, organ theft, and photocopier repair(!). Some are hilarious and some poignant, but all underscore the importance of telling stories that are simple, concrete, credible, and emotional like the micro-story encapsulated by "Day Care for Drunks," or the tale recounted in "The Ballad of Gilligan's Island."

The authors wisely let the stories speak for themselves, but further details of their origins and sources are included in the book's extensive endnotes. The back matter also includes "Making Ideas Stick: The Easy Reference Guide," which outlines the key points of each chapter, along with a comprehensive index. And to demonstrate how the principles of SUCCESs can be applied to as-yet undeveloped ideas, the authors present a series of "Idea Clinics," practical exercises demonstrating how the same idea can be expressed in sticky and non-sticky ways, with each idea evaluated on a SUCCESs scorecard. It's a technique that can easily be adapted to any enterprise, a sort of do-it-yourself guide to generating stickiness.

So before hiring those branding experts or PR wizards, before writing that PSA or refashioning that mission statement, read this book. Following its advice may not yield a masterpiece like "Day Care for Drunks," but at least it will give you the tools to start transforming your ho-hum messages into the kinds of stories that are not easily forgotten: Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip....