I really took to the Heath brothers' creation of CHIFF in this chapter of Made to Stick. To employ the standards of clever, high-quality, innovative, friendly, and fun allows for a much more rigorous, if whimsical, level of quality. To be clever forces companies to adhere to the unexpected aspect of SUCCESs and ensure that their product be unique and enjoyable. To be high-quality is pretty self explanatory, forcing the product to be of a standard the company can be proud of and the consumer can respect. To be innovative also works towards the unexpected by forcing the company to come up with new ideas rather than recycle old ones. Friendly and fun both make for a more enjoyable product that appeals to a wider consumer pool. These strategies are all important because they go hand in hand with SUCCESs and with the need to put the consumer first and thus help the idea to stick.
The Heath brothers have a way of conveying their message in ways that makes sense and are easy to remember, and CHIFF helps the reader to do just that. It's important to remember because this is a helpful strategy for those wanting their idea to be successful. It's important to have standards and to stick to them, just like the company behind Cranium did. Without these standards, failure could have been theirs. But because they stuck to what they'd been doing before and didn't waver from their very precise standards, they continued to be a hugely successful producer of a hugely successful product. This is example is the perfect way to illustrate the importance of knowing one's market and audience and sticking to the procedures and ideals that led you to them in the first place. Made to Stick is all about finding out who that audience is and latching on to what they respond to no matter what.
I agree that a helpful strategy is the key to success for businesses. Just as Cranium uses CHIFF, Dr. Howard relies on the acronym RIBS, which is helpful criteria for creating and maintaining social media sites. Having acronyms are easy ways of remembering information, and they are so beneficial towards any project you're working on.
ReplyDeleteI think that CHIFF is really important for businesses to remember when creating products. The strategy opens the doors for more consumers and more engaging products. Products created with CHIFF in mind will be more successful, just like the book said about the game board producing company that had to create fun questions for a game. When the company wasn't using CHIFF standards, they were struggling to create engaging, but silly questions. Once they instilled the standards, their game became more marketable and accepted by the higher levels of the company.
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