Summary

Carmen Simon explains how to make content memorable, emphasizing the importance of emotion, motivation, and memory in capturing attention. Aim for a few precise memories by asking what you want your audience to remember and act upon. Balance novelty and the mere exposure effect to keep your audience engaged. Create anticipation and manage tension to make messages more compelling while ensuring they are portable with high processing fluency to aid in their repeatability. Use contrasts and employ dual coding through visual and verbal pairing as part of effective storytelling, combining sensory details, actions, facts, concepts, meaning, and emotion. Consider the four variables of reward perception – effort, risk, time delay, and social aspects. To combat temporal discounting, make future rewards vivid and concrete. Follow the checklist for memorable content below!

Key Takeaways

• 3 modes of remembering: pavlovian, habitual, and goal-oriented
• Brain design: emotion, motivation, and memory
• 4 variables of reward perception: effort, risk (ambiguity + uncertainty), time delay, social aspects
• Checklist for memorable content*
• Forgetting curve: two components: initial trace, forgetting rate
• Fuzzy trace theory: verbatim vs gist memory
• Tie to current unfulfilled needs + goals and social desirability
• Novelty > surprise, balance with mere exposure effect
• Anticipation: invite audience to imagine future outcomes
  • Tension: balance uncertainty, outcome importance, and delay tolerance
• Repeatable messages are portable with high processing fluency
• Use contrasts to simplify decision making: binary, relational, and graded
• Effective storytelling: combine sensory details, actions, facts, concepts, meaning, emotion
  • Dual coding: pair visuals with verbal content to enhance recall
  • Vivid imagery, metaphors, and emotional intensity make stories memorable
• Optimal content delivery: aim for a few precise memories
  • 1. what do I want them to remember? 2) what to act on?
  • Visible signs of progress, keep audience’s attention shifting
• Stability-plasticity dilemma: tradeoff between learning, remembering
• Make future rewards vivid and concrete to combat temporal discounting
• People are more creative when thinking about their future selves
  • When deciding for self: feasibility, others: desirability (eg. job pay vs desirability)

Checklist for memorable content

• Have 9/15 variables in >= 1/2 of content
  • Score variables on level of intensity from 1-5
  • 40% should have 7/15 and be intense

1. Context: the setting in which the encoding of info takes place (space + time)
2. Cues: internal or external triggers about specific content (reminders that help with recall)
3. Distinctiveness: the ability of a stimulus to stand out compared to its neighbors
4. Emotion: state elicited by obtaining rewards or avoiding punishment
5. Facts: truths known by actual experience or observation
   • Distinguish versus abstract / opinion
6. Familiarity: knowledge or mastery of subject
7. Motivation: mental state of willingness to work to receive reward or avoid punishment
   • Factors: amount of perceived effort, risk, time delay before receiving rewards, social impact
8. Novelty: quality of not previously being experienced / encountered
   • Absolute vs relative novelty
9. Quantity of information: amount of content distributed at one time
10. Relevance: importance of the matter at hand
11. Repetition: occurrence of a stimulus multiple times (3+)
12. Self-generated content: implies interactive content that invites engagement
    • Rhetorical question, imagine a scenario, etc.
13. Sensory intensity: the degree to which our senses are activated
    • Visual + auditory information
14. Social aspects: social advantages that can be obtained if acting on content later
    • Eg. power, prominence, status
15. Surprise: the result of encountering something suddenly, unexpectedly
    • Learning happens when we are surprised! 🤪

Notes

1: Memory is a means to an end

• Memory is heart of adaptive behavior and decision making
• Brian = prediction engine, memory = fuel
• Purpose of book: translate current memory research into practical tips to help others remember, act on what you consider important
• 3 ways of remembering:
  • 1. Pavlovian: subconsciously, reflexively alter behavior to ensure biological fitness
  • 2. Habitual: repeat actions that proved rewarding in the past (can be arbitrary)
  • 3. Goal-oriented:
• ↑ plug into people’s reflexes, habits, goals
• Novelty + integration
• Variable use:
  • Temperance: right proportions
  • No benefit from overusing (7/15)
  • Distribution: relative salience (make a thought stand out around dull ones)
  • Fuzzy: 0-1 float, not binary

2: A business approach to memory

• Thinking about the past, future are linked
• Retroactive, prospective memory
• Approach memory with the future in mind
• 1. notice cues that are linked to their intentions
• 2. search their memory for something related to those cues and intentions
• 3. if something is rewarding enough, execute
• Basis of brain’s design:
  1. Emotion: states elicited by rewards and punishments
  2. Motivation: the state we are in when willing to work to receive reward or avoid punishment
  3. Memory: the process that leads to selection of the appropriate action
• “4-step goal setting process” vs “earn more money with goal setting”
• Variables tied to rewards:
  1. Effort
  2. Time delay
  3. Risk
  4. Social aspects

3: Control what your audience remembers

• Forgetting curve: two components: initial trace, forgetting rate
• 10% base rate for long-term memory
• Random memory: unless you take control, audience will remember random 10%
• Fuzzy trace theory: two types of memory when experiencing an event:
  • Verbatim: word-for-word, crisp sets
  • Gist: general themes, fuzzy sets
• Beauty in average effect:
• Determine what needs to be remembered, how it needs to be remembered (what proportions)

4: Made you look

• Physical properties of objects are automatic attention triggers (color, size, etc.)
• Gibsonian affordances: hints for how to use an object (eg. pull door handle)
• Cues for reflective attention:
  • Reactivate old memories: “remember that happened when?”
  • Note relationships between concepts:
  • Elaborate on something they learned in the past
  • Derive meaning: “what does that suggest about your values?”
• Elaborate encoding:
• Identify audience’s goals, needs: privacy vs team, structure vs autonomy, etc.
• Tie to a current; unfulfilled goal
• Tie cues to social desirability

5: The paradox of surprise

• Surprise: unexpected experience / brain prediction error (always bad)
• Enjoy some surprises because opiates released but no real danger
• Schemas → expectations
• Novelty: not previously experienced
• Mere exposure effect: preference for familiarity
• Disrupt existing schemas
  • Linguistic: eg. “the old man the boats”
  • Perceptual: optical illusions
• Juxtapose schemas
• Self-fulfilling prophecies: eg. placebos work
• Link content with uplifting associations

6: Sweet anticipation

• Anticipation: prepare our state of attention, arousal accordingly
• ↑ invitation to imagine how the future unfolds
• Study: 5 main categories of drivers at work: (23 total)
  1. Achievers: ownership, problem-solving
  2. Builders: developing others, purpose
  3. Caregivers: empathy, family, fun
  4. Reward-driven: money, prestige, autonomy
  5. Thinkers: creativity, impact, variety
• Anticipating novelty feels as good as anticipating a reward
• Tension: 1) degree of uncertainty, 2) importance of possible outcomes, 3) tolerate amount of delay until realized

7: What makes a message repeatable?

• Portability: can be used flexibly in many different contexts
• Avoid cliches
• Processing fluency: simple syntax + dis-fluent words (deeper processing)
• Tension between accurate memories of reality vs constantly evolving coherent self
• Tie message to long-term goals
• Tie message to desired self (mantra)
• Messages that make us look good in front of others

8: Become memorable with distinction

• Similarity is mandatory for creating uniqueness
• Opposites:
  1. Binary: complimentary, eg. right vs wrong
  2. Relational: mutualistic, eg. profit vs charity
  3. Graded: relative, eg. old vs young
• ^ contrast is a shortcut for decision making
• Self-generated distinctiveness: human touch + deep meaning

9: Memories through stories

• How do people search their memories?
  • 1. sensory impressions in context
  • 2. actions across a timeline
  • 3. facts
  • 4. abstract concepts
  • 5. meaning
  • 6. emotion
• Balance, mix perceptive, cognitive elements
• Abstract vs concrete concepts (sensory?)
• Generic vs specific item (eg. car vs …)
• Dual coding: images coded both visually and verbally, doubling recall
  • Still works when brain generates mental picture via visual imagery
• Ensure abstract concepts evoke same imagery, meaning
  • Metaphors
• Study: memorization recall best in same environment where learned
• Use “vivid” images: the more time it takes to describe the image, the better
• Use emotion: emotion-based memories are prioritized by brain for storage
  • Match audience’s emotional context
• Use nostalgia: idealized past
• Add emotional intensity

10: How much content is too much?

• Aim for a few precise memories
• Start with two questions to ask yourself:
  1. What do I want them to remember?
  2. What do I want them to act on?
• Take only the time granted by a specific context
  1. Reduce ask when little time: buying → time allowance decision
• People are more easily persuaded by large lists (eg. 9 vs 3 arguments)
• Offer visible signs of progress
• Shifting attention → view time less keenly
  1. Keep changing graphics

11: How does the brain decide?

• Make yourself part of audience’s future

1. Design cues that are hard to miss and are linked with something rewarding
2. Create anticipation
3. Make important messages easy to repeat
4. Make it distinct from other content
5. Use effective storytelling: perceptive, cognitive, affective components
6. Offer an optimal amount of info

• 4 automatic brain processes:
  1. Awareness
  2. Intentionality
  3. Efficiency
  4. Controllability
• Stability-plasticity dilemma: need right tradeoff between learning, remembering
• Know customers’ values
• Two types of risk: ambiguity, uncertainty
• Heuristics and biases*

11.2: Temporal expectations

• Temporal discounting:
• Make it vivid and concrete
  • Eg. ways to spend the money
• Perceived stability of environment affects patience
• “Cool”: novel, already liked, subculture-building capability
• When thinking of future self, we are more creative and abstract
• When deciding for self: feasibility, others: desirability
  • Eg. job pay versus impact
• Weave past rewards with new types of rewards (explore + exploit)

12: Forget + remember

• Does your message have an expiration?
• Plan for black swans
• Being remembered honor