If you need to communicate ideas, if you are a businessperson, marketer, teacher, clergyperson, politician, parent or spouse, you need this book.

If you are a reader of Malcolm Gladwell, if you enjoyed any of Seth Godin's books, if you want to stay out of a bathtub filled with ice with one of your vital organs removed, you need this book.

Seriously, Chip and Dan have taken a concept that was briefly introduced in Gladwell's The Tipping Point -- the characteristics of ideas that are memorable and longstanding -- and turned it into a recipe book for constructing memborable stories.

The book is organized around a set of six powerful principles that anyone can use to transform themselves into more effective communicators. It's written with humor and real-life examples that make it a quick read, but also one that "sticks" with you long after you put it down.

Keep one for yourself and buy copies for everyone who inflicts PowerPoint presentations on you at work. You'll be glad you did.

Great message -- great examples -- very useful to anyone who has to lead a team or, for that matter, a company -- the message and tools need to be understood and used by anyone in the business of communiating new ideas.

Try this - Read the introduction and the first chapter and tell a friend what the book is about. If you're anything like me, you'll realize that you've miraculously absorbed virtually every "sticky" example given along with the reasoning and methodology, without even thinking about it. The book practices its own preaching, making it not only everything you'd hope for in a book of this nature, but living proof that it works. Its very form supports its message, all the way down to the fluorescent orange, textured cover. Absolutely LOVED it.

Let's face it, if you are advertising, marketing, communicating today, you are sending a message into the eyes and ears of overwhelmed, over marketed, numb, ambivalent consumers.

And yet, some people and brands continue to grow, in fact they explode, they become part of the lexicon.

This book does an exceptional job explaining why and how.

The information on crafting stories that stick is invaluable. If you are not telling powerful stories today you are leaving business and opportunity on the table.

This book has made it to my top 15 business books that I'll refer back to often. I'll also give it to all my new clients, it is that important.

The other thing that I like is the practical mix of real world application that anyone whether they have a service business or a traditional product oriented business and whether big or small can implement.

Dave Lakhani
Author of:
Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want
The Power of an Hour: Business and Life Mastery In One Hour A Week

Do you have a product to sell? Do you have a presentation to give? Do you have to create a marketing plan? Maybe you need to rewrite your organization's mission statement? Or perhaps teach a class? Whatever it is you do at work, it involves communicating complex ideas. This is the book that shows you how to send your message into people's heads and make it "stick" there.

The authors provide you with an easy-to-use checklist to help guide you in crafting your message. They base this checklist on years of research and experience. They also provide you with references for most of the research so you can confirm for yourself what they say works. This is a scientific approach to communication, but it's delivered in a story-telling style that guarantees you will learn and quickly apply their model. It incorporates a lot of ideas that have been floating around for years into one simple, usable model that will turbo-charge whatever message your trying to send.

As a preview, the checklist they discuss is encapsulated as SUCCESs, which stands for:

Simplicity
Unexpectedness
Concreteness
Credibility
Emotional
Stories

OK, they don't provide any concept for the last "S" but it's close enough to spelling out SUCCESS.

Before sending out any communication make sure it meets the SUCCESs checklist and your message will be more more SUCCESsful in "sticking" to your audience's brains.

Read this now, as it promises to be one of the most influential business books of 2007. Then once it really catches fire, you will be one step ahead of the herd.