Thanks to my good friend Dave, I love the Heath Brothers, who wrote the powerful book Made to Stick.

In 1999, an Israeli research team assembled a group of 200 highly regarded ads — ads that were finalists and award winners in the top advertising competitions. They found that 89 percent of the award-winning ads could be classified into six basic categories, or templates. That’s remarkable. We might expect great creative concepts to be highly idiosyncratic — emerging from the whims of born creative types. It turns out that six simple templates go a long way.

I quote this because so often I, and many other designers, get stopped up trying to come up with the newest, most creatively unique, idea. But that probably will not be the most successful concept. Embrace the power of “sticky ideas” and tried and true methods of persuasion. Just always remember to give it a twist.