Impossible to Ignore by Carmen Simon

Impossible to Ignore by Carmen Simon ISBN-13: 9781259584138 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education Released: April 22, 2016

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from NetGalley:
A groundbreaking approach to creating memorable messages that are easy to process, hard to forget, and impossible to ignore―using the latest in brain science. Audiences forget up to 90% of what you communicate. How can your employees and customers decide to act on your message if they only remember a tenth of it? How do you know which tenth they’ll remember? How will you stay on their minds long enough to spark the action you need?

Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Carmen Simon, PhD, reveals how to avoid the hazards of random recall and deliver just the right amount of content. This practical guide is filled with case studies and examples. Whether you’re giving a presentation, conducting a meeting, delivering training, making a sales pitch, or creating a marketing campaign, these field-tested techniques will help you develop content that speaks to people’s hearts, stays in their heads, and influences their decisions.


My Review:
Impossible to Ignore is about how to improve the likelihood that people will take away the message that you're trying to impart, remember it, and act upon it. It's mainly aimed at business situations like meetings, sales interactions, ad campaigns, or seminars, but the basic principles can be applied to other situations. The author provided helpful real life and theoretical examples on how to apply the basic principles.

The author explained discoveries about how we form memories or are motivated to take new actions and then explained how to use this information to affect other people's memories and actions. She talked about what we remember and what we forget, expectations, anticipation, surprise, and novelty. She discussed the differences between getting people to remember the gist of what you said versus what's needed for people to remember exact information. She talked about the amount of information to include and how to inspire others to talk about you.

There's a checklist list at the end so you can make sure you're using these principles and engaging the audience's imagination and senses. Overall, I felt like this book contained useful information.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.