Sticky Stories Offered by Stanford and UC Davis

A "Sticky Story" is one that sticks in your head. This sort of story is easy to watch, but hard to forget. As technology has enabled us to share our thoughts and stories more widely, it has also allowed students to construct "Sticky Stories" in ways that can engender change. For our purposes, we want to analyze how certain universities use "Sticky Stories" to establish the necessity of bike and pedestrian safety.

But how do you know if your story is "sticky"? These stories are defined by eight steps:

1. Constructing a narrative

2. Choosing an audience

3. Purporting a primary message

4. Deciding if your story is argumentative/how-to/radical

5. Creating a call to action

6. Choosing medium

7. Making authentic content - no staged videos

8. Sharing your story

From the past two websites we analyzed, from Stanford and UC Davis, they both implemented aspects of a "Sticky Story". Each illustrating some if not all of the eight "Stick Story" steps.

Stanford

The Stanford Commuting Page first illustrates their narrative, which is the story about alternative forms of transportation. They then establish who their audience is by the affiliation with Stanford, thus their audience is college students, faculty, and staff. Their primary message to students was about finding alternative means of transportation, and they even offered different alternatives on the first page. Therefore, their story was more informative and a how-to-use or how-to-find alternative ways of transportation. Their medium of choice was a website, with no videos, but with minimal pictures and some graphics. Their content was authentic in that they address students directly, like having a conversation with another student because they use direct pronouns and address the audience by "you." In order to share their story, there is a YouTube video attached to the bottom of the page that takes viewers to the Stanford channel that has videos about bike safety and different ways of community in and around Stanford.

UC Davis

At UC Davis, their Transportation Services's Bicycle Program illustrates by the title alone that their narrative will be about biking programs involving the University. Their audience at hand is also from their affiliation, thus their audience is members of the UC Davis community (students, staff, and faculty). Their primary message revolves strictly around bike rules and regulations, as all of their content regards biking licenses, laws, and protocol. Their story was also how-to in nature as it gave strict instructions on how to safely ride a bike around campus and provided resources for proper bike riding. Their medium was also a website, except, unlike Stanford's website, there were not YouTube links or videos that explained the content further. Their content felt less authentic than Stanford's as it was very informative and technical, and not as personal as the other website. UC Davis did not spread their information widely either, there were no social media links provided on the page whatsoever.

Although each website had different approaches for implementing a "Sticky Story", all that matters is that the stories stick and the primary story in both is that there are alternative means of transportation and that is a narrative that should "spread...like wildfire and inspire us to take action."