As a follow up to last month’s article on the history of highlighters, I now bring you The History of Sticky Notes!
As you all know, my first point of research on any topic is Wikipedia. Wiki defines the Post-It or sticky note as “a piece of stationery with a readherable strip of adhesive on the back, designed for temporarily attaching notes to documents and to other surfaces”. It was invented in 1974 (it turns 35 this year!) by a scientist at 3M named Art Fry,who needed a better way to keep his place in his hymn book at church. However, in order to truly understand the sticky note, we have to go back to 1968, and a couple of scientists named Spencer Silver and Jesse Kops.
Spencer, with the help of Jesse, developed a”low-tack”, reusable pressure sensitive adhesive. This adhesive was made of tiny, indestructible acrylic spheres that were strong enough to hold papers together but weak enough to pull them apart. For 5 years, Spencer tried promoting his invention amongst the executives at 3M but had no success. Spencer’s first application of the adhesive was a “Post-It Bulletin Board”, which was essentially a large photograph covered in the glue that would allow people to stick documents to it without a thumbtack. Sales disappointed, however, and most of the attention the bulletin board attracted was from dust that got stuck in the glue.
Spencer, undetered, put on various seminars and informal discussions to no avail, but by chance one afternoon, Art Fry attended one ofthem. It turns out that Art had heard about Silver’s figurative ‘glue that doesn’t stick’ while golfing with another colleague. Art thought that this low-tack adhesive was fascinating and wanted to learn more, but was also stumped for a potential application.
Art Fry also performed in his church choir and typically organized all of the various hymns that they would sing with paper bookmarks. With each flip of the page these bookmarks would move or fall out creating an annoyance for Art. One day, while performing, Art realized that if he were to apply Silver’s adhesive to his bookmarks, they would stay in place perfectly without permanently bonding to the book.
Using 3M’s policy of allowing employees to use 15% of their time for independent projects, Art began working on this new application. The first few attempts worked, but left too much of the adhesive on the pages ofhis hymnal. Eventually, he was able to perfect the formula and created a batch of notes for some of his coworkers. People used the notes, but they mostly fizzled, further frustrating Art.
Time passes, and one day while he was reading a report, he had some questions about the data. Art clipped out a sticky note, drew an arrow to the data, wrote his question and then gave it to his supervisor. His supervisor then wrote the response on Fry’s note and then attached it to another document to send back. Later that day, the two men discussed the exchange and immediately realized the value of the sticky note. This new layer of communication quickly allowed more effective correspondence, not just better bookmarking. Knowing this, Fry reintroduced the sticky note to his colleagues and the note immediately took off. 3M employees were clammoring for more, sometimes trudging across 3M’s snow filled campus to get them.
Despite this internal success, there were still institutional biases that prevented 3M execs from “getting” the product. Further complicating the process was the need for new machines to mass produce these sticky notes, which engineers claimed would be exceedingly difficult to implement. Art, once again, proved them wrong and built a prototype machine in the basement of his house. With the proper machinery inplace, the Post-It could now be market tested. 3M chose 4 cities, and as you might have guessed, Post-It’s failed in all of them.
How could this be? The product was great, secretaries at 3M loved them, so what could’ve gone wrong? Two execs decided that they needed to investigate further and began cold calling the test markets and interacting with the users, showing them how to use Post-Its correctly. This time, the response was incredible, and according to one of the execs, Steve Collins,”those things really were like cocaine”. The great success of this “Boise Blitz” marketing test finally convinced 3M to commercialize the product in 1980. Millions of free notes were distributed in the 1st year, and when the free notes ran out, people started buying more. The product took off so quickly that in 1981, 3M awarded Post-It’s the Golden Step award, given to any product generating more than 2 million in revenues. By 1998, Post-It’s accounted for more than $1 Billion in revenues.
But the saga doesn’t end here, Art Fry himself notes: “The digital age generates so many documents, and they all look the same. How do you organize all that material?” How indeed?
[Thanks to Viernest for the Photo]
