You may not remember the name Jared Fogle, but you know his story. In 1999, the fast-food chain Subway ran their first advertisements featuring a nondescript young man who had lost 245 pounds on a diet of Subway sandwiches. Two years later, the company’s sales had nearly doubled, and the Subway guy was an icon. According to Chip and Dan Heath in their new book, “Made To Stick” (Random House, 304 pages, $24.95) there was nothing mysterious about this episode. Mr. Fogle’s story had all the ingredients of an unforgettable tale. It worked so well because it was made to stick.

The contrarian social science treatise — why everything you thought you knew about everyday phenomena is wrong — is a genre we can’t get enough of. The classic of the field is Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point,” (2000) and it is from Mr. Gladwell that Chip and Dan Heath borrow the term “stickiness.” In “The Tipping Point,” Mr. Gladwell explained why certain ideas and trends become cultural epidemics. “Made To Stick” takes up an issue that Mr. Gladwell broached but did not plumb: What is it about the structure and content of some ideas that makes them endure, while others — sometimes more worthy — slip through the mind’s sieve?

It’s a good question, and the Heaths offer a sound, if incomplete, answer. “Made To Stick” takes the reader through dozens of political speeches, classroom lessons, advertising campaigns, and urban legends to identify and analyze the common traits of catchy and inspiring concepts. It also dissects ineffective messages to explain how, often with slight modifications, they can be made more memorable. Marshalling evidence from dozens of studies on memory, motivation, and the emotions, the Heaths argue that sticky ideas share six characteristics: They are simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and packaged in the form of stories.

Spell out the first letters of these six principles and you get — prepare yourself — “succes.” The Heaths unveil this acronym reluctantly, as though it were a move forced upon them by their publishers. The tone here, and throughout the book, strikes a clever balance. “Made To Stick” doesn’t simply explore why ideas stick; it wants to help you make your ideas stick, too. It’s a gimmicky book about gimmicks, pairing its lessons with mnemonic tricks, try-it-at-home exercises, and even, in lieu of a proper conclusion, a list of frequently asked questions.

But this is not your average self-help book. Throughout, the authors emphasize provocative arguments over facile bromides. And much of the book is surprising and provocative. It is fun to discover, for instance, that urban legends, despite their bankruptcy of substance and truth, are memorable because they share the same elements of tactility and surprise of those wise nuggets of Aesop. Ever wonder why public-service slogans like “Loose Lips Sink Ships,” and “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” have become staples our collective memory? The Heaths have an answer. Their chapter on narratives — perhaps the best — describes why our minds are uniquely suited to remember and act upon information presented through narratives. Nothing profound, but it’s interesting stuff, presented in crisp, lively prose, and shored up with solid research.

Interesting, that is, as far as it goes. The Heaths leave the more profound dimensions of stickiness unaddressed. Like the tale of Mr. Fogle, Chekhov’s stories are sometimes simple, credible, and emotional, but that’s not why they endure. More importantly, while the Heaths aim to hone our ability to spot inherently sticky ideas, they ignore the fact that such ideas are often false, dumb, or dangerous. Propaganda — think of “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” or “Workers of the World, Unite” — are models of effective messages. So are many foolish ideas (“as they stand up, we’ll stand down.”) But “Made To Stick” doesn’t deal in unsettling examples, only feel-good ones, such as the non-profit group that killed high-fat movie popcorn, or the noble effort to bring sportsmanship back to high school sports.

The omission is telling but unsurprising. The strategy of the contrarian social science treatise is to take curious phenomena — epidemics in Mr. Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point,” collective intelligence in James Surowiecki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds” (2005), and popular entertainment in Steven Johnson’s “Everything Bad is Good for You” (2006) — and show that, while reality is contrary to expectations, it is still predictable — and thus still manageable. That balance between contrariness and reassuring empowerment is the key to the genre’s success, and it’s a balance the Heaths strike perfectly. Their book is made to stick, but that’s about it.

Mr. Reynolds works at the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Washington, D.C.