POST IT NOTES: 10 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Them
This week's video goes through 10 things most people probably haven’t got a clue about the Post-it notes!
The Post-it is a small piece of paper of which its low-tack adhesive band allows you to temporarily attach it to pretty much everything you can think of (from documents, to computer monitors and ultimately walls).
Despite its omnipresence on most of our homes, desks, and office spaces, this little piece of canary yellow sticky paper had far from certain origins.
One could say that the success of the Post-it note arose from a good technology paired with the right user need that got sold at the right time via a very effective marketing strategy. Although this statement can be a little bit misleading since its journey was packed with challenges and hiccups along the way!
It all started with a team effort although, it took a decade for a team within 3M (Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Company) to come up with such a successful product.
The Post-it low tack adhesive was invented in 1968 by Dr. Spencer Silver although it took 6 years for its application to be envisioned by another fellow 3M scientist, Art Fry. At this point, 3M management had no faith in the product whatsoever and the project got canned until 1978 when Geoff Nicholson, the 3M New Products Laboratory Manager, was able to push the Post-It into the market using the right marketing strategy.
Spencer Silver stumbled across a somewhat peculiar low-tack, pressure-sensitive adhesive that was able to stick lightly to surfaces without bonding tightly to them.
This low-tack pressure-sensitive adhesive, also known as Acrylate Copolymer Microspheres is (as its name suggests) actually made of microscopic spheres which are ONLY pretty good at sticking well to surfaces they are tangent to.
It is in this tangential relationship between the microspheres and the surface to which they will be bonded to, that lies the secret of the Post-it. The lack of contact area allows for the microspheres to stick to pretty much anything as well as still allowing them to be easily peeled away.
Silver was well known within 3M for constantly pushing the low-tack adhesive to his peers however it took 6 years for someone to come up with a functional application for it.
The person who did so was Art Fry. This 3M Product Development Engineer suggested sticking Silver’s low tack adhesive to a piece of paper so that they could stick it to pretty much anything.
Fry’s idea arose from a challenge with which he was faced every Wednesday night, when the little scraps of paper he used to bookmark his hymnal kept falling before Sunday’s service.
Although getting the adhesive to permanently bond with the yellow canary paper was a task which has proven to be easier said than done.
Post-it early prototypes kept leaving parts of their adhesive stuck to the surface they have been adhered to; and to deal with this issue, two other 3M employees entered the scene; Roger Merril and Henry Courtney were the men responsible to come up with the coating, which applied to the paper, helped Silver’s low-tack adhesive to permanently bond onto it.
A lot has been speculated about the Post-It’s iconic yellow canary color... some have said that this was a way to make them stand out when stuck to the widely used white paper; others saw it as a way to create an emotional connection with their users… although, no one could be far more off from the truth!
Geoff Nicholson has confirmed that the Post-It color was (as pretty much everything on its development path) a rather fortunate coincidence. The lab where the 3M Post-It team was working on, was right next to another one which produced a lot of yellow scrap paper, making this an easily available and accessible resource for them to work on.
Fry decided to make 3M corporate headquarters as the Post-It’s proving ground. To do that, he supplied the entire company with this new, revolutionary piece of canary yellow paper which could easily be pinned to pretty much anything.
They were an instant success! Everyone started using them around the office to pass on written messages and that’s when Fry realized that they were not just a simple bookmark; instead, they’ve just created a completely revolutionary way of communicating.
Even though 3M management still didn’t think that the Post-It would be a commercial success which led them to shelve the project for another three years.
Although, the 1977 Press ‘n Peel flop, was not enough to discourage Nicholson!
A year later, in 1978 (in what ended up being known as the Boise Blitz), 3M marketers decided to send out large numbers of free Post-It samples straight to companies. With this repurposed marketing approach almost 90% of the companies re-ordered additional units thereby proving 3M management wrong and showing them that there was an actual demand for this type of product.
And it was, by means of self-promotion, that the Post-It notes ended up achieving the design iconic status they have today.