The Tipping Point

In the last marketing course I took, we were given the option of reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point for extra credit. I was already familiar with the author having read his essays in the New Yorker magazine, so I bought the book expecting nothing. I had not however - until I picked up The Tipping Point- imagined that he would produce a scholarly work so relevant to the field of marketing.
The tipping point is originally an epidemiological term which Gladwell re-coined as a sociological one. In epidemiology It refers to the moment at which the “momentum for change becomes unstoppable (Wikipedia).” As far as marketers are concerned, the tipping point is the point at which a simple trend “tips over” and becomes something more than just a trend; an epidemic.
Gladwell approaches the phenomenon from all angles. He analyzes a wide spectrum of social issues; ranging from the 90s crime epidemic in New York City, to the exponentially increasing teenage smoking rates. The Hush Puppies case serves as the framework, on which Gladwell explains various marketing concepts such as that of the trend-setters, which in turn is implemented in today’s marketing as the practice of cool-hunting.
You may remember Hush Puppies’ from their Timberland-like boots. Although the brand was initially a hit in the States, in time it became completely obsolete. Towards the end of the 90s however, something changed, reviving the brand’s image and hence its sales. The strange thing about this sudden change was that, it did not occur through any conscious marketing effort. When baffled marketers began investigating as to how this miraculous change came about, they discovered that it was all due to a few hip teens’ newly-acquired vintage sense of style. These teenagers, who lived in the East Village (NYC), began wearing the boots in order to distinguish themselves as unique, rejecting to conform by wearing the prevalent mass-customized fashion of the times. Through a series of rather fortunate events, Hush Puppies once again became all the rage for Americans, as hunting cool kids or trend-setters did for marketers.
Gladwell devotes an entire chapter to the word-of-mouth phenomenon which is one of the mechanisms that catalyze the trend-to-epidemic conversion process. He mentions historical events (Paul Revere riding all night to warn key American quasi-military officials of the impending English strike, during the American revolutionary war) as well as the reasons behind the sudden rise of the book “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” to the bestsellers list.
He identifies three psychological types of people as the key players of word-of-mouth; he calls them connectors, mavens and salesmen. Mavens are those consumers who can be defined as nit-picky or rather, demanding. They collect all the available information on products and make a lengthy comparison before purchase. Because they are highly aware of most market offerings, they usually pick up on new trends before others. This makes them innovators as opposed to laggards in terms of product adoption. Moreover, these slightly obsessive types become authorities on purchase decisions, enabling them to influence the decisions of others’ within their social group. One can understand why it’s crucial for marketer’s to communicate with these people, whose opinion matters more than most. Connectors are unusually social people who have a wide network of casual acquaintances. Salesmen have a charismatic authority that makes others want to agree with them. Gladwell uses the Influentials Theory[1] – dictates that making a change requires no more than the efforts of a few influential people with unique sets of social skills- to bring all the qualities of mavens, connectors and salesman that will trigger word-out-mouth and induce an epidemic, together. It is important to note however, that some marketers criticize this theory, claiming that the widely-practiced word-of-mouth marketing is widely ineffective.
Marketing is a vague science and the process of launching a successful brand is more an art than it is a science. If it were as exact as say accounting, we could not explain the near 80% failure rate of start-up brands. Malcolm Gladwell highlights a series of ingenious tricks that have been, are already being, and can be used to take control of trends; such as toll-free customer feedback numbers to attract, or “trap” mavens, achieving stickiness thorugh appropriate contexts in advertising, and many others. In my opinion, his most significant contribution above all, is the necessary framework in which to think about trends and related social phenomena in general.
[1] Thompson, Clive. Is the Tipping Point Toast