Malcolm Gladwell, the intelligent (and crazy-haired) writer from The New Yorker Magazine turns in a fascinating volume about the sociology of epidemics. The epidemics range from STDs in Baltimore to Hush Puppies shoes to marketing Airwalk shoes with many fascinating examples that I did not mention here. The question of the book is…what makes an idea hit a tipping point?
Gladwell defines a tipping point as the point at which an idea or a product (are STDs a product? sure, i guess product works) spreads in epidemic fashion. How do we reach tipping points and how do we create products that are capable of tipping into societal or group epidemics? Anyone in marketing or idea development has surely asked these questions. Gladwell approaches these ideas from a unique angle.
Three key components to Gladwell’s book and his thesis on how tipping points are hit:
1) involvement of people with particular sets of social skills – Paul Revere is used as an example of these type of people as well as many other unique characters
2) Stickiness – an idea or a product must stick to someone who hears about it. How do we connect our ideas to those who are interested in them?
3) The Power of Context – the example of the New York subways has certainly given me a lot to think about in my student center. The context in which a product or idea is introduced can have dramatic impact on it’s potential to become an epidemic
The concepts of the book aren’t particularly new. There’s even a book called “making it stick” that elaborates for several hundred pages on how to make a product/idea sticky. I loved Gladwell’s illustrations of the concepts though, as well as the cases studies; these case studies helped to bring home the concepts and gave me much more room for thought than the concepts themselves.
The tipping point is a quick read and a worthwhile read for any person who finds themself marketing, whether it be at work, in your volunteer work, or even marketing yourself. I liked it enough that I also picked up Gladwell’s “outliers”.
