How little things can make a difference
By Malcom Gladwell

How to Start a Marketing Craze

What can marketers learn from the outbreaks of infectious diseases?

As a science writer for the Washington Post and the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell noticed similarities between the laws that influence epidemics and the laws that influence marketing.

In a brilliant and groundbreaking book The Tipping Point, How Little Things Make a Big Difference, Gladwell looks at how marketing and social crazes start.

Marketing crazes argues Gladwell are similar to epidemics. A flu epidemic, for example, may start with a small group of 100 infected individuals. This group of 100 will infect 10 percent of the people they meet. If each of the 100 meets 10 people a day, they will infect just one other person a day, and the flu will remain confined at a manageable level. But if they met 11 people a day, they'll infect two other people everyday, and in just a couple of weeks the flu will explode into an uncontrollable epidemic.

Gladwell calls the moment when an epidemic reaches critical mass and explodes the Tipping Point.

The rise of Hush Puppies is a classic case of an epidemic in action. Late In 1994 the Hush Puppy brand was all but buried. Sales were low, 30,000 pairs a year. Wolverine the shoes manufacturers were thinking of phasing them out. Then suddenly the brand exploded. Hush Puppies had suddenly become hip. In 1995 the company sold 430,000 pairs. In 1996 sales skyrocketed four times.

How did it happen? Gladwell argues the best explanation is to think of crazes like the Hush Puppies as epidemics. Ideas, products and messages spread like viruses do.

The Law of the Few

Gladwell shows epidemics are started by a tiny handful of key influencers he calls connectors, movers and salespeople. Gladwell calls it the law of the few.

Connectors are people who have large social circles. Movers are people to whom we seek advice on what we should buy. Salespeople are those who have the charm, likeability, and energy to persuade us when we would normally be unconvinced.

Stickiness

For an idea to take hold it has to be more than contagious. It must possess what Gladwell calls stickiness. A message to be sticky has to be memorable. Stickiness however rarely comes from earth shattering innovations. It often comes from a small change in the message or packaging. Little changes Gladwell reminds us can make a huge difference.

Gladwell's ideas are brilliant and groundbreaking. It really is one of these rare gems of a book that change the way you think about marketing and selling.

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