Hush puppies, a footwear brand that was on the brink of obscurity, suddenly started becoming trendy again in the streets of Manhattan. New York, a city known for criminal gangs roaming and causing havoc with impunity suddenly saw crime incidences plummet. Sesame Street, a show that pioneered the genre of children’s edutainment, spread like wildfire across the world. All the above incidences looked like epidemics, because they actually were.
Malcolm Gladwell, the author of the widely popular book The Outliers, wrote The Tipping Point-How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference way before he discovered what makes Outliers in our society stand out. In his characteristic easy going manner he breaks down complex research data into a way that ordinary readers like me can understand and enjoy. He convincingly explains what makes ideas and products spread like viruses by exploring 3 rules which turn ideas into epidemics:
i) The Law of the Few: This law describes how a select group of people with certain unique characteristics are able to make ideas spread like Australian bush-fires. Paul Revere was a man who was able to spread the news of America’s invasion from Britain and almost single-handedly change the course of the war which led to America’s independence. He possessed characteristics which few people had. Amongst us there exist such people; they are described in the book as Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen.
ii) The Stickiness Factor: To infect people with an idea, it has to stick long after it’s introduced to them. Sesame Street was able to stick to its target audience and was widely popular long after it was introduced to the American public in the summer of 1969. An even more “stickier” show named Blues Clues launched much later with a concept that seemed foolish to adults captivated the pre-school children it targeted. The Tipping Point illustrates how the producers of those shows discovered the factors that made them stick.
iii) The Power of Context: New York City in the 1980s was a city with one of the worst crime epidemics in the world. By 1996 crime rates had dropped by more than two thirds of what it was in 1990, when it was at an all time high. Gladwell explores seemingly unrelated events which contributed to drastic drop in crime because they changed the context of where the crime was happening.
If you are curious of how ideas, products and events become widely popular or if you are wondering how to popularize a product and turn it into an epidemic, The Tipping Point is the book for you. Easy to read and laden with examples from different contexts, it’s easy to see why it became a New York Times bestseller and maintained its “stickiness factor” in that list for years.
Dreams Haven 