Has the Tipping Point tipped over?

Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" and other books like "The Influentials" have been making a case for marketers targeting their message to a relatively small group of trend-setters or thought-leaders they call "Influentials."   If you can interest them in your product or service, they have the clout through word-of-mouth persuasion to get the masses to follow their lead, say the books.

The concept of influentials actually goes back to two sociologists who in 1955, according to the February issue of FAST COMPANY, chronicled their theory of marketing influence in their book "Personal Influence," where they introduced the idea of what they dubbed "opinion leaders."

Over the past 40 - 50 years, marketers have targeted those opinion leaders with their advertising as a way to break through to the larger markets they hope to penetrate.  In the past few years, more than $1 billion is spent annually, according to MarketingVOX, on word-of-mouth campaigns targeting influentials, and the trend is growing by more than one-third every year.

So along comes a guy named Duncan Watts -- a Columbia University network theory scientist currently working for Yahoo (unless he's one of the several hundred caught in recent layoffs there).  Watts says all that money being spent to reach influentials is a waste.

His experiments, outlined in detail in FAST COMPANY, claim that moving markets through influentials just doesn't work.  A number of random factors come together to create WOM, or viral buzz.  The emergence of a trend, he says, depends more on the receptivity of the public to a particular message at a particular time, and not on the blessing of so-called influentials.

Viral marketing a dud?  That flies in the face of trendy marketing, which often encourages companies to focus on a well-connected few who spread the word out to the masses.  Watts says his experiments and analyses show viral marketing through influentials may ultimately be less effective than that old standard -- mass marketing.

He recognizes the power of viral, but claims it is impossible to know who is going to spark the fire.  Therefore, he says marketers should aim at as broad a market as possible within their target demos, rather than waste money chasing "important" people.

I won't hazard a guess as to which theory is right, or perhaps more effective.  Watts' experiments are interesting and should challenge us to look more closely at how we try to get our messages out to potential buyers. I suspect some combination of the mass market and the "influentials" approach might work for some, customized for who you want to reach and how much you have to spend.

Check out the FAST COMPANY article if you have time (it's lengthy, but interesting) and let us know what you think.

Update 1/29/08:  Gavin Heaton explores the subject a bit more at his blog today.

Comments

[Gavin Heaton]

Very interesting ... I will bookmark this for later reading! I have been thinking on the whole strength of weak ties concept for a while and this plays right into it. That is ... it is not the strong connections that you have that will work in your favour, but the weak connections (for a variety of reasons).

What I find fascinating in this is that my heart says go with the influentials while my head says ignore them. An interesting reversal.

[David Reich]

Yes, Gavin, it's an interesting concept. I don't think we should ignore influentials, but perhaps play with the mix a bit. In some of the p.r. work I do, we'll shoot for opinion leaders, but certainly not to the exclusion of the larger market.

[Cam Beck]

This is fascinating and overdue. "The Tipping Point" is an oft-overused phrase these days, thanks to Gladwell and lazy marketers.

I tend to agree with you, David. I think the key is to put your company/product/service in a position to quickly react to the marketplace -- in whatever capacity is needed -- to take advantage of its natural chaotic vicissitudes.

[Cam Beck]

Great quote from the FastCompany article: "'My models might be totally wrong,' he says cheerfully. 'But at least I'm clear about what I'm saying. You can look at them, and tell me if you disagree. But none of these other thinkers are actually clear about what they're saying. You can't tell if they're wrong.'"

[Cam Beck]

I will say, though (and I'm sorry for spreading these into multiple comments), that mass marketing in its old form is made especially challenging since the attention we need to grab is so splintered these days. Once upon a time you could broadcast TV ads on all the major networks and you had great penetration and recognition.

The new media age requires that we find other ways to attract an audience, and that means (I think) finding someone who is passionate about what you have, whether they're influential or not, and exciting them about what you can do for them.

That's overly simple, but it's a starting point.

[David Reich]

Cam, I agree, but also, with so many highly targeted media venues available now, marketers can pinpoint where their message is aimed. To do this within reasonable media budgets can be a challenge, however.

[Cam Beck]

"Cam, I agree, but also, with so many highly targeted media venues available now, marketers can pinpoint where their message is aimed. To do this within reasonable media budgets can be a challenge, however."

Completely agree.

[Gavin Heaton]

This has been playing on my mind for a few days ... and to me, the challenge is finding and identifying not just the influencers, but those who are likely to become active based upon an influential trigger.

[David Reich]

Yes, Gavin, that's the challenge. I suppose the question is -- how much do you put against finding and influencing those "influencers" vs. just going after the masses?

[Gaurav Mishra]

Unless I’m way off the mark here, and correct me if I am, the only debate here is whether you should spend your marketing dollars targeting your ads at a lower number of influentials or reaching a broader market. This is a debate about cost trade-offs, not the fundamental nature of social networks.

Given that the objective of most marketers is to spread a given idea in the most cost-efficient manner (and it is), given that improvements in technology will make it more cost-efficient to identify and target influentials (and it will), and given that influentials themselves will become more connected via social media tools (and they will), word-of-mouth/ social/ viral marketing practitioners will do well to continue to focus on the tipping point potential of influentials.

[David Reich]

Gaurav, yes, the discussion is about how to spend marketing dollars. But what's interesting here is Watts' findings that, he says, indicate "influentials" aren't predictably influential. If that's true -- and I don't know -- then it calls into question the very idea of influentials impacting that tipping point.