Understanding "The Tipping Point"

Malcolm Gladwell is a trend watcher. As a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, he connects with his audience through stories that draw upon research into social and historical trends.

In 2000, he published The Tipping Point, an amazing book that focuses on what he calls social epidemics. Why, for example, did Hush Puppies rise from the retail dead world to become a fashion trend in late 1994-1995? It was a confluence, he says of a few people doing something that became contagious, thus having a big effect in a short amount of time. A few young people bought Hush Puppies at resale shops in Greenwich Village in Soho. Then designers spotted the shoes and used them in photo shoots. Suddenly sales of the shoes hit the Tipping Point, jumping from 30,000 pairs a year to more than a million in less than two years.

Gladwell is instrumental in introducing the Tipping Point into our vocabulary. He identifies three rules that describe this phenomenon: the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Context.

Let's see how these apply to public relations.

The Law of the Few looks at the three kinds of people who are critical to spreading your message. First are the Connectors. They're the people who know lots and lots of people because they're involved in so many different activities involving different circles of people. Second are the Mavens. These are people who know a lot of information and share it willingly without expecting something in return. For example, they might know which restaurants are the best in town and can tell you what to order, how much to expect to pay, and what the service will be like. Finally, we have the Salesmen. These are the ones who can persuade you to buy, feel or do something and make you feel good (at least for a moment) about doing it.

The second rule is the Stickiness Factor. Why do we remember some messages but not others? The makers of "Sesame Street," for example, learned that preschoolers would stop paying attention when real people -- adults and children -- were doing things and talking on screen. But as soon as the Muppets showed up, the preschoolers got interested again. The Muppets helped make the message stick.

Think about TV commercials. Which company uses a gecko as its "spokes-animal"? And what does that company sell? If you can answer both questions, then the messaging was sticky. Of course, the crucial part is whether the message moves you to act.

Little things can help a message stick. For example, Gladwell tells of a research study at Yale on what motivated students to get tetanus shots. Some students got a brochure with general facts while others got a version with gruesome details and scary photos. The number of students from both groups who actually went to the campus health center to get inoculated was essential the same (3 percent). The researchers found that by simply including a map showing the health center and listing when the shots would be given, this increased the number of students who got the tetanus shots to 28 percent. A small change brought about big results.

And the third rule is the Power of Context. This refers to what is going on at the time and place when you are trying to disseminate your message. Gladwell talks about the Broken Windows theory, proposed by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, which says that "If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes. In a city, relatively minor problems like graffiti, public disorder, and aggressive panhandling ... are all the equivalent of broken windows, invitations to more serious crimes" (p. 141).

As a PR practitioner, you need to think about what the Tipping Point would be for your message. Who will deliver it? What will make it stick? And what else is going on that might help your people get ... and respond to ... your message?