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Has The Tipping Point Jumped the Shark?

Lots of marketing types are talking about Clive Thompson’s provocative article in Fast Company, postulating that the Influentials theory of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (and many others) is, well, bollocks. I don’t have anything smart to contribute at the moment, but I wanted to point to two clever marketers.

Seth Godin discriminates between ‘important’ and ‘passionate’:

Unleashing the Ideavirus didn’t spread because ‘important’ people endorsed and promoted it. It spread because passionate people did.

One more reason not to obsess about the A list in any media category. Worry instead about people with passion and people with lots of friends. You need both for ideas to spread. That was Malcolm’s point all along.

Meanwhile, publishing industry guru Monique Trottier references a pitch I made to her, and the results:

In internet land, my blog post is a very small blip in the Brother Printer landscape. Although SoMisguided is the first result for the search “brother printer wireless”. But down on Earth, everyone who comes into our office comments on our fancy printer and I mention it’s a Brother Printer and that I like it very much. It does an excellent print job. I also comment that I wish it did more…

So was it a waste of money for Brother Printers to hire Darren and to get a bunch of bloggers test driving their printers? I don’t think so. Again, it comes down to trusted sources and timely feedback on something people were interested in.

It is worth mentioning that Duncan Watts, the smart dude between the anti-influencers theory, isn’t stirring the pot without reason. As Thompson writes:

He has developed a new technique for propagating ads virally, which can double or even quadruple the reach of an ordinary online campaign by harnessing the pass-around power of everyday people–and ignoring Influentials altogether.

Ironically, the influencers are talking about his approach.

Tags: clive thompson, Duncan Watts, influencers, malcolm gladwell, monique trottier, seth godin, tipping point