It has been 12 years since Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point was released and subsequently hit the New York Times Best Seller List. Gladwell explored the anatomy of influence breaking down how viruses spread, how fashion trends emerge and even the influence of children’s television programming. With more than 1.7 million copies sold, the idea of influence is still being explored, understood and sold into marketeers as the latest thing.
Gladwell says, “The Tipping Point is a way of making sense of the world.” It structures influence around the people that share and those that consume and how that functions to create an epidemic. For marketing and PR agencies, and brands themselves it is a successful exploration of inorganically creating one of “the small things” that then creates a movement. This also means finitely mapping influence in a particular community or industry then seeing how it can be manipulated.
What is exciting about Gladwell’s structured approach is that it is constantly evolving and changing making mapping influence a challenge and the ultimate goal of creating influence even more challenging. Understanding influence and making it work for your brand are two very different things. Successful marketing and PR often feels like a post-mortum rather than a strategic operation.
As the world of marketing and communications embraces a more content-led approach, it’s the little things can make a big difference in creating influence. Mapping influence is the first phase, understanding what content “connectors” are sharing and then creating something that meets their requirements as a compelling piece of content. The structure is in place and understood, it is time that brands begin to look at how they can not only be part of the ecosystem but deliver content that serves and creates influence.
12 years on, it is strategic content and a focus on mapping influence that will take this knowledge of the structure of our relationships in society and make it a tool for brand building.