Friday, April 11, 2008
The Tipping Point through life's stories...
Just before I started graduate school my mom came to visit me and excitedly shoved a book that she had read at me. She said it explained leaders, communicators and suppliers and how people fell into one of those three camps in order to affect change. She then proceeded to tell me the ‘real’ reason that the crime rate dropped so significantly in New York during the 90’s… at which point I interrupted and proclaimed to her that it was the infamous abortion-rights case of Roe V. Wade – after all, I had recently read the Steven Levitt book Freakanomics on a plane ride back from Brussels and was tired of her profound new knowledge. She dismissed my notion all together by saying that it wasn’t Roe V. Wade at all that pulled down the crime rate, but instead, according to book’s author, Malcolm Gladwell, it was an effort on petty crimes that lead to a stem of the more violent crimes.
Although I was somewhat intrigued by the story and the book which contained it, and others – “The Tipping Point – How Little Things Can Make a Difference,” I was knee deep in Pythagorean’s theorem and Pi-R-squared formulas as I was in the throes of my GMAT studies and the book would have to wait.
Fast forward to Christmas break 2007 and “The Tipping Point” resurfaced – this time with a quasi-mandate, not from my mother – but, unfortunately, from a higher source – Dr. Peter Topping, professor of our Goizueta Leadership Academy. This time, with free time on my hands, I eagerly pulled the book from its resting place on my dusty shelf and tore into it… thanks to an extended layover in the Richmond, VA airport on the way up to New York, I learned all about Mavens, Connectors and Salesman. I also finally came to understand the oft-used business marketing cliché of “Stickiness” and – to my mother’s delight – understood why roping in petty crimes in NY was the key to shoring violent crime.
As a marketer, I tended to read this book through a different lens than I would imagine someone who was attempting to stay on top of the “business book de jour.” I was particularly interested in the critical mass concept that Gladwell outlined – described by him as the tipping point of when enough of the right people engage in a mission, good or bad, to affect change in a transcending way. Although it was would be easy to diagram Gladwell’s framework for this Tipping Point and summarize each of this metaphorical stories – I believe it would be most helpful to instead share either what was running around in my crazy mind as I read his anecdotes or in the days and months following my read.
To iterate my own analogy to the need for a Connector and the Law of the Few, I think back to my days working at Sandusky Radio’s 98 KUPD – a Phoenix rock station that was number one among males 18-34 for a number of years. In my time at the station, I would sit in on meetings with the music director and his staff as they selected what new releases to put into the tightly monitored rotation and which ones to pull and retire. It was here that I unknowingly developed an ‘ear’ for the successful ‘hit’. It was pretty likely that many of the songs I was listening to had been listened to a total of a few thousand people nationwide – mostly record reps and radio station music and program directors. During one of these music sessions, the Sony rep excitedly made us listen to a band called Sponge and their new single “Plowed.” On the reps next visit to the station he urged us to add “Plowed” to the playlist. Although we agreed that Plowed was a fair enough song and deserved to be in rotation, we all were more enthusiastically excited about another cut deeper on the disc called “Molly.” The music director often encouraged those hanging around the station to earn their keep and take home the piles of unknown CDs and listen for ‘hits.’ The song Molly came from one of those take-home sessions where my friend Chris (who now, ironically, lives in Richmond, VA) and I drove up to Payson for a day out of the summer heat of Phoenix. During the trip, we kept returning to the “Molly” track and became very excited about sharing this newly-found gem with Curtiss (the music director).
Unfortunately, the Sony rep did not believe that ”Molly” should replace “Plowed,” nor be a deeper cut single at all since it was more of a short-pop junket of a song that wouldn’t work well in a rock atmosphere. We continued to make our case as “Plowed” gained more and more popularity and the band stared to tour. Although we continued to make our case to anyone that listened anytime “Plowed” was heard on the radio, it looked less and less likely that “Molly” would become anything of a single. Even in early 1995, while watching another blooming Sony artist, “Our Lady Peace” perform at the annual South by Southwest show in Austin, TX, the Sony rep confessed that the record company didn’t have interest in “Molly” and was pushing another track, “Pennywheels” as the follow up to “Plowed.” “Pennywheels” certainly had more grunge than pop and was nearly a minute longer than “Molly” so it made sense, plus it was the lead track on the album, so the record label had deliberately been planning its release. Soon after, stations began to drop “Pennywheels” from rotation. Our Sony rep called up and asked us if we were sure about “Molly” and if so, if we would consider adding it to our rotation as a trial follow up to the now-failed “Pennywise.” Our response was that since we too had dropped “Pennywise” nearly three weeks earlier, we had already been playing “Molly” and received more than nominal response in the form of call ins and increased Sponge CD sales at the local Tower Records. Later that summer, “Molly” made it to #55 on the Billboard Hot 100 and to this day is the biggest single in the life of Sponge – their only single to register in the Hot 100.
This story is akin to Gladwell’s opening tale of youngsters in the village of New York wearing Hush Puppies in showing how even something more superior, in this case a hit song to Gladwell’s fashion ware needs the help of a Connector to become wildy successful and experience that “Tipping Point.”
Another analogy related to Gladwell’s framework is an adventure that a girlfriend and I shared when looking for a house in San Diego, California. Southern California was in the middle of its housing boom in 2003 and we were trying to purchase our first home. Conditions were vicious, as typically 80 buyers would show up jockeying for availabilities of 10-15 houses at a time. Everything from lotteries to paying people to sleep in line became the norm in the quest to get a new house. At one point, we found an ideal, if not smaller than expected home and put a bid in, only to find that we were one of 13 people to bid on the property and that the bidding would start again after the price was raised an additional $25,000. In this story, there are two players: My girlfriend, the saleswoman and myself the Maven. I don’t typically see myself as a maven, but everytime I think of this story, I immediately think of our contrasting styles in handling the situation and upon reading Gladwell, immediately remembered this event.
Somehow, we ended up being of the top seven picked to bid/choose among seven new houses in a new development outside of Chula Vista. Among the seven houses was a corner lot with the biggest backyard and an unobstructed view of San Diego’s downtown skyline, the Pacific Ocean and the hills of Tijuana – we would later find out that it was the highest point of elevation in Chula Vista. Even though we were chosen among the top seven, we had the fifth pick and doubted that our ‘dream house’ would actually be available for us by that time. Our doubts sunk even further as the price list was announced and our choice was one of the least expensive.
It is at this point, where the personalities of Maven and Saleswoman came to play. Although we did not clearly form a strategy, we appeared to break into our natural settings as we waited around the model homes for the home selection to begin. My girlfriend started by socializing with each of the other buyers to try to learn what they planned to buy and why. She would ask how many kids the family had and what they lived in currently. She would then proclaim that a three-bedroom house (the size we wanted) would be too confined as she was just up at the home sites and saw that the bedrooms were rather small. She would also point out that a certain house of equal floor plan to ours was actually ‘closer’ to the entrance to the school, so it might be safer for the young children to have that house.
I, on the other hand, stood by the 3D map of the homes and began to point out to the buyers all the strategic advantages of the corner lot house that we wanted would be. I pointed out that it was really the same price as the cheapest house, if you excluded the balcony that came with our desired house. I also pointed out the view and the size of the backyard, both which would fetch significantly higher resale values. These were all facts that the buyers would not get from looking at the monopoly board like 3D map and I was proud to share the info as my profession at the time was that of a corporate trainer.
My girlfriend, whose job was ironically, in sales, was furious at my attempts to share this valuable information. It was an interesting setting as we were both playing our natural roles, mine being a maven who wanted to share as much information as I could to help those around me make the most informed decision as possible and my girlfriend – the saleswoman - who wanted to sweet talk everyone into thinking that they would make a better choice with another house. In the end, we did end up getting our desired house, and clearly, my girlfriend’s saleswoman abilities got us there.
In a final conclusion, I definitely enjoyed “The Tipping Point” and understand why it was as successful book as it was – for one reason, it allowed me to think and more importantly apply labels and definitions, thus explaining the events I had experienced in my life. Now, as I meet people, I immediately try to put one of the three labels on them: Maven, Connector, Salesman. I also am much more in-tuned to the “Stickiness” factor everytime I am developing a campaign and new product at my job. And, now I understand why cops try to ticket people for Jaywalking… although most big city cops appear to busy on their cell phones to even notice a jaywalker these days. Maybe crime is on the way back up?
