TIPPING POINTS

Viral Marketing

Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller• Thomas Schelling (Nobel

Prize winner) first introduced the concept of “tipping points” in 1972

• Malcolm Gladwell popularized the concept in his best seller

Downside of traditional marketing/advertising

• Cost:– TV and print ads are expensive

• Media clutter:– It is difficult for products to stand out

against the background of advertising• Cynicism:

– Consumers, especially Gen X and Gen Y consumers, are jaded and cynical about “obvious” marketing

• TIVO, DVRs:– Consumers can avoid TV commercials

altogether• Segmentation:

– Consumers aren’t heterogeneous, they are segmented into different markets

Viral Marketing

• Steve Jurvetson and Tim Draper coined the term “viral marketing” in 1997.

• a.k.a. below the radar marketing, buzz marketing, stealth advertising

• Relies on word-of-mouth (WOM) endorsements– like a virus, word about a product or

service spreads from one consumer to another

Examples, intentional and unintentional

• Live Strong bracelets (and the whole wrist band craze)

• Ipods, Iphones• accessory dogs• “Support Our Troops”

stickers• Juicy Couture handbags• Hip Hop (culture as a

commodity)

More examples of buzz gone wild

• JenniCam• Razor scooters• Harry Potter books• Wii Fit• YouTube• MySpace, Facebook• Blogs, blogging, the

blogosphere

Methods and techniques• Poseurs: “ordinary person at a

bar, in line at a concert, at a soccer field– Sony Ericcson hired 120 actors

and actresses to play tourists at popular attractions around the country.The “tourists” asked passersby to take their picture with a T68i cell phone that featured a digital camera

• Trendsetters and early adopters– Use of “cool hunters” and

“trend spotters”

• Imitation, social modeling– yellow magnetic ribbons

saying “Support the Troops”

• Email, chat rooms, and blogs• Manufactured controversies:

– Ambercrombie & Fitch sold thong underwear in children’s sizes, with the words “eye candy” printed on the front

Malcolm Gladwell’s notion of “Tipping Points”

• Tipping point:– the threshold or critical point at which an idea,

product, or message takes off or reaches critical mass.

• Viral theory of marketing:– ideas and messages can be contagious just like

diseases • The law of the few

– It doesn’t take large numbers of people to generate a trend

– A select few enjoy a disproportionate amount of influence over the spread of social trends

Tipping points--continued• The stickiness factor

– idea, message, or product has to be “sticky” or inherently attractive

– idea must be memorable, practical, personal, novel

– hard to manufacture this feature• Power of context

– must happen at the right time, place– for example, social networking (MySpace,

Facebook) wouldn’t be possible without widespread access to the Internet

– rule of 150: Groups grow too large and loose cohesion at 150

Key influencers• Connectors: know everybody, are networkers, have many

contacts– “Connectors are social glue: they spread it.” (Gladwell)– Have large social circles

• Mavens: possess information, expertise, and seek to share it– “Mavens are data banks. They provide the message”

(Gladwell)– Are “in the know”

• Salesman: are persuasive– Charismatic types– Often rely on “soft” influence

• Note: All three types are needed for a phenomenon to take-off

Other concerns

• Scalability: message must be able to go from very small to very large without “gearing up.”

– Wii couldn’t ramp up manufacturing and lost millions in sales.

• Effortless transfer: message must be passed on for free, or nearly free, or “coast” on existing networks.

The downside• Not that scientific

– evidence is largely anecdotal

– phenomenon isn’t that reliable, predictable

– A bit of a “finger in the wind” approach to marketing

• viral marketing” is something of an oxymoron.– The more viral marketing is

planned or contrived, the less likely it is to succeed;

• Momentum may not reach the tipping point– no guarantee the initial

“buzz” will become contagious.

– difficult to orchestrate word of mouth

• Trends come and go quickly– like a contagion, a trend can

die out quickly or be replaced by a new trend