The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can - By Gladwell, Malcolm Page 0,101

who meet face to face. People holding dissenting opinions expressed their arguments most “frequently and persistently” when they communicated online, the researchers concluded. “At the same time, minorities received the highest level of positive attention and had the greatest influence on the private opinions of members in the majority and on the final group decision when they communicated face to face.” The fact that expressing a dissenting view in person is much harder socially, in other words, gives that opinion much more credence in the group’s deliberations. It’s the same way in other kinds of communications. The fact that anyone can e-mail us for free, if they have our address, means that people frequently and persistently e-mail us. But that quickly creates immunity, and simply makes us value face to face communications — and the communications of those we already know and trust — all the more.

I think that the “fax effect” error is being repeated by marketers and communicators over and over again. Advertising agencies often decide which magazines and television shows they want to place their ads in on the basis of cost: they buy whatever time is the cheapest as a means of reaching the widest possible audience. But what about immunity? The agencies’ logic has resulted in so many companies buying ads on television that it now runs more hours of commercial time than ever before. Therefore, it’s hard to believe that people are really watching commercials as closely as they did before. The same is true for a magazine with hundreds of advertisements or a roadside with billboards every hundred feet. When people are overwhelmed with information and develop immunity to traditional forms of communication, they turn instead for advice and information to the people in their lives whom they respect, admire, and trust. The cure for immunity is finding Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen.

Finding the Mavens

Whenever I look at an unopened bar of Ivory bath soap, I flip it over and burst out laughing. In the midst of all the product information, there is a line that says: “Questions? Comments? Call 1 800 395 9960.” Who on earth could ever have a question about Ivory soap? In fact, who on earth would ever have a question about Ivory soap so important that they felt compelled to call the company right away? The answer, of course, is that while most of us would never dial that number, a very small percentage of profoundly weird people may well feel compelled from time to time to call in with a question. These are people who feel passionate about soap. They are the soap Mavens, and if you are in the soap business you had better treat those soap Mavens well because they are the ones whom all their friends turn to for advice about soap.

The Ivory soap 800 number is what I call a Maven trap — a way of efficiently figuring out who the Mavens are in a particular world — and how to set Maven traps is one of the central problems facing the modern marketplace. For the better part of a century, we defined influence in this country in the form of status. The most important influence in making up our minds, we were told, was the people who made the most money and who had the most education and who lived in the choicest neighborhoods. The virtue of this notion was that these kinds of people were easy to find: in fact, an entire industry in the marketing world was created around the convenient delivery of long lists of people who had graduate degrees, made lots of money, and lived in nice neighborhoods. But Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen are a little different. They are distinguished not by worldly status and achievement, but by the particular standing they have among their friends. People look up to them not out of envy, but out of love, which is why these kinds of personalities have the power to break through the rising tide of isolation and immunity. But love is a very difficult thing to track. How on earth do you find these kinds of people?

This is a question that I’ve been asked again and again over the last year, and there is no easy answer. Connectors, I think, are the sorts of people who don’t need to be found. They make it their business to find you. But Mavens are a little harder, which is why it is so important, I think, to come up with