The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can - By Gladwell, Malcolm Page 0,93

embedded suicide had become in the teen culture of Micronesia.

A number of young boys who attempted suicide reported that they first saw or heard about it when they were 8 or 10 years old. Their suicide attempts appear in the spirit of imitative or experimental play. One 11 year old boy, for example, hanged himself inside his house and when found he was already unconscious and his tongue protruding. He later explained that he wanted to “try” out hanging. He said that he did not want to die.

What is tragic about this is not that these little boys were experimenting. Experimenting is what little boys do. What is tragic is that they have chosen to experiment with something that you cannot experiment with. Unfortunately, there isn’t ever going to be a safer form of suicide, to help save the teenagers of Micronesia. But there can be a safer form of smoking, and by paying attention to the Tipping Points of the addiction process we can make that safer, less sticky form of smoking possible.

EIGHT

Conclusion

FOCUS, TEST, AND BELIEVE

Not long ago a nurse by the name of Georgia Sadler began a campaign to increase knowledge and awareness of diabetes and breast cancer in the black community of San Diego. She wanted to create a grassroots movement toward prevention, and so she began setting up seminars in black churches around the city. The results, however, were disappointing. “There’d be maybe two hundred people in church, but we’d get only twenty or so to stay, and the people who were staying were people who already knew a lot about those diseases and just wanted to know more. It was very discouraging.” Sadler couldn’t get her message to tip outside of that small group.

She realized she needed a new context. “I guess people were tired and hungry after the service,” she says. “We all have a busy life. People wanted to get home.” She needed a place where women were relaxed, receptive to new ideas, and had the time and opportunity to hear something new. She also needed a new messenger, someone who was a little bit Connector, a little bit Salesman, and a little bit Maven. She needed a new, stickier way of presenting the information. And she needed to make all those changes in such a way that she didn’t exceed the very small amount of money she’d cobbled together from various foundations and funding groups. Her solution? Move the campaign from black churches to beauty salons.

“It’s a captive audience,” Sadler says. “These women may be at a salon for anywhere from two hours to eight hours, if they’re having their hair braided.” The stylist also enjoys a special relationship with her client. “Once you find someone who can manage your hair, you’ll drive a hundred miles to see her. The stylist is your friend. She takes you through your high school graduation, your wedding, your first baby. It’s a long term relationship. It’s a trusting relationship. You literally and figuratively let your hair down in a salon.” There is something about the profession of stylist, as well, that seems to attract a certain kind of person—someone who communicates easily and well with others, someone with a wide variety of acquaintances. “They’re natural conversationalists,” Sadler says. “They love talking to you. They tend to be very intuitive, because they have to keep an eye on you and see how you’re doing.”

She gathered together a group of stylists from the city for a series of training sessions. She brought in a folklorist to help coach the stylists in how to present their information about breast cancer in a compelling manner. “We wanted to rely on traditional methods of communication,” Sadler says. “This isn’t a classroom setting. We wanted this to be something that women wanted to share, that they wanted to pass on. And how much easier is it to hang the hooks of knowledge on a story?” Sadler kept a constant cycle of new information and gossipy tidbits and conversational starters about breast cancer flowing into the salons, so that each time a client came back, the stylist could seize on some new cue to start a conversation. She wrote the material up in large print, and put it on laminated sheets that would survive the rough and tumble of a busy hair salon. She set up an evaluation program to find out what was working and to see how successful she was in changing attitudes and getting women to have mammograms and