1. The Tipping point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling
point. (pg 12).
2. The Law of the Few says there a few types of people that are critical to social
epidemics. (pg 34). There are three types of the people that control buzz
marketing, connectors, mavens and salesmen. Connectors are people who
have a gift for bringing people together. (pg 38). Mavens have a lot of
information on products, prices or places. (pg 62). Salesmen are the people
with the skills to persuade people when they are unconvinced of what they
are hearing. (pg 70). The qualities of these people differ, but together they
have the ability to awareness about a brand, idea, or issue.
3. Hush Puppies exemplify the Tipping Point because they had been around for
a while and seemed to be dead until 1994-1995 when the company
experienced an explosion in sales thanks to a few kids in the East Village and
Soho. (pg 3-4). It shows how a few people can create a social epidemic.
4. Paul Revere’s ride may be the most famous historical example of buzz
marketing. A piece of news traveled a long distance in a short time,
mobilizing an entire region to arms. The fact that people believed Paul
Revere and not William Dawes shows that it takes a special type of person to
induce a Tipping Point. (pg 32-33).
5. The 80/20 Principle is the idea that in any situation 20 percent of the
participants will do 80 percent of the “work.” (pg 19). This relates to the
Tipping Point because similar to what the Law of the Few says, a small
number of people induce a Tipping Point.
6. The Stickiness Factor says that there are specific ways of making a
contagious message memorable; there are simple changes in presentation
and the way information is structured that can make a big difference in how
big of an impact it has. (pg 25). “Sesame Street” used the live animation of
Saturday morning cartoons to teach lessons, brought in celebrities to sing
and dance and star in comedy, and taught children about the virtues of
cooperation or about their own emotions. They discovered that by making
small adjustments they overcame televisions weakness as a teaching tool. (pg
91). “Blues Clues” made their show one storyline because they realized kids
had long attention spans, included pauses to make the show interactive, and
ran the same episode for 5 days straight to teach kids using the James Earl
Jones effect. (pg 118-125).
7. The Power of Context means that human beings are a lot more sensitive to
their environment than the appear to be. (pg 29). With Kitty Genovese
nobody called because each person assumed that somebody else was going
to do it. (pg 28). Bernie Goetz was a product of his environment and
expressed his anger by brutally shooting four innocent kids because of the
color of their skin.(pg 134). The Power of context can both halt people from
inducing the Tipping Point or drive people to it .
8. Six degrees of separation means that a very small number of people are
linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the
world via those few people. (pg 36-27).
9. The TV anchors had an impact on voters by showing an unconscious bias. By
simply smiling and nodding his head Peter Jennings was able to show a bias
for Ronald Regan. (pg 75). I feel like this implies that the public views
journalists as mavens. The study done with the high-tech headphones
showed how body language impacted whether students agreed or disagreed
with a tuition increase. (pg 77).
10. With the Columbia Record Club advertising I learned that when you venture
outside the normal way of thinking and allow consumers to be participants in
a campaign it is more effective. (pg 95). With the case of the Yale tetanus
experiment I learned that the more information you make available the more
likely the public is to respond to the message. People are also more likely to
respond to material that is visual instead of written. (pg 98) .
11. The Broken Windows theory explains the epidemic of crime because it says
that an epidemic can be reversely tipped by tinkering with the smallest
details of the environment. Arresting people for “broken windows” like
graffiti, public disorder, and aggressive panhandling will deter people from
criminal activities. (pg 141). This theory reminds PR practitioners to repair
smaller problems in an organization to lesson the chance of a crisis.
12. The Good Samaritan experiment concluded that the convictions of your
heart and the actual contents of your thoughts are not as important as the
immediate context of your behavior when it comes to guiding your actions.
(pg 165). When it comes to PR, we have to remember that current situations
play a major impact on behavior.
13. The marketing of “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” exemplifies
the critical role that groups play in social epidemics because it brought
groups of women together in book clubs around the world and created a “yaya” bond. The once small town epidemic quickly grew into a nationwide
epidemic in a snowball effect. (pg 174.)
14. The Rule of 150 caps the number of people humans are able to care about
and work with cohesively. When a group reaches past 150, sub-groups begin
to appear. (pg 174-179.) An example is a fraternity. Fraternities have
chapters because a chapter can work cohesively in a group and carry out the
organizations mission statement whereas working along with all the
chapters in a state might be too difficult and take too much emotional energy.
15. The “Paradox of Epidemic” means that in order to create a contagious
epidemic you usually have to create many small movements first.(pg 192).
Various groups in various locations dedicated to preventing global warning
could create a major difference.
16. The Airwalk campaign was successful because they were able to appeal to
youth by having visually arresting ads. The ads were funning in a
sophisticated way and were founded on principles of epidemic transmission.
(pg 196). The epidemic ended because the company had production
problems and was unable to fill orders and supply enough products during
the back-to-school season. Distributors began to turn against them. (pg 213215).
17. Many teens associated smoking with the cool people. Smoking wasn’t cool,
the cool people smoked. (pg 32). Smoking illustrates the Law of the Few
because a few people are responsible for driving the epidemic forward. It
illustrates the Stickiness Factor because the smoking experience is so
memorable and powerful for some people that they cannot stop smoking (pg
233). Strategies for stopping the spread of teenage smoking include: PSA’s,
Commercials, Ad campaigns, parental input, the raising cost of cigarettes, and
harsh consequences for those who sell cigarettes to minors. These methods
have not really worked and we need to tackle the small problems that lead to
smoking instead of trying to tackle the issue of smoking as one big problem
(pg 250).
18. In the case study about diabetes/breast cancer awareness, a nurse named
Georgia Sadler wanted to create a grassroots movement toward prevention
of the diseases in the black community. She began setting up seminars in
black churches. People were not coming to the seminars because people
wanted to get home to eat and sleep during the meeting times. She moved the
seminars to beauty salons and used stylists as “salesmen”. Using the stylists
worked. (pg-253-255).
19. Band-Aid solutions are good because they involve solving a problem with
the minimum amount of effort and time and cost. They are inexpensive,
convenient, and are a remarkably versatile solution to an astonishing array of
problems. (pg 256).
20. The concept of a Tipping Point can help shape strategies and activities for a
campaign to slow down global warming by finding those interested in the
topic and using them as connectors, mavens, and salesmen. These people
working together can create a social epidemic.