VIRAL MARKETING &
TIPPING POINTS
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
 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
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“viral marketing” in 1997.
a.k.a. below the radar marketing, buzz marketing,
stealth advertising
Companies now devote roughly 15 percent of their
marketing budgets to buzz and related strategies
(Martin & Smith, 2008)
Relies on word-of-mouth (WOM) endorsements
 like a virus, word about a product or service
spreads from one consumer to another
“67 percent of sales of U.S. consumer goods are
now influenced by word of mouth” (Salzman,
Matathia, & O’Reilly, 2003, p. 31).
Conduits for viral marketing
 Face-to-face interaction
 Twitter
 Cell phone
 Social networking media
 Email
MySpace
 Facebook
 Blogs
 Texting
 Instant messaging

Examples, intentional and unintentional
 Twitter, tweeting
 Live Strong bracelets (and

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the whole wrist band
craze)
Ipods, Iphones
accessory dogs
“Support Our Troops”
stickers
Hip Hop (culture as a
commodity)
More examples of buzz
 Flash mobs
 MySpace, Facebook
 YouTube
 Blogs, blogging, the

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blogosphere
Pinkberry
Razor scooters
Harry Potter books
Wii Fit
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

Key influencers: Mavens
 Mavens: possess information,
expertise, and seek to share it
 “Mavens are data banks.
They provide the message”
(Gladwell)
 Are “in the know”
 Alpha consumers or early
adopters (keller & Berry,
2003)
 Examples: celebrity chefs,
eco-enthusiasts, fashion
aficionados, fitness gurus,
tech geeks, wine snobs
 “One American in 10 tells the
other nine how to live”
(Keller & Barry, 2003)
 Mavens may be somewhat
socially awkward or “geeky”
 Mavens want to educate more
than persuade or sell.
Key Influencers: Connectors
 Connectors: know everybody,
are networkers, have many
contacts
 “Connectors are social glue:
they spread it.” (Gladwell)
 Have large social circles
 They are social gadflies;
they blog, chat, text, twitter
 They are the people who
always forward emails to
you.
 6 degrees of separation: a
small number of people, like
Kevin Bacon, are linked to
everyone else
Key Influencers: Salesman
 Salesman: are persuasive
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Charismatic types
Good at building rapport, trust
Often rely on “soft” influence
They are the friends who tell us:



“you gotta see this movie,”
“check out this YouTube video”
“You have got to try this
restaurant.”
 Note: All three types are needed
for a phenomenon to take-off
Tipping points--continued
 Power of context
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must happen at the right time, place
for example, social networking (MySpace,
Facebook) wouldn’t be possible without
widespread access to the Internet
 The stickiness factor
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idea, message, or product has to be “sticky” or
inherently attractive
idea must be memorable, practical, personal,
novel
hard to manufacture this feature
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.
 “word of mouse”
 Leveraging free media
The downside
 Not that scientific
 Momentum may not reach
the tipping point
 evidence is largely anecdotal
 no guarantee the initial
 phenomenon isn’t that
“buzz” will become
reliable, predictable
contagious.
 A bit of a “finger in the
 difficult to orchestrate word
wind” approach to
of mouth
marketing
 good ideas don’t always gain
 viral marketing” is
traction
something of an
 Trends come and go
oxymoron.
quickly
 The more viral marketing is
planned or contrived, the
 like a contagion, a trend can
less likely it is to succeed
die out quickly or be
replaced by a new trend
 Viral marketing may
backfire: Wal-mart and
Facebook