Influentials are toast

Is the Tipping Point Toast?

This story has in fact come to me via a number of sources. So thank you all you kind hearted souls. :-)

I am sure many have read the above post.

The premise according to Duncan Watts – Six Degrees is that Malcolm Gladwell is wrong in his theory in his the Tipping Point about influentials, virality and epidemics that can influence commercial communications.

The article seems to trounce the idea and the philosophy.

Why did people send me this article? Well of course we are interested in social networks, engagement, technology etc., and the implications of such insights.

The simplistic focus on one aspect of something very complex is perhaps a little worrying.

My simple view is that if you read Henry Jenkins Convergence Culture, or the Network Society written by Manuel Castells and another separate book by Jan van Dijk and many others there is a level of complexity here which is unprecendented. In my post 6 feet of junk mail or a 29% response rate? Blyk shows the way

I referenced some ideas on recounting audiences and how one does that.

Commercial success in the world of networks is not about viral marketing however how many algorithms' one decides to throw at the problem.

The science is deeper. Alpha users do have a role to play but they are part of a much bigger story, jigsaw, worldview.

As Watts says diseases spread in so many different ways.

I think Gladwell is a fantastic thinker, he forces us to reconsider our own worldview - and I suggest that anyone that can do that is doing a good job. We have discussed social marketing intelligence on this Blog quite a few times and it is here that I think black gold will be made in taking massive and multiple refined data flows and applying those to a targeted audience in a variety of different ways.

The other issue that is not mentioned is currency - what is the "value=currency" of the communication?

Companies are so brainwashed by what advertising is that they cannot think round new ways of creating advertising, how to enhance and increase its currency to the recipient - whereby it becomes information that can be timely, relevant and contextual.

Is the the Tipping Point Toast - in my view it never really got under the grill.

My suggestion would have been to cut the lengthy article by 2 thirds and use that space to explore in a richer way what the real opportunities are.

We are rapidly moving to a world by 2015 five billion people will be connected - that is a 100 fold increase in networked traffic. Networks: Economic, Cultural and Media are becoming the nervous system of society.

This suggests that our world of media and communications is evolving from the straight road of an industrial era to the more complex and networked world that mimics nature. Our new media world isn't about content and distribution. It is about people, connections and social networks.

If we accept that as a truth then that truth changes what we make, how we make it and how in fact we market and communicate with our customers. It requires a new logic

This is the wealth of networks. The author at Fast Company alludes that actually Mass Marketing still works. Sure. Just go and ask AG Laffley of Jim Stengel at P&G.

Because Prime Time is no longer a time of day, it is in fact a state of mind where time and space no longer matter

Remember there are 3 times as many mobile phones in the world as TV sets or computers - the digital universe is not the same as our old familiar analogue one. The mobile is a bigger media platform than TV. So what is Madison Avenue doing on that score? Doh.

And research has also showed that time spent on the internet has overtaken time spent watching TV. Madison Avenue and the whole Love Marks DooDahh (Sorry I can't even bring my self to hyperlink.) Premised around mass market communications is a poor effort, dare I say pathetic.

In his book Convergence Culture - Professor Henry Jenkins of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT articulates a world in which young people have a very different relationship with media consumption. This is the migration from consumption as an individual practice to consumption as a networked practice - which I might add is voluntary.

Culture Jenkins argues is today Participatory. We create, we share, we collaborate, we consume, we discuss

When people consume and produce media together, when they pool their insights and information, mobilise to promote common interests, and function as grassroots intermediaries – rather than talking about personal media, perhaps we should be talking about communal media or social commerce that becomes part of our lives as members of communities, whether experienced face-to-face at the most local level or over the Net.

If we accept Jenkins above world view, this has profound implications on how we reach out and attract our customers, talk to our suppliers and how we create value. It was Jonathan Schwartz that said our 1000 bloggers at Sun have done more for this company than a $1bn ad campaign could have ever done. This is participatory culture at the coalface. Or we could reference wikipedia, World of Warcraft, Pop Idol, the Matrix, citizen journalism or social commerce platforms like ebay, MyNuMo or Spreadshirt.

Change the way you count, for instance, and you can change where advertising dollars go. In a world where we leave digital footprints Where certain companies can unpick 54 billion data points to develop social network intelligence and apply that commercially – where we can count every individual - and therefore recount the audience to a degree of accuracy never before thought possible this is called Social Marketing Intelligence.

For over 150 years the main organs of industrialization, mass consumption and mass media have breathed and operated in relative harmony together. Today, digitalisation is “deconstructing” traditional industries while at the same time creating new commercial opportunities, and, what is emerging is the grass roots of a new networked socio-economic ecology. Yet what we have witnessed so far is only the beginning of a more structural shift in the very foundations of how business and our societies will now evolve.

A key development is the emergence of digitally connected communities coupled with the fact that we are a “We Species”. Human beings have an innate need to; connect, communicate and collaborate. Digitalization has revealed the true nature of humans, and, that truth changes everything. Communities form around values, interests and desires, not demographics in the traditional sense of the word. Culture is created by the interaction between human beings.

Is it any wonder then that after 150 years of industrialization and media control, we are using technology to: tell our stories, to co-create experiences, to harness collective intelligence, share knowledge and information, co-create commerce and become part of the socio-economic fabric of the world we live in. We are renewing the bonds that once held our geographic communities together via the digital universe.

In the world of We Media, we have to think and act differently as businesses and organizations to succeed.

This changes essentially everything. It changes the way customers can access information and changes the way they use it. It changes the way business can communicate with their customers and it also changes how a business might go to market. It changes the linking between channels, that link businesses, customers, suppliers and employees. It offers opportunity and it offers your once helpless competitors the chance to radically rethink their business strategies and attack vital parts of your business model.

It was Darwin that said “Its not the strongest, or the most intelligent that survive, but those that are most adapted to change”. And so we have to ask the following questions

1. How do audiences behave and how should companies be prepared for that?
2. How do communities work and what is the impact of communities on businesses?
3. How do consumers consume information?
4. What is happening in the on-line world and what are the opportunities for businesses?

So I thank my concerned friends for sending me the article. I hope that I have perhaps enabled them to reframe their worldview, and also help them understand that The Tipping Point is just the tip of the iceberg.

My treatise is how we start to frame what we do to how we create customer value in the digital world.

Comments

[A big fan]

And that's a fact jack!
Well put.

[Bruce]

Excellent post. But, where's your RSS Feed?

[Alan Moore]

Apparently we have one somewhere Bruce

Left had side says "subscribe to this feed?"

Thank you for posting

Alan

[12 dogs and a blog]

The interconnectivity of the We Media. Gotta love it. Lean stealth. Group dynamics are definitely different. Not sure that I agree with the idea of it being voluntary though. Let's face it, evolution's not voluntary. Reminds me of high school clicks actually. The "currency" of belonging to something in society hasn't changed much. The "alpha dog" is very much alive and well. He or she still eats first. Still demands that the others in the "pack" obey or be banished. And the "pack" still does because to be a part of the group is better than being expelled from the group. You still have the "secondaries" and the "low man on the totem poles". And the "alpha dog" is always aware of a challenge. And I have seen one "pack" go after another and be really successful. Difference here is that the trends come and go so fast. By the time the public is aware. The "alpha dog" is long gone to the next big thing.

[Alan Moore]

Dear 12 dogs and a blog it is voluntary as in communities people self select to participate. But no evolution id not voluntary but that's evolution not the insight into what drives social networks and communities.

I don't disagree with what you say, but its a metaphor against something that is more complex.

Thanks for posting

Alan

[12 dogs and a blog]

Allen,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my comment. My view of this subject comes from growing up in a family business. A successful family business in a very tough market. Regardless of our perspective on this issue, we are all trying to understand and profit from the information juggernaut. The difference in trying to predict today's market is that the ebb and flow of information is now world wide. A little old lady in Hoboken, with a quickwit and internet access, can influence markets just as easily as Madison Avenue. Sometime even more so. It's just that when she does, her way of doing so will be as old as time. Human nature changes very little. Still pretty much a pack mentality out there. And it is after all human nature that ultimately drives commerce.
Once again I thank you very much for your response to my comment.
It was quite gracious and appreciated. I very much look forward to reading more about this subject here on your website. Should learn quite alot.

[Bruce Warila]

Alan,

Thanks for helping me find the RSS link on your site (see my last comment).

I read this post three times while stuck on a runway last week. You have inspired me. Check out my translation to the music industry. I hope I did not misinterpret anything you wrote..
http://www.unsprungmedia.com/unsprung-lessons/2008/3/1/communities-dominate-brands.html

Thanks for your thoughts..

-Bruce

[Sebastiaan Elsenburg]

Excerpt from 'The Record R.I.P':

http://ridinghood.squarespace.com/the-filter/

Marketers now advise artists not to sell product (by which they erroneously mean records, not music) but to 'sell relationship' - and they absurdly advise them to do so over the net. The enthusiasm with which music industry bloggers such as Bruce Warila and Andrew Dubber explore the marketing possibilities of the Internet strikes me as exceedingly naïve. In their haste to champion new technology, they have inadvertently embraced a marketing tool (the Mp3 download) that is incapable of raising any real revenue. Bruce Warila unsurprisingly writes on his blog page: “In my mind the right tool has not hit the market yet.” Really! Alan Moore even goes so far as to state that “Culture is created by the interaction between human beings.” Poor misguided man. Will somebody please tell him that the only thing created by the interaction between human beings is – gossip. Culture is created when an artist interacts with his audience.

The Internet is being credited with forging communities. Alan Moore again: “Human beings have an innate need to connect, communicate and collaborate.” Unfortunately, the Internet is a cultural expression of people’s increased reluctance, fear even, to connect, communicate and collaborate. If they really wanted to connect, they would go out into the street and shake each other by the hand. Bruce Warila is extremely confused on this issue and gives himself away when he calls the connections that people forge on Myspace “fake-friending”. Why he has not the sense to acknowledge that any networking done over the web is fake-networking remains a mystery. Bob Moog put it best when he said: when a musician invites people to gather around him and engage with his music, he is making community. This is the only way I can make sense of the words: 'sell relationship': the artist eye-to-eye with his audience.

[Alan Moore]

Dear Sebastian - sounds like a bit of an ill-informed rant to me.

:-)

And you contradict yourself - you quote me "Culture is created by the interaction between human beings" you debunk that as an idea and then you say "when a musician invites people to gather around him and engage with his music, he is making community." which is exactly the same thing. You take a rather idealistic view of the "Artist" as separate to the great unwashed US - it was Joseph Beuys that said "we are all artists". And I think that Flickr is a great example of that

You need to read: Manuel Castells, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich, Community & Society by Ferdinand Tönnies, Covergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins, Culture by Raymond Williams, the Price Waterhouse report on the changing relationship that brands have with consumers through connected conversations, A brief History of the Future - the origins of the Internet by John Naughton

Before you come stamping your foot. Your views on the web are truly naïve

But thanks for posting - you gave me something to get my teeth into

Alan

[Sebastiaan Elsenburg]

Hi Allen,

You are right, I take an idealistic view of the artist. I do not think we are all artists, nor that every human being has it in him to entertain and enlighten an audience. I concur with Lee Siegel, whose book 'Against The Machine' has as a subtitle: 'Being Human in the Age of the Mob'. Art and art criticsm are pursuits that require a solid grounding. To let the unschooled (unwashed) mob take over the role of cultural gatekeeper as is happening now on the Internet will carry with it far-reaching social consequences. My view is perhaps alarmist, even hysterical, but naive? I think we ought to preserve that qualification for the assertion that there is some great art to be appreciated over at Flickr, agreed?

Sebastiaan.

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