Free Report About The Tipping Point: A Hope For Social Change

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Taking off from the Hush Puppies resurgence in the mid-1990s, The Tipping Point explained the phenomena of trends and social behaviours that each will eventually reach a tipping point with the right strategy.
Malcolm Gladwell took a deeper look into why Hush Puppies, from sliding into the quagmire, took turn and resurged until reaching its epidemic. He also cited the phenomenon in the New York City where the crime rate dramatically fell. The phenomenon of the tipping point gives hope that systems behaviour change is possible with the right attitude in selling it.
Hush Puppies Gladwell explained nearly lost its hope of regaining its space in the fashion trend. The company was on its way of losing hope until the mid-1990s when that the company saw a flicker of hope from a few groups of people who started buying their products in their stores. Again, it became trendy through the word of the mouth until the few groups of people eventually the trend spread and became a flood affecting young adults. He mentioned the power of the few in which it happened with the case of Hush Puppies. However, just because a product has a few followers will take the sale into an epidemic. Gladwell explained that the power of the few works when the few people who endorses a product know a throng of people. It needs a few people who can command followers.
On the other hand, it does not only take a few popular people to sell a product or an idea. It needs a powerful selling point or words that will be etched into the minds of people. Gladwell called this as the stickiness factor. This factor can make the readers realize the reality that people do not have full control over their choices of products, ideas or political ideologies. The selling point Gladwell said influences almost all the people’s freedom to choose. People he further said are lured into the beautifully crafted advertisements. He mentioned the case of the tipping point of the sale of cigarette among teenagers and young adults. Despite the campaigns on the bad effects of cigarette smoking to health, smoking among teenagers still surged. One sticky commercial that Gladwell cited was the “Winston tastes good.”
One factor of the tipping point phenomena is the context. Gladwell explained this more in talking about peer pressure. Say for example, the doing drugs that if many of your friends are doing it, it will eventually push you in doing so. The campaign of Nancy Reagan in the 1980s which was called “Say No to Drugs” did not have an impact because there was much more force in the context which was peer pressure. He also explained that people might not accept it but people have a mob mentality. It is when somebody decides to do something because people around are doing it. After following a trend, people realized that they do not know why they followed the said trend or social behaviour.
Gladwell is consistent in his book that social change is possible by studying the tipping point phenomena in order to wage an effective action. In the examples that he put on the table, the factors for a tipping point phenomena are stickiness of the marketing technique, peer pressure and the mob mentality.
Gladwell led the discussion in transforming the factors of the tipping point phenomenon into a game-changer in the society. It only needs an unwavering spirit for change among those who are pushing social change. Like the case of Hush Puppies, selling a new mind-set will have to go through very difficult situation until it finds its way up. They need a game-changing and sticky marketing to be able to sell a social behaviour. The negative lessons from the pervasion of cigarette smoking and drug using can be turned into positive.

Reference

Gladwell, M. (2000). “The Tipping Point.” USA: Little Brown and Company.
Schultz, A. (2001). “The Tipping Point: How Little Things can make a Big Difference.” Virginia Tech: Digital Library and Archives. Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JITE/v38n4/review.html
Wolfe, A. (2000). “The Next Big Thing.” The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/05/reviews/000305.05wolfet.html