Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Tipping Point at Work in Curacao Referendum

In the previous post http://smallmarketmarketing.blogspot.com/2009/06/lessons-from-marketing-politics-and.html post I made some observations about the referendum campaigns in Curacao. Here is my most interesting observation still.

According to Malcolm Gladwell, "The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips and spreads like wildfire". He suggests that these so-called social epidemics are created by a combination of "connectors", "mavens", "salesmen" "stickiness" and "context".


  1. Connectors are those people "who know lots of people";

  2. Mavens are people known for their objective knowledge and who pass it along without self interest;

  3. Salesmen are those communicators who do not only speak but also convince;

  4. Stickiness refers to the memorability of the message;

  5. The ideal context is when all of the above comes together at the right time.

Nothing really new for a communicator or marketer. But when was the last time you really thought about these?

How do you think the different referendum campaigns in Curacao did on these points?

No comments:

Post a Comment