The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is a book full of epidemics.

In the middle of the1990's, Wolverine planned to phase out one of their brands of shoes, Hush Puppies, because of the shoes' decreasing popularity. However, at the end of 1994 and the beginning of 1995, Hush Puppies hit their Tipping Point. Hush Puppies became the trendy shoe to own.

The Tipping Point theory is when ideas, products, messages, and behaviors spread like viruses. They infect one person and suddenly everyone is talking about it. That one person is an effective carrier. The Hush Puppies hit the tipping point when a few trendy kids started wearing the shoes, two designers saw the shoes in a new light, advertised them, and then they became the new popular shoe of the moment.

Gladwell highlights three types of people that make epidemics happen: connectors, mavens, and salesmen. Connectors have a natural way of meeting people and making an impression that leads to lifetime acquaintances. They tend to know a great deal of people. Mavens do not know everyone, but they tend to know everything. Mavens accumulate knowledge and are eager to teach others what they have learned. Their teaching is not in a persuasive matter though. Mavens simply want people to know what they know without any pressure. Salesmen are the persuaders. Salesmen walk into rooms and are naturally happy and positive. They automatically make people in a better mood. Salesmen have an inherent way of convincing people to do things.

In order for ideas, products, messages, and behaviors to tip and spread, connectors, mavens, and salesmen must be involved. Each personality type is greatly needed for the process. For example, a maven tells a salesman about a great bed and breakfast and the salesmen stays at the bed and breakfast and loves it and then precedes to persuade a connector to tell all his connections about the bed in breakfast. One day that bed and breakfast could reach a tipping point and be extremely popular and booked for the entire year. Connectors, mavens, and salesmen are translators. They take ideas and information from a highly specialized world and translate them into a language the rest of us can understand.


I am a maven. While I don't know every detail of all situations, I inform my friends thoroughly of the situations I know about. I am a people pleaser and want people to be happy, so I share valuable information in a non-persuasive manner. I also get excited about new information and am constantly bursting to tell people about it.

As our class prepares the Relay For Life kick off, the mavens, connectors, and salesmen will come together to tip the event. Our class connectors will draw the community into the event. Our mavens will keep their eyes open for good deals to work with a small budget, and the salesmen will keep the morale of the team up. One way Gladwell describes a salesman is that they spread happiness. A true salesman can walk into a room of sad people and everyone will come out happy.

Gladwell also stresses the stickiness factor, in that things need to be memorable. The stickiness factor works perfectly with our Relay For Life theme: Celebrate a Memory. We are encouraging people to celebrate their life by remembering great birthdays.

The Tipping Point is ultimately when the little things make a big difference. Word of mouth is the best way to start an epidemic, but it needs to go through the right people: connectors, mavens, and salesmen. And the message needs to be sticky.