Review of Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point"

Nowadays, trends pop up in all sorts of ways in the average consumer’s life. From Facebook ads, to viral YouTube videos, to style flares on a fashionista’s blog, trends are everywhere. But how did they get there? And why did they become such huge social attractions in the first place? I recent read the novel “TheTipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell, and I learned some interesting things about what Gladwell defines as “social epidemics.” Social epidemics being the trends that emerge in society. I know not everyone has the time (or the interest) to sit down and read a full-length book, but at the very least, use this review to question in some way your own consumer habits.

Gladwell states that there are three different ways to understand social epidemics. Logically, you’d start with the source of the message, or the people who cause the epidemics. Let’s stick with a social media analogy here. The source would be the poster/creator of some sort of internet content, like a video or picture. The second way to understand social epidemics is, naturally, the content of the epidemic itself. So, as I previously mentioned, this would be the video or picture that the content creator published. Lastly, you can also understand social epidemics through the environment or context in which a particular epidemic takes place. In the social media analogy, the environment would be the internet, or the specific social media site the content was published on (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter). And just keep in mind, that while my analogy is fairly specific, Gladwell extends this idea to content that isn’t singularly published.

Just like there are three ways to understand social epidemics, Gladwell extended his exploration of trends and created three associative laws of social epidemics. The first is the Law of the Few. This refers to the few people in society who have a large control over content popularity, like celebrities, salespeople, public figures, etc. I think it’s interesting how Gladwell classifies these types of people as Connectors because they do serve an important function in content distribution that often goes overlooked. People tend to follow these people more than lead their own trends. Moreover, the second law Gladwell discusses is the Law of Stickiness. Yes, you read that right, stickiness. Stickiness is what the product has to be to society in order to become popular. It needs to be intriguing and memorable to its audience, which makes a lot of sense. Things actually have to be of good quality to gain traction in the consumer market. And of course, the third law is the Law of Context. This law refers to the consumer’s trends, hobbies, likes, physical location, and so forth.

All in all, I found Malcolm Gladwell’s novel “The Tipping Point” to be an extremely though-provoking read. Since I’m soon going to graduate school for public relations, it was interesting to understand Gladwell’s perspective on social trends. I also find myself asking how something became popular, or for that matter how I can produce content that draws in a large viewership. I suppose at the end of the day it’s all about context, quality and availability. I hope this review was helpful!