tipping

The other day, for the first time ever, I bought a marketing book. Doubts concerning my sanity are in order at this point, but I have a few reasons that, bunched together, might just form a passable excuse. Here it goes.

I didn't know it was a marketing book. Maybe I shouldn't tell, but I only figured this out after the first ten pages. As I had found the book in the one-shelf business section at the local Oxfam store it didn't come as a total surprise. But I didn't buy it for its content – it was the name of the author that caught my eye.

Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer at the New Yorker, and though I don't recall any of this stories, I'm always ready to read something associated with that publication, my favorite weekly for many years now. Without further contemplations I shelled out two pounds (for a good cause) and obtained The Tipping Point.

The book doesn't claim to be primarily interested in marketing, but that's what it is. With much simplified psychology and prolific pseudo-scientific obfuscation, it is explained how trends are created and propagated and how they, eventually and in the best of cases, become generally accepted. That's the tipping of the title. Something goes from fringe to mainstream in a short period of time, much to everyone's surprise.

The concept is intriguing. Most of the examples are fascinating and some deeply thought-provoking, but nothing has ever been proven by examples. Examples serve to illustrate, but in this book, the author makes them carry the story all by themselves. Inevitably, correlation is mistaken for causation, and points are being made for the sake of the story only. In other words, solid explanations for the described phenomena are lacking.

Despite all this, it's an interesting book, and I learned quite a few things. As I said, I've never read a marketing book. The Rule of 150 was news to me, as was the Broken Windows theory. Either might not be of any practical relevance to me, but stickiness surely is. The question of how to package a story so it sticks with readers or listeners is important in the sciences as well. You want your talks and papers to be remembered, you want colleagues and competitors, peers in short, to associate your name with your discovery. Like it or not, you have to sell it. If you know how, you'll do a better job. And you might get a better job in the end.