The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point is a great example of Public Relations in its finest. Malcolm Gladwell uses this book to explain the idea of “the tipping point”. The tipping point is the moment that a trend catches on and the role that key players have in making the trend stick.

Malcolm Gladwell describes three different types of people. These people are called Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.

Connectors are people who are not only great at networking, but they connect others to the people who can help them move forward in their field. Gladwell also emphasizes the importance of the weak tie. These are people who are not in your immediate circle who you might not communicate with on a regular basis. These people are important because they might have a totally different set of contacts that you have and are able to tell you about opportunities you otherwise would have never heard of. Public relation practitioners need connectors in order to network and be effective. Public relations, unlike advertising, is about free publicity which often comes from one of these connects.

Mavens are people with a plethora of knowledge about everything. These people would often win the random fact award. These people are beneficial in the world of public relations because they are natural researchers who retain information just for the fun of it. They can offer valuable information at the drop of a hat that would regularly take time to look up.

Salesmen are people with charisma, likability, and personality. They are usually the face of an organization. They do the people to people contact often meeting new people to draw them in and win them over with their charm. These people are crucial to the public relations field because they are the people who outside organizations deal with. There has to be a level of ease that salesmen provide that allows these organizations to trust them with their business and that’s where the personality and likability play a major role.

So many times we recognize things but not realize that there are names for it. After reading The Tipping Point, I am able to put names to these phenomenons.