The Law of The Few

1. The Law of The Few Connectors, Mavens, & Salesmen PAUL REVERE LEARNING GROUP 7

2. Word-of-mouth appeals are the only kind of persuasion that most of us respond to anymore. • Word-of-mouth epidemic- Example of Paul Revere and William Dawes • But only in rare cases such an exchange ignites a word of mouth epidemic - Paul Reveres was successful but Dawes failed • The success depends on the involvement of people with a rare set of social gifts. – The Law of the Few LEARNING GROUP 7

3. Role of people around us- Connectors, Mavens & Salesmen • How the people are connected?- Miligram’s chain letter experiment ( Concept of Six degrees of Separation) • We associate with the people who occupy the small, physical spaces that we do. • In six degrees of separation not all degrees are equal- very small no. of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few. LEARNING GROUP 7

4. Connectors:know lots of people. They are the kinds of people who know everyone. They are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. Maven: Someone who wants to solve other people’s problems, generally by solving his own. • They are information brokers, sharing and trading what they know. • Mavens provide the message and connectors spread it. Salesman:What separates a great salesman from an average one is the number and quality of answers they have to the objections commonly raised by potential clients. LEARNING GROUP 7

5. Connectors are important for more than simply the number of people they know. Their importance is the function of the quality of people they know. BreetTjaden tried to show how the quality of people is important for the connectors . BreetTjden calculated the number of steps in which one Hollywood actor is connected to other who has ever worked in Hollywood. LEARNING GROUP 7

6. Two actors of Hollywood, John Wayne & Rod Steiger have worked for more than 150 films in their career, Rod Steiger known to be best actor in terms of the number of steps in which he is connected to other Hollywood actors. • One of the major reasons, John Wayne’s has worked mostly in same kind of movies with same kind of actors over & over again. • Rod Steiger is the best connected actor in history because he has managed to move up & down & back & forth among all the different worlds and subcultures and levels that the acting professional has to offer. • High connectedness is the function of his versatility as an actor. LEARNING GROUP 7

7. Connectors function in accomplishing a task. • Two types of ties “strong ties & weak ties. • Strength of weak ties. • Weak ties gives us access to opportunities and world to which we don’t belong. • Finest example of weak ties is MLM marketing. LEARNING GROUP 7

8. peter jennings at abc • 1984 Presidential election between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. • Led by Brian Mullen of Syracuse University. • Peter Jennings at ABC, Tom Brokaw at NBC and Dan Rather at CBS. Jennings exhibited a significant and noticeable bias in facial expression towards Reagan. LEARNING GROUP 7

9. Recommendations: • Concentrate your resources on a few key areas • Start with a small budget if you must and use it more intelligently to change the context of the message, or change the messenger, or change the message itself. LEARNING GROUP 7

10. The Power of Contextfrom “The Tipping Point”Network & AdvocacyLG - 8

11. Epidemic Theory of Crime “Broken Windows Theory” • Brain child of the criminologists James Q Wilson and George Kelling. • Crime is the inevitable result of disorder. • Relatively minor problems give invitations to more serious crime. • Crime is contagious • Tipping Point – Physical feature of the environment, e.g. Graffiti

12. Broken Windows Theory • Explained through the incidence in a downtown express train, were a Goetz fires and kills trouble making four young black men and moves away • He gives the analysis that the high crime rate in New York city attribute to this situation were any individual could take crime in hand. This did made Goetz a hero for short period but reflects the ill mechanised public saftey system prevalent.

13. Epidemic Theory of Crime “Power of Context” • It is an environmental argument • Behavior is a function of social context • Different from what the liberals, in 1960s, propagated as fundamental social factors • Instead, the theory says – “What really matters is little things”, for e.g. Showdown on the subway in New York • Don’t have to solve big problem to solve crime

14. Two Theories Suggest • The epidemic of crime is reversible • It can be tipped by tinkering with the smallest details • Say that the criminal is actually someone acutely sensitive to his environment • Our inner states are the results of our outer circumstances • Zimbardo’s conclusion that there are specific situations so powerful that they can overwhelm our inherent predispositions

15. The Tipping Point The Stickiness Factor Learning Group 9 15

16. Illustration of one of the rules of the Tipping Point, The Stickiness Factor Discusses in detail several illustrative examples with a special emphasis on a television program ‘Sesame Street’. Sesame Street aimed to create a learning epidemic to counter the prevailing epidemics of poverty and illiteracy Learning Group 9 16

17. Sesame Street is an American educational children's television series. As a result of its positive influence, Sesame Street is one of the most highly regarded educational shows for children in the world. No other television series has matched its level of international recognition and success. • Sesame Street faced the following challenges : • Apprehensions about efficacy of television as a medium of education. • Low involvement in the learning process. • Low participation of parents in child’s learning process. • Designing hiccups. • Taking learning beyond the viewers Learning Group 9 17

18. Sesame street involved various creative people to work on the premise that if you can hold the attention of children you can educate them. Dynamic research was used to continually enrich the educational content. Responses to the programming as compared with children watching it with a distracter, with children playing with toys etc were tried to fine tune the program. “Adult elements” were included to make parents participate in the learning process. Learning Group 9 18

19. Similar examples are cited from other communication strategies: • Wunderman’s buying fringe time on TV and introducing the Gold Box Campaign for direct marketing of Columbia Club. • Levanthal’s experiment on selling the concepts of tetanus shots by introducing maps and an appointment schedule on the publicity material. • Blue’s Clues feat drawing upon the success of Sesame Street Learning Group 9 19

20. The Importance of STICKINESS • In epidemics the messenger is very important. But the content and quality of the message is also equally important. • By making small but critical adjustments one could make an idea sticky. • The lesson of stickiness is to package the information in a simple way , under the right circumstances, to make it irresistible. All one has to do is to find the way. Learning Group 9 20