Influencers III: More Important than Luck?
April 17th, 2008 by David RosenMy two previous posts described Gladwell’s influencers, and posited that while family members make a big impact on our purchasing decisions, it was still worth our while to find these influencers. As for Duncan Watts’ theory—that some people have a disproportionate impact, but that it’s impossible to identify those people in advance—well, that’s a radical and fascinating perspective.
Gladwell’s position (as reported here) that we’re a young field, and we’re explaining small pieces of the variability in influence, is exceptionally similar to the thoughts that I expressed in my earlier blog post. Watts’ simulations are interesting, but none of them caused people to actually act, by purchasing something or going to a movie or voting for a candidate. Perhaps it takes a real-world influencer to make someone act on a preference—to bridge the gap between attitude and behavior. Connectors, Salesmen and Mavens are all action-oriented beings: their power comes not in their attitudes, but in their abilities to turn their attitudes into action, whether that action is social connection, market mastery, or persuasion.
In summary, influencers may not play the role that marketers have expected them to play, but they’re still worth finding. Even if Watts is correct—if social phenomena spread more randomly than anything—we’re still not wasting our time, as these people can still help spread trends once people are willing to accept them, and might also be able to guide general trends towards specific products or services. If he’s wrong, and influencers are still the kindling for wildfire-like spreads of information or action, then we don’t have to stop searching for them merely because many of them celebrate holidays with us.
(note: the image here is a representation of 30,000 random numbers from an interesting post on codinghorror.com)