We have a new perspective on epidemics since our multi-year wrestling match with COVID in the early 2020’s. In reality though, epidemics are a normal part of life that influence the clothes we wear, the activities we engage in and how we view people around us. 

Malcolm Gladwell wrote The Tipping Point well before anyone heard of COVID. This book demonstrates that epidemics were well understood in the late 1990’s when he put pen to paper. He not only describes how an epidemic works but he shows us how its principles explain decisions we make every day.  They explain what people decide to wear, how people decide to do something dangerous and they explain what videos we choose to watch. Let’s take a quick look at three laws that influence the spread of an epidemic and a couple of examples of them in action.

3 Rules of Epidemics:

Rule #1 – The Law of the Few: ( Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen )

The scale of an epidemic is largely dependent on 3 specific types of accelerators: Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. Each has characteristics that create an exceptional amount of momentum for an idea, behaviour or product to spread.

 Connectors are critical because they make connections possible between groups that wouldn’t normally interact. This could be someone who travels between geographies or someone who engages with many different social groups. Connectors are easy to engage with and are approachable from a wide variety of disconnected groups. An average person may interact with a few dozen people in a week while a connector may interact in a meaningful way with hundreds of people during the same time. Connectors build an interstate highway system between normally unconnected parts of our society.

A Maven is the human version of Google, with a twist. They accumulate knowledge and synthesize it into information that helps people. This is the person who knows the best place to by gasoline, who has a sale on that special piece of furniture you’re looking for. This is also the person who has done the research on all the political candidates in your region and give you the salient points of each person’s platform.

Mavens help us connect to information that matters and help that information get to the people that need it.

The last type of accelerator is the Salesman. We all have a picture of what this person does but let’s put it in a larger context. In the simplest form a salesman is a persuader. This person can compel you to do something you may not have considered before. A maven has great information but they are usually not a persuader. A salesman takes the information and makes you want to engage with it by connecting it to things you care about, whether you know it or not. If a maven is able to synthesize knowledge into simple logic, a salesman is able to make it matter to you.

All three of these accelerators play a role spreading ideas, behaviour and products in a way that normal people just don’t. What Malcolm Gladwell demonstrates is that these three types of people play a critical role in turning a normal experience into an epidemic. 

Rule #2 – The Stickiness Factor:

The first rule is about what kind of messenger can accelerate the spread of a message. The second rule is about the message. Is the message something people want to pass on? Does it make and impact when it’s received and is it something that the receiver feels necessary to pass on?

Two powerful case studies for stickiness come out of children’s television programming. Not only did these programs entertain but they left an impact that kids took with them into life and started to spread around. These two shows are Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues.

Sesame Street was the first kids program that successfully made an educational impact on its young audience in almost every test that was used to evaluate it. Specifically, it went after reading and learning skills of pre-school children in poor parts of society to give them a strong foundation when they entered school.

The creators of Sesame Street were so focused on their goal of stickiness that they obsessed in testing every part of their production with their target audience before publishing. The results of their testing shaped the nature of the show profoundly. Content needed to be understandable. Confusing content got ignored even if it had great visual interest. Kids were more engaged by the mixing of muppet characters with their human counterparts so segments with just one or the other got de-emphasized. Connecting with the receiver of the message is critical in making a message sticky.

Blues Clues took the success of Sesame Street a little further. This show’s creators took a slightly different approach that engaged their young audience even more. They used a consistent program structure to create a story line through each episode. It wasn’t fast moving but rather engaged in a conversation with the viewers who often answered the host’s questions out loud. Kids often talked to or shouted at  the TV like it was another person in the room. That behaviour is the essence of engagement and stickiness.

These same principles apply to all messages and products that spread like an epidemic. The message engages the receiver and compels them to share it with the people around them. It must be sticky.

Rule #3 – The Power of Context:

So far we’ve seen that the messenger and the message both have a significant impact on how an epidemic spreads but there’s one more important factor and that is the context that both of these are in. Some contexts provide an accelerant for epidemics and others actually slow epidemics down.

In the 1980’s New York City was in the middle of a crime epidemic. Malcolm Gladwell takes a close look at how perpetrators (messengers) and crime (message) found a fertile environment to act out during this period of time. He also explores specific ways that changing the environment clearly impacted the nature of this crime epidemic and eventually ended it.

First of all, the intuitive parts of an environment that we expect to affect an epidemic often don’t. For example the economic recovery in the 1980’s had an impact on American crime over all, but not in New York City. The key environmental factor in New York was what they called the broken window effect. In areas of the city where broken windows were repaired and graffiti was removed off of buildings the crime rate began to drop dramatically. This pattern was repeated over and over again from one neighbourhood to the next.

When the 3 rules of epidemics converge in the same time and place, incredible growth happens in the spread of ideas, products or behaviour. The last few chapters of this book describe multiple examples of how this phenomena has occurred in recent history.

Case Study: Rumours, Sneakers and the Power of Translation

What we wear is highly influenced by the clothing that seems to communicate who we are and what we want to express. Airwalk is a brand that inserted itself into the center of almost every teen’s clothing choices during the mid 1980’s. Malcolm Gladwell masterfully guides us through the humble beginnings of Airwalk in the skater subculture of San Diego and explains how the rules of epidemics influenced the rapid spread of Airwalk into popular teen culture around the world.

In connection with the law of the few a relatively unknown marketing company called Lambesis managed to visually connect the essence of Airwalk culture to the average teen in America. They used connectors, mavens and salesmen to translate the essence of a very specialized skater culture element into the angst, rebellion and quirkiness of every average teenager, teenagers who may never set foot on the deck of a skateboard.

Case Study: Suicide, Smoking and the Search for the Unsticky Cigarette

The final case study explores the frustrations of trying to understand and conquer some of the most destructive social epidemics of our time. The law of the few creates a space of permission to engage in destructive behaviour by connectors, mavens and salesmen.  Next there’s a sticky emotional pull toward the acts of smoking and suicide that are difficult for most of society to relate to, but for the people involved it’s compelling and undeniable.

Malcolm Gladwell uses the 3 rules of epidemics and many related examples to shed light on how these behaviours can be impacted effectively. As expected this impact isn’t easy to explain and he takes us through multiple twists and turns to make sense of it all. In the end there are some compelling options to make smoking less sticky as an epidemic but the sad reality is that making suicide less compelling for those that are getting drawn in proves to be much more complex.

The Tipping Point provides us with an effective framework to deconstruct the elements of any epidemic. The 3 rules identify the primary factors that accelerate the spread of an epidemic and the author’s numerous anecdotes shed light on many of the ways that these rules play out around us.

Maybe you’re a leader who wants to start or control an epidemic. Maybe you’re a participant who gets easily swayed by mavens and salesmen. Maybe you’re just a curious observer. In any case this book will help you make sense of the epidemics that are happening all around you.