The Tipping Point

by Malcolm Gladwell

An excellent essay on the anatomy of an epidemic, the Tipping Point helped me understand how certain people have wide influence and others have none.
An Epidemic begins with 3 kinds of people : Connectors (social butterflys), Mavens (bargain and information brokers) and Salesmen (charismatic mindreaders that infect you with their optimism). When an epidemic takes over it is because the Mavens of cool, dollar-saving, slick shoes or whatever told a Connector and they passed it on to everyone they know in a sticky way. Stickiness is what binds the message to the person being infected. It may be a treasure hunt in an ad, a likability in a person (Salesmen), a brand attractiveness, quality eyecare, or whatever, but people respond. A great message or stickiness with slow distribution may still infect a large swath of population. Or a widely spread message that is rote and ignored may fail, so stickiness is clearly a critical part of spreading popularity of a brand or product.

Immunity occurs when people ignore your message because they've heard it before and rejected it. Mass or repetitive ads off target from peoples response will build immunity.