"The Tipping Point" is a book about epidemics and how they get that way. There are five ways for an epidemic to tip: word of month, the stickiness factor, the law of the few, the power of context, and the innovators and early adopters.
Word of mouth is a "multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns" and is the "most important form of human communication. In "The Tipping Point" the most prominent example about Paul Revere's midnight ride with the epidemic phase of "the British are coming!" In order for word of mouth to start an epidemic the person communicating the message is important. If a person of no importance ran around and said "the British are coming" many people might not believe him, such as William Dawes who also rode the midnight toward Lexington. Even though Dawes communicated the same urgent message, it did not alert local militia leaders. This is because Revere was the more prominent person to believe.
The next part of how epidemics tip is the stickiness factor. The stickiness factor is how does the epidemic stick, or what causes people to keep doing something. The most prominent example in "The Tipping Point" is the idea of Sesame Street. In order for something to have stickiness it must have ideas that are to be memorable and move us to action. This is what Sesame Street did. Children were not just watching television, but they were also learning. The creators of the show "discovered that by making small but critical adjustments in how they presented ideas to preschoolers, they could overcome television's weakness as a teaching tool and make what they had to say memorable." This is the idea of the stickiness factor, to make something memorable that we keep coming back to it.
The next way to make an epidemic tip is the law of the few. The law of the few is how a message travels through a population. The main idea that came from this is six degrees of separation. This means that most people are connected through others by a difference of six people. However, the law of the few states that the "one critical factor in epidemics is the nature of the message." Messengers are what make the message spread, such as Paul Revere could make the message of "the British are coming" stick better than William Dawes could. Another example of the importance of the message was the advertising campaign for Columbia. Columbia had a man named Wunderman who was in charge of the print ads, but they wanted to bring in someone different for the television ads. Wunderman did not like the idea of this and basically asked for Columbia to give him a chance. So Wunderman and the new competition, McCann, each made television ads for Columbia. In any other circumstance, McCann should have won, but Wunderman ended up winning. Wunderman's success was due to his tactic of a "treasure hunt". Since Wunderman was in charge of the print advertising he was able to put little golden treasure chest in every TV Guide and Parade ad. Then, in the commercial he told the audience that if they could find the gold treasure box that they could write in the name of any record on the Columbia list and get that record for free. In this case more people were interested in Wunderman's message than McCann's.
The next way to make an epidemic tip is called the power of context. This means that epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur. "And the kinds of contextual changes that are capable of tipping an epidemic are very difference than we might ordinarily suspect. The prominent example for the power of context was the violence in the New York subway system. The walls and subways were covered in graffiti and violence was at an all time high. Then a decade later when New York decided to clean up the walls and trains the epidemic tipped and violence is now seemed as unusual in the New York subways.These are examples of environmental tipping points, which are the things that we can change, we can clean up the graffiti on the New York subways for example. Another part to power of context is the idea of groups. You have to understand the purpose of the group in order for the power of context to work.
The last way to make an epidemic tip is the innovators and early adopters. These people want change, something that sets them apart from everyone else, and will take enormous risks.
For the GCSU Athletic Auction our tipping point will be where the unexpected becomes the expected. Since the auction happens every year we need to think as innovators and early adopters, we need to think of ideas that the groups before us have never done. Our message is clear this is an auction where all the proceeds will go to the Athletic program at GCSU. Our theme is "A Night with the Stars of GCSU Bobcats". When everyone comes into the gym, hopefully they won't see a gym, but they will be sent back to old Hollywood, where the athletes are the stars. We also need to concentrate on what we do best. Each person should use there talents to create something unexpected. For example, Zach and Ben are great with computers and graphic design, Brittni is a great writer, the rest of use are great creatively, which means that we can see what we want it to look like and make it a reality. We need to learn to take a small budget and make it look like a million dollars. Also, we need to learn our group, the people who are coming all have one common interest and that is there support for GCSU athletics. If we remember what they are here for then we can use the power of context to keep the group happy and wanting to come back again next year.
In my life I would think that I am in the stage of innovators and early adopters. I am still in college and have the whole world open to me. I still think that I can change the world and think that I can take extreme risks without harm. I know that this may seem naive of me, but I do believe that just one person can change the world, but not just anyone can, you must be able to risk putting yourself out there and stay strong in your beliefs.
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