leveraging the faithful — a second opinion

This Fast Company piece purporting to debunk the tipping point as described by Malcolm Gladwell, is making the rounds. It argues that so-called “influentials” are no more likely to spread your messages than “ordinary everyday folks.”

Well, duh. When marketing mavens are bandying about such terms as “Influentials” or “opinion leaders” they are are usually talking about an aspect of the rapidly failing “old marketing model.” It’s not about reaching Maureen Dowd or Paul Krugman, it’s about Christine in Des Moines who lives and breathes global warming and spams her capacious email list of friends and colleagues on a regular basis.

“I think Seth Godin pretty much blew this strawman down. Simply, it’s not the influentials in the old sense of the word that matters, it’s the well-connected passionate:

Worry instead about people with passion and people with lots of friends. You need both for ideas to spread. That was Malcolm’s point all along.