The tipping point: concepts and applications

Tipping Point

Advertising and the Tailoring of Message: The Insidious Underside of Gladwell's Translation

In Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell examines the nature of trends in all of their forms, form political ideas to rumors to manners of dress and social habits. In so doing, he identifies and explains several key personalities that are involved, whether consciously or not, in the creation and perpetuation of trends, capable of turning the smallest idea or innovation into the next big thing. Some of the various personalities he identifies are easily identifiable and readily expected in this context: there is of course the Salesman, who packages ideas in ways that laymen can see their benefits; the Connector, who knows everyone and is an expert at knowing who to got for what, and when; and the Maven who knows everything there is to know on a subject, and knows where to find out more.

These are only three of many of the personalities involved in creating an idea or innovation that takes hold of the public that Gladwell identifies in his book that help to create what he terms the tipping point, where a simple innovation stops being a limited idea and instead begins to mimic a viral epidemic in its spread. The specific functions performed by these individuals are quite obviously essential in the development and spread of an idea from something small to something viral, but there is another function that Gladwell describes that is equally essential, yet less obvious to one who hasn't studies this issue from the same perspective. Some of the statements that Gladwell makes regarding this function also hints at other possibilities for its use, and though they are not explicitly detailed in Tipping Point these hints constitute some of the most interesting ponderables in the book.

This function is that of the translator, which performs something of an intermediary step between the Innovator -- the originator of the idea, product, or trend -- and the rest of the world. Interestingly, Gladwell does not assign this role to a specific personality, but rather sees it as a function performed during the primary function of the other personalities -- the Salesman, Connector, and Maven -- that is necessary for the successful completion of their functions. Gladwell describes the role of the translator, in whatever shape they take, quite succinctly: "the take ideas and information from a highly specialized world and translate them into a language the rest of us can understand (Gladwell 200). Mavens must make their knowledge understandable for it to be useful; Salesman must be able to make cerebral and abstruse concepts resonate emotionally with their buyers, and the Connector translates between different people all the time as the essence of their function.

This is all well and good, and the need for translation is fairly obvious in the creation of the next big thing or indeed in almost any field of human endeavor -- the auto mechanic lets people know how to take care of their car (hopefully) with getting into the technical details, and the politicians make strong and concise statements instead of explaining policy for half-an-hour. Translation is something that allows the world to get by without everybody stopping to understand everything all of the time. Gladwell uses the example of a fashion trend to show how this works in a non-informational setting: a pant leg duct taped higher and tighter for bicycle riding becomes a fashion statement, with a Velcro band replacing the duct tape and a complete lack of bicycle messaging -- the look has been translated.

Yet for all of the necessity of translation, Gladwell makes a very scary point about it, too. Explaining the process of translation more specifically, Gladwell insists that "what Mavens and Connectors and Salesman do to an idea in order to make it contagious is to alter it in such a way that extraneous details are dropped and others are exaggerated so that the message itself comes to acquire a deeper meaning" (Gladwell 203). Reading between the lines here, what Gladwell is saying is that information is distorted -- not necessarily rendered unreliable, but certainly changed from its original untouched form -- into an exaggerated reflection of itself. This is scary not simply because it means that messages -- in advertising and elsewhere -- are consciously distorted to elicit specific reactions, but in addition because of what it suggests about the receivers of these messages.

Though necessary at times -- from auto mechanics, for instance -- the conscious use of this type of translation in advertising and other communications that are meant to persuade people to certain actions and behaviors amounts to a distortion not merely of information, but of truth. The number of "get rich from home" pop-up and email ads proliferating on the Internet are one very clear example of this. Little of what is said on these advertisements is an outright lie (though there certainly are some that lie more than others), but there is a deliberate distortion or translation that ignores certain details and exaggerates others. While it might be true that Margaret from Tacoma made $5,000 last month working just ten hours a week, the amount of hype (read: exaggeration) that this detail receives is huge. The fact that Marvin, also of Tacoma, paid $50 for a start-up kit and hasn't made a penny isn't revealed.