Summary: The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell

Blue’s Clues also does something else quite extraordinary. Instead of running a new episode each day, the same episode gets repeated for five days in a row. The following week, another episode runs for five days in succession. This aligns with the fact the show’s producers found preschoolers’ comprehension increased with repetition over the course of the week.

The tetanus shots

The key lesson with stickiness is there is always a simple way to package information in such a way that makes it memorable and irresistible

Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key areas. The Law of the Few says that Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen are responsible for starting word-of-mouth epidemics, which means that if you are interested in starting a word-of-mouth epidemic, your resources ought to be solely concentrated on those three groups. No one else matters.

For example, to become aligned with the public interest in aliens, one Airwalk ad showed a young man driving into Roswell, New Mexico and having his Airwalks confiscated by aliens.

Airwalk initially did a great job of segregating its channels of distribution.

So why did Dawes fail where Paul Revere was such a great success? If the spread of a word-of-mouth virus is dependant on the quality of the message, both men should have been equally successful.

Mavens live to figure out what’s the best deal in life and to tell their friends about those deals.

Epidemics don’t just spread by themselves or by word-of-mouth recommendations. There’s just too much competition

The three key types of people who spread epidemics are:
Connectors – people with a special gift for networking and bringing people together.
Mavens – information specialists who are always up to date with what’s new and interesting.
Salesmen – people who are good at persuading others to act in some way. To succeed in building an epidemic, get the right kinds of people involved.