Do Influentials Matter to WOM?

In a cover article in Advertising Age, author Matthew Creamer suggests that research by Columbia University sociologist Duncan Watts disputes the value of influentials to creating word-of-mouth information cascades.  Watts, he contends, doesn't believe influentials exist.  Whereas Ed Keller, the coauthor of the book The Influentials, argues that a tiny subset of the population decides most everything for the rest of us.  Predictably, I had a different take.  The following is the comment I left on the Ad Age website which you can read, along with the article, here.

The issue isn't whether influential’s matter to widespread diffusion of innovation. They do. And, even Duncan Watts agrees. 

In his book, Six Degrees, Watt's writes, "If we imagine what happens when an innovation is introduced into an initially inactive population, we can see that it can only spread if the initial innovator is connected to at least one early adopter. Obviously the more early adopters there are in a population; the more likely a particular innovation is to spread. And the larger the connected cluster of early adopters in which the innovation lands, the farther it will spread. If the vulnerable cluster that is "hit" by an innovation (that is, the cluster containing an innovator) happens to percolate throughout the network, then the innovation will trigger a global cascade." (Pgs 235-236)

In a world of bewildering options people lack the time, energy, and mental wherewithal to make rational independent choices about everything. Instead, they are only equipped to choose independently when they are specifically interested in something. When they are only generally interested they tend to follow other people’s choices. It’s called social proof and Watts himself confirmed this phenomenon with an online experiment he ran called “Music Lab”.

Influential’s then, are key to starting, sustaining, and tipping word of mouth cascades. The problem, I think, is that we have been defining influential’s incorrectly. They are not a particular class of people like college grads or news junkies. Instead, the title of influential migrates from one person to the next depending on the topic of interest. One person is an influential for computers, another is an influential for wine. It’s a function of passion, not position.

We should not attempt to find them by mass marketing that indiscriminately blankets whole populations, (the suggestion that we should “cling to the 'safety' afforded by mass marketing’s .5% response rates made me chuckle) instead we should look for the affiliation networks where they gather (what I call “the driest tinder”). These are the vulnerable clusters Watts writes about and the key to starting marketing wildfires. Spread the fire. GS

Comments

[Justin Foster]

I saw the same article and felt the same way you did. I love your point about "passion not position". Mass marketing is dead - not just because of the mediums, but because we consumers don't put ourselves in any particular demographic. As such, the influencers are not influencing the masses but smaller micro-communities - which actually might make them even more powerful since there are so many of them now. In fact, each consumer is really an influencer - it's just a matter of degress.

[Greg Stielstra]

As usual, Justin, you nailed it. We are all influencers. GS