Title: The Tipping Point
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 280
Rating: 8/10
Since its publication, The Tipping Point has become one of the most iconic non-fiction books on the market, as well as the one that Gladwell is most well-known for. Loosely speaking, it looks at the idea that there’s a moment at which a cultural phenomenon hits a ‘tipping point’, a point of no return after which something will take off. Gladwell applies this to marketing, such as the rise and fall of Hush Puppies, as well as to things like crime and smoking, which can actually increase on a large scale due to things like graffiti, which can form a tipping point.
It might sound complicated, but it’s pretty easy to get your head around it once you start to get absorbed into Gladwell’s writing, which I guarantee will happen. It happened to me before, when I read Blink – he has a gift for taking complex subjects and scientific studies and making them easy for you to swallow. You feel smart when you’re reading it, and you should do – you’re learning things, things that you can put into practice both in business and in your day-to-day life.
Honestly, I’d recommend this book to anyone who works in marketing, like I do – the core concepts of it are valuable to both marketers and advertisers, as well as to communicators in general. It also introduces Mavens, which I’m not going to explain here – however, the concept of Mavens has taken on a life of its own, and it’s interesting to see how it all comes back to this book. Go read it!