Sara Goepel

A long, but interesting read of Duncan Watt disputing Malcolm Gladwell’s influencer’s theory.

“If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one–and if it isn’t, then almost no one can,” Watts concludes. To succeed with a new product, it’s less a matter of finding the perfect hipster to infect and more a matter of gauging the public’s mood. Sure, there’ll always be a first mover in a trend. But since she generally stumbles into that role by chance, she is, in Watts’s terminology, an “accidental Influential.”

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point-toast.html

I’d be curious to hear thoughts—I think a key missing element with the Madonna theory is that the influencer’s in that situation may have been media (MTV or radio) that played something over and over again until became a hit. How does the media powerhouse influence trends?