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The Tipping Point and Media Saturation

Over the weekend I finally read Malcolm Gladwell’s 2002 book, The Tipping Point. It’s well-written and logical, with references to a great variety of research in pyschology and social sciences. This book is mentioned very often among startups and innovators as being an underlying transmission mechanism for getting new ideas into products which are then bought by real customers. I recommend reading it, even though the concepts were very familiar, showing that they have permeated into shared consciousness and mindset of the Valley. See some of the reviews on Amazon for an idea of the key ideas of the book (especially Gough’s).
The ideas seem very sounds and true to the experience of technology transfer. They certainly relate well to Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm.

However, there was one part of the book that seemed out of synch with another small tidbit of data I encountered. I’m not a social scientist and not terribly interested in how people’s minds work, but this seemed dichotomous. In discussing the human mind and his concept of stickiness, Gladwell wrote that “According to a study done by one advertising research firm whenever there are at least four different 15-second commercial in a two-and-a-half-minute commercial time-out the effectivenss of any one 15-second ad sinks to almost zero.” That would support the longer, lengthier model of advertising, as we see now with info-mercial style ads.

But when do these observations take on the force of absolute rules? A piece I recall reading in The Wall Street Journal came to mind after I read the above passage. ClearChannel, the dominant player in advertising on radio and billboards, recently proposed changing its radio advertising policies and prices to encourage shorter ads rather than the conventional 60-second slots.

An excerpt of Clear Channel’s Ad-Trim Plans Irk Some Clientsappears below. The full content is available for free to subscribers until 3-Nov-2004.

That’s why in July, the company announced a “less is more” initiative, saying it would trim available ad time to leave no more than 15 minutes of ads per hour and no more than six ads in a row. The move was supposed to create a less-commercial environment and attract more listeners for the nation’s largest radio station owner, with 1,200 stations around the country. At the same time, the radio chain was hoping to get advertisers hooked on 30-second spots and increase revenue, by charging more for two 30-second spots than for one 60-second ad.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, some advertisers are balking, dubbing the plan “Giving you less, charging you more.” In the radio industry, a 30-second spot typically costs about 80% of the price of a 60-second pitch: Advertisers usually figure they might as well spend the extra cash and get a full minute. And advertisers, it turns out, don’t like having to cram their message into half the time they’re used to.

Clear Channel is trying to smooth out the situation as it approaches a self-imposed Jan. 1 deadline for implementing its new strategy. First, it is shaving a bit off the price of 30-second ads, to 75% of the cost of a full minute. And today, it plans to announce the creation of an in-house creative unit to help advertisers come up with snappier ads.

Clear Channel is presenting the plan to media buyers as a way to get more “frequency” for their advertising buck — five 30-second spots for the price of four 60-second spots. And with fewer ads in a row, Clear Channel says listeners will be able to recall the ads more readily.

What does this mean? Nothing of itself, except to say that even the best written book that presents clear and distilled theories about how the human mind works doesn’t have all the answers.

What I take away from this is that it’s important to keep the tipping point model in mind, but not to have it be the only factor guiding your advertising, marketing and product development activities.