3. Who is Duncan Watts?
Duncan Watts is a professor of sociology at Columbia University.
He argues that “Influentials” do not have any special role in
trends, especially for marketing.
4. Gladwell states that, “social influence stems from a two-step
flow of communication; from the media to influentials (a tiny
minority of well-connected, persuasive people), and from them
to everyone else. If correct, this theory means that marketers
should search out and influence the influentials” (Gow, 2007).
5. However, in his research, Watts, “analyzed email patterns and
found that highly connected people are not, in fact, crucial social
hubs” (Thompson, 2008). Instead, he predicts your average
couch potato has just as high of a chance to start a new trend!
6. The only exception Watts found were influential celebrities
such as Oprah Winfrey because of how wide an audience
they are able to reach (Gow, 2007).
7. Watt’s findings suggest that marketers should, “not focus on a
few influentials but rather on leveraging Web-based social
networking tools to reach large numbers of ordinary people”
(Gow, 2007 ).
