I think your question #2 is deeper and gets to the hard part. Rejection. When we developed the plan for RAGE a youth anti-smoking movement. We knew when the teens went out in the real world they would face harsh words, rejection, and worse. So we tried to bring them to understand the many views that they would face. It’s not about preaching, as a RAGEer told me once, I’m just educating them to be able to make the right choice for them. If I get one of my peers to think about their choice I’ve done my job.

It seems — as a result of cultural shifts, mass availability of tools and luxury, availability of choices, self-serve environments — many more people DO have at least the perception of an active voice, a say-so, a sense of personal expertise in the marketplace (of their world). It’s a strong wave now, even as many people in fact feel LESS powerful to affect changes in some important areas of their lives. An interesting rony, methinks.

Sharing an opinion or belief, or persuading someone else that they might want or like something you like, provides a sense of personal power (key word: ’sense’). And we all are subject to the experience that by evangelizing we interact with powerful emotions. And a sense of influence. Crucial to our existance and survival in an information age.

Smart companies, and their agencies, seek to capitalize on the emotional currents that run through all human psychic needs and desires (whether the offers, products or USPs are understandable or valuable is another thing, right?). But Maszlow, Freud, Jung, Adler, et al. provide an important basis for seeing how and why we buy what we buy, why and what we really desire, what happens when those desires are repressed, etc.

I think waves or Tipping Points can’t in fact really be created, but think rather that they instead follow patterns that rise and fall in the conscious (or unconscious) public - affected by all kinds of forces we’re not even aware of. It’s our jobs to see them, and use them though, eh?

It’d be interesting to ask deeper, personal questions of respondents to determine things like:

> How do you feel when someone takes your suggestion and buys the product you suggested to them?

> How do you feel when they don’t? Do you try hard to understand why not? What reasons do you think affect the person having a different experience?

> What words and stories did you use when you were able to convince your friends to buy or do X? Why? Why do you think this was successful?

> What about X product or service makes you feel good? Why do you think that is, or what problem or issue does it address in your life?

…excuse me, I have a 2:30 meeting with my shrink….

Who is an opinion leader today? 68 percent of respondents of the Edleman survey said: “A person like yourself or your peer” as the most credible spokesperson about your company.

That makes me want to revisit the whole idea of “finding the influentials.” I think that definitiion is changing and the WOM strategy of focusing on the most influential customers needs to be revisited. What do you think?