The 25% Threshold Effect: The Secret to Breaking Out in the Decentralized Market#
Omnivore#
Highlights#
People can use "threshold points" (or "tipping points") to break social norms. ⤴️ ^d8a569fa
Rural Surrounding the City
Damon refers to these people as "influence neutralizers," that is, a group of people who are immune to the influence of new things. As long as these people have not adopted the innovation, they are enough to send a loud signal to this social star - the innovation has not been accepted by the public. ⤴️ ^316dc251
This makes the network edge an easier place for innovation to take root. The more people on the network edge adopt your innovation, the stronger the positive signal is for others. This is the driving force behind social change. Once an innovation begins to spread at the network edge, it becomes influential enough that even influential figures with extensive connections have to take a great interest in it. ⤴️ ^05950f4b
Innovative products often have the most loyal users after adoption. This is what sociologists call the moat effect. It hinders changes in people's behavior, but it is also the key to change. In order to gain social support for a brand's new image and new products, increase the favorability of new users, and eliminate the discomfort of using new products, brands have put a lot of effort into marketing actions, just like various martial arts moves. Podcasts have become the first new marketing trend. ⤴️ ^e4f50fbc
This article is excerpted from "Critical Change" by Damon Centola, published by CITIC Publishing Group, with the cover image from Visual China.
This article introduces the "25% threshold" effect proposed by communication expert Damon Centola, which explains how to trigger a new lifestyle change in the decentralized market. Through complex communication theory and social network research, Damon Centola decrypts the fundamental logic of the "25% threshold effect" and demonstrates how social media plays a role in triggering the spread at the tipping point.
• 💥 The "25% threshold" effect separates the change initiated by a small group of people from the resistance of the majority.
• 🌍 Through the tipping point spread on social media, people's behavior and social norms can be changed.
• 📈 Twitter is a successful example, rapidly expanding its user base through tipping point spread and attracting widespread attention.
In recent years, various media platforms such as Xiaohongshu have witnessed the phenomenon of generalized and decentralized aesthetics: elderly fashion bloggers, special forces travel methods, unlocking niche destinations, etc. People have found a unique sense of belonging in them, forming a popular new trend, unlocking new trends, and ultimately attracting widespread attention and triggering a new lifestyle change. The reason behind this is closely related to the "25% threshold" effect proposed by communication expert Damon Centola.
In "Critical Change," Damon Centola uses complex communication research to interpret a large number of popular phenomena and successful brand influence cases, and proposes the "25% threshold effect" to help us decrypt the fundamental logic behind many complex "breaking out" phenomena.
I. What is the 25% threshold effect?
In the 1970s, when Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter studied large corporations, she and an increasing number of sociologists and economists began to accept the view that even in the face of resistance to change by the majority, a small group of people could still trigger change. Kanter's anthropological research also hypothesized that the critical mass required to change social norms is about 20% to 35% of the population of that group.
You may be familiar with the concept of "tipping point" (or "critical point"), which comes from Malcolm Gladwell's book of the same name and is widely known because of his promotion. But I use this concept differently. I use it to refer to a scientific theory, that is, there is a measurable critical mass in organizations and groups, and once this critical mass is reached, it can trigger a complete change in people's behavior.
Years later, Damon Centola's research on social networks was based on these ideas. The research shows that if enough social confirmation accumulates continuously in a social network, it can trigger the widespread spread of changing social norms and eventually transmit this change to everyone. Damon and his colleagues believe that complex communication theory can be used to make precise mathematical predictions about tipping points.
Damon Centola's approach is to imagine a person like Chris, who likes to shake hands. How many fist bumps does Chris need to get used to greeting with a fist bump? Although Chris has always used handshakes, his recent experiences may be more meaningful than before when he decides to figure out how to deal with new situations.
Damon infers that if fist bumps become the most frequently encountered behavior in Chris's recent memory, he will change his behavior and use fist bumps to greet clients in the next meeting. How many early adopters are needed to trigger a chain reaction and ultimately change the masses? Our predicted result is consistent with Kanter's initial research: we predict a threshold of 25%.
To test the theory of critical change, Damon's team created 10 independent online communities. The size of each community ranged from 20 to 30 people. In each community, participants interacted with each other to form a social network. Each community played a "language game" in which they tried to come up with a suitable name for a randomly appearing person.
They collected photos of 10 unfamiliar people and gave one to each community. Some communities received a photo of a man, while others received a photo of a woman. Then they asked them: What do you think the person's name might be? At the beginning of each round, we randomly paired each member of each community with their network friends.
In a 20-person community, they created 10 pairs of random partners. Each pair of participants had 20 seconds to come up with a name for the person in the photo, and each person had to give a name within the specified time. Each player played the game simultaneously. The interesting thing about this game is that there is no correct answer.
Each person can only see the name entered by their previous partner in the previous round, and they do not know what names other people in the community are using, or even how many people are in a community. Players cannot infer what the next person they meet will do based on information at the group level. But every once in a while, a pair of random players will successfully coordinate—for example, both using the name "Mia."
After so many early failures, both players are excited about the final success. In the next round, they will both try again with their new partner using the name "Mia." Even if "Mia" is not successful in this round, they will still try it one or two more times. Once a norm is established, everyone has an understanding of each other's ideas.
Because "Mia" has recently been confirmed by them, they may all try it. Surprise! They will succeed. Each community starts in a disorderly manner. But the small sparks of coordination quickly lead people and their companions, their companions' companions, and more companions to coordinate on the same behavior. By the 15th round, whenever someone meets a stranger, they will immediately know how to coordinate.
Damon arranged a unique group of "activators" in each of the 10 communities. These mysterious activators are actually members of the research team. They have only one task: to overturn established social norms. In each round, no matter who they interact with, the activators will use the name they want to become the new norm. If everyone in a community is using the name "Mia," the activators will suddenly appear and start using the name "Ingrid" in each round. They are committed to initiating social change.
Different communities in the study had different numbers of activator groups. The smallest activator group accounted for 17% of the total community population (far below our predicted threshold), and the largest activator group accounted for 31% of the total community population (far above our predicted threshold). We call them "resolute minority groups" because they are determined to persistently use "Ingrid" no matter what.
Most communities follow established social norms and ignore the presence of activators. Regardless of how determined the activators are to "Ingrid," the majority group that loves "Mia" remains consistent. But in Community 6, Damon slightly increased the proportion of activators calling for "Ingrid" to 25%, and everyone accepted this new name and abandoned their attachment to "Mia."
II. The tipping point triggers a surge in Twitter users
Based on this scientific finding, ==people can use "tipping points" to break social norms.== As you can see, an innovation movement on the verge of failure can become one of the most successful initiatives in American history. Damon Centola shows in the book how social networks can transform a failed marketing campaign into an extremely efficient product promotion campaign, ultimately achieving 100% market saturation.
Let's return to the real world and think about it. Suppose you want to spread a new technology, such as Venmo—a social media-based payment service that allows you to split costs, repay debts, and comment on each other's activities dynamically. You are developing a marketing strategy for Venmo and need to decide who your audience is: a small group of people working in tech startups, each with a few hundred contacts, or CEOs of nationally renowned brands with tens of thousands of contacts?
By now, you should know the answer. Although the CEO of this brand may be well-known, she is also paying attention to the behavior of those around her. She is acutely aware of what her decisions will look like in the eyes of colleagues and clients. The reason she has achieved what she has is partly because she has a high level of social insight.
Before adopting an unknown technology, she will carefully consider and look around at the people around her to see how many people in her peers and peer organizations have already adopted this technology. She is unlikely to take the risk of adopting a new technology earlier than those around her, risking her reputation. This is the key reason why this influential CEO is so difficult to influence: although her extensive social network may introduce her to some early adopters of this innovation, she is more likely to know more people who have not adopted this innovation.
==Damon refers to these people as "influence neutralizers," that is, a group of people who are immune to the influence of new things. As long as these people have not adopted the innovation, they are enough to send a loud signal to this social star - the innovation has not been accepted by the public.== These people who are immune to new things convey a silent but strong social signal. They tell us the degree to which an innovation is accepted.
In other words, a leader with a wide network is much more negatively affected by this new thing's immunity than the positive signals received from a small number of early adopters. For employees of startups on the network edge, the situation is different. Compared with a CEO with extensive connections, for people with average connections, a small number of people around them adopting the innovation is enough to have a huge impact. Because people on the network edge around ordinary people have a higher degree of adoption of new things, the small proportion of early adopters has a greater presence in the social network of ordinary people.
==This makes the network edge an easier place for innovation to take root.====The more people on the network edge adopt your innovation, the stronger the positive signal is for others. This is the driving force behind social change. Once an innovation begins to spread at the network edge, it becomes influential enough that even influential figures with extensive connections have to take a great interest in it.==
This is exactly the process of Twitter's development, and the same is true in "Second Life." Initially, it was ordinary people in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area who got Twitter started, spreading it locally through their friends and family networks. The new internet technology achieved success by spreading from one block to another, one community to another in the city. With the momentum of Twitter growing, it expanded to other similar areas in the United States until it reached critical mass in January 2009. Since then, its user base has grown rapidly. It only took a few months to grow from hundreds of thousands of users to nearly 20 million active users. Such growth even attracted great interest from social superstars like Oprah Winfrey.
III. How did niche podcasts break out of their circles?
Viral marketing spreads product messages on a large scale. Damon believes that this is a form of simple communication. When we talk about simple ideas and information (such as headline news about volcanic eruptions or royal marriages), this viral spread is effective. This type of information is highly contagious: it grabs people's attention and is easy to spread. However, it has a big problem: to bring about real change, what you need to do is not just spread information, but also change people's beliefs and behaviors. These are difficult to shake.
This is a world of simple communication—captivating ideas spread quickly to everyone, but there is a lack of lasting impact on changing our thoughts and lifestyles. Innovative ideas and behaviors do not spread like viruses, and simple exposure is not enough to "infect" others. So how do you get others to accept these new ideas? Many brands have begun to embrace the logic of complex communication.
Most of the behaviors we usually pay attention to—market investments, choosing political candidates, planning career development, choosing a community to live in, using contraception, buying expensive technology products, or joining a social movement—all belong to complex communication. They are complex because they involve real risks. The greater the risk and uncertainty of a decision, the more "proof" is needed before people take risks, that is, confirmation from many people around them.
Damon gives an example: the legitimacy of using the virtual augmented reality game "Pokémon Go" depends on whether others accept it. You wouldn't want to walk around playing AR games on the street unless others accept these games. This social support will allow you to maintain interest in the game for a long time, just like everyone else.
==Innovative products often have the most loyal users after adoption.====This is what sociologists call the moat effect. It hinders changes in people's behavior, but it is also the key to change. In order to gain social support for a brand's new image and new products, increase the favorability of new users, and eliminate the discomfort of using new products, brands have put a lot of effort into marketing actions, just like various martial arts moves. Podcasts have become the first new marketing trend.==
Nike collaborated with the digital audio company Just Pod to launch the first Chinese podcast program of an international sports brand, "Nike Listening." It invited professional athletes, sports enthusiasts from various industries, and trend enthusiasts as guests. It has released over 50 episodes and aims to involve consumers in the co-construction of the brand's cultural ecosystem and enhance emotional connections. Following closely, at the end of 2023, the luxury brand Louis Vuitton started to create its podcast "Louis Vuitton [EXTEND]," with the first four episodes focusing on "In Shanghai," emphasizing the brand's local presence to gain user favorability and build a moat.
Emotional investment and a sense of companionship have enabled many podcasts to form stable private domain users. This close-to-life authenticity has accelerated one-on-one connections within the private domain, gradually forming similar usage tastes and habits. In the unfamiliar society of the city, podcasts quickly broke out in this way, although they did not become 100% popular, they have already formed large-scale one-on-one recommendations and sharing. Behind this, Damon's "tipping point" change is still triggering new thinking.
"Critical Change"
Author: Damon Centola
Publisher: CITIC Publishing Group
Publication Date: January 2024
This article is excerpted from "Critical Change" by Damon Centola, published by CITIC Publishing Group.