Lessons from The Tipping Point: How to create a Lib Dem voting epidemic

The tipping point for the Liberal Democrats would be where voting for the Liberal Democrats tips over into a large national movement, resulting in a massive leap in percentage points at an election. For those who have not read the Tipping Point you can read about it here or here.

So what can we learn from this view of social change and where our efforts should be?

Firstly, efforts should be made to recruit Mavens to the Liberal Democrat movement as they are powerful people who are seen as data banks and provide the important message.  Efforts should be made to recruit Connectors as they spread the message.  We should seek natural salesmen and recruit them as they persuade people when they are unconvinced of what they are hearing.

According to the Tipping Point these few people should be a major target as these few people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through these special few. Simply by finding and reaching those few special people who hold so much social power, we can shape the course of social change towards the Lib Dems as they will spread the message to more people and more effectively than any other way.

Secondly, we need to make the message ‘sticky’ i.e. is it memorable enough to spur someone to action? The ‘stickiness’ factor says that there are specific ways to make a message memorable; there are relatively simple changes in the presentation and structuring of information that can make a big difference in how much of an impact it makes. By tinkering with the presentation of information, we can significantly improve its stickiness.

Thirdly, we should look at the size of the groups we are focusing on and the message we are giving them. Human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they seem and by manipulating the size of a group we can dramatically improve its receptivity to new ideas.

So what does this mean?

Maybe Nick Clegg is a salesman? I think he has been good at communicating the Liberal message and the leaders’ debate before the General Election gave Nick Clegg an opportunity to do provide this to a wider audience. This was successful according to the polls, but the message was not ‘sticky’ enough for people to vote for it. So the message needs tinkering with to stick in people’s minds. Neil Stockley posted a good response to the Lib Dem message for the campaign here.

Maybe the party focused on a too large a group i.e. the whole country, rather than smaller groups as it has been good at previously such as in by-elections or that the quality of the message in a given group was not good enough as written by Mark Pack.

Maybe there were not enough Connectors or Salesmen spreading the message or that the Maverns thought there were better messages out there? So focusing on these individuals, according to the Tipping Point, would produce great results.

Apparently, you know a Connector, Salesman and Mavern when you meet them. Convincing a Mavern would be virtually impossible as he would have done a lot of homework already. Maybe there are a lot of Maverns in the party already and we need to get more Connectors and Salesmen?

Some possible people to focus on would be people who are sociable, have a large social group, and have good relationships with people. In the Tipping Point book there is a successful story of a public health campaign using hairdressers to spread the message.

I am sure there are many others we could focus on so let me know if you can think of any. If you come across any of these people, it will be worth investing in this relationship for the liberal democrat cause. These have also been tried by people and got some good results so it would be worth a go.