“No one finds this story that I’m about to tell you funny,” says Malcolm Gladwell. “I’m only telling it because I find it hilarious.” Gladwell is speaking to a few hundred freshmen in UT’s Union Ballroom. Author and staff writer for The New Yorker, he is almost indistinguishable from the button-down Waldo on the inside flap of his bestselling book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Back Bay, $14.95 paper). In person, Gladwell is more casual, more New York, with a springy growth of afro. He looks comfortable working a crowd, especially for someone who jokingly refers to himself as a “social recluse” and a “hermit.” So here’s his story: “I am a big fan of Ivory soap,” he begins. “And when I pick it up at the store, and I turn it over, I get a chuckle every time. Because on the back, it says, ‘For questions or complaints, call 1-800-395-9960.'”
Gladwell raises one finger. “Assumption number one. There is someone out there with a question or complaint about Ivory soap.
“Assumption number two,” he says, raising another finger. “They feel so strongly about that question or complaint that they feel compelled to call Proctor & Gamble.” The laughter starts to spread. “This kills me every time. Who is going home and dialing?”
The story continues, as does the laughter. “But if you sell soap, you have to treat people seriously when they take soap seriously. You gotta take their calls. Because these people have social power.” And here is the real point: “We get far too caught up in the person who drives a flashy car and lives in a big house, and we forget about the people who have a different kind of power, and that is social power.”
That’s what Malcolm Gladwell wants to talk about: social power. It is at the heart of The Tipping Point, a book about how social change happens. Gladwell dissects a few curious trends — “Why is teenage smoking on the rise?” for example or “How did Blue’s Clues become so popular?” — and finds that they function in much the same way as an infectious disease. Ideas, Gladwell claims, can also cause an epidemic. It’s not just the corporations and the Big Guys who shape the world; we can have a hand, too.
“We get so caught up in economic power and political power that we forget there is an equally important kind of power that does not reside in status or wealth or position,” Gladwell tells the students. “It resides in individuals and their personalities. I think it has a lot of relevance, particularly to students, because it explains why students can make a difference in the world — when they otherwise might think that they can’t.”
The Tipping Point has been assigned to these UT freshmen as part of the First-Year Forum, a new program sponsored by the Division of Rhetoric and Composition in which all of the students read a book that models rhetorical devices they can emulate in their own writing. (Next year’s book is Eric Schlosser’s excellent Fast Food Nation.) Gladwell’s book is a particularly fine choice, as he is a man of endless enthusiasm for ideas, an admirable profile writer, and a cultural critic with more than a whiff of the contrarian. “Are Smart People Overrated?” one New Yorker story asked. “What does Saturday Night Live have in common with German philosophy?” asked another. Gladwell never stops asking how the world operates. He is always questioning, always listening, always turning things over to find what’s underneath — even if it is just a bar of Ivory soap.
For an archive of Malcolm Gladwell’s work, visit www.gladwell.com.
This article appears in April 11 • 2003.