Tipping Points for Wine?

I have just started reading the book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I have only read the introduction and chapter 1 thus far, but they have prompted me to begin to think about the occurrence of tipping points within the wine industry.

Firstly, per the Gladwell website a tipping point is '... is that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire'.

Gladwell suggests that this phenomenon is akin to epidemics. The question for wine producers is how does one 'deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own?'

For this post I want to just share what Gladwell posits as 'The 3 Rules of Epidemics':

I quote from his online reading guide.

'The Law of the Few:

The 80/20 Principle states that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the 'work' will be done by 20 percent of the participants. This idea is central to the Law of the Few theory where a tiny percentage of people do the majority of work. But say you took those 20 people who do all the "work" away, would changes or epidemics never occur or would the next 20 people step into that role and assume the position of "workers"? Is one born an exceptional person, a 'one of the few,' or could someone eventually learn how to become a member of this exceptional group?

Stickiness Factor:

Stickiness means that a message makes an impact and doesn't go in one ear and out the other. Take a simple, every day example of this. Think about a song that you couldn't get out of your head or that television commercial you still remember from when you were a kid. Could you pinpoint what it is you think makes them "sticky?"

The Power of Context:

This says that human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they may seem. How attuned are you to your environment and its effect on you? Have you felt your mood change because of the surroundings even if it's as subtle as standing near a couple in a bitter argument or being in a cluttered, messy bedroom?'

A challenge to wine producers is to internalise those rules and come up with a plan to use them in an effort to drive sales.

SB