Every Tribe Needs a Guy #3

A subscriber to the Seth Godin school of marketing, I have been following up on his latest (or latest to me) conceptualization of tribe marketing. He argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. Check out his talk on tribes at the TED Conference

If you look at this video and see a dancing fool you will be entertained for 3 minutes. But if you look at it in terms of cool little social experiment on how an idea is spread through a population, as
Seth Godin does on his blog , suddenly, we have a lot more to talk about.



Seth Godin's take on the relevance of the video:

My favorite part happens just before the first minute mark. That's when guy #3 joins the group. Before him, it was just a crazy dancing guy and then maybe one other crazy guy. But it's guy #3 who made it a movement.

Initiators are rare indeed, but it's scary to be the leader. Guy #3 is rare too, but it's a lot less scary and just as important. Guy #49 is irrelevant. No bravery points for being part of the mob.

We need more guy #3s.

So what what type of Guy or Gal are you? I guess another way to put this question is to dig deep and ask yourself if you could picture yourself being Guy#1? Creating spontaneous magic in large social groups is a difficult thing to. Sometimes things will take off like they did in this video and some times they will fall flat on their face and you will be left in the spotlight, holding the microphone with thousands of people looking at you like you should be in some sort of restraining device. Something tells me that Guy #1 would have been just as happy having the hillside to himself, grooving out on life for the next several hours or days, and not caring one iota that thousands were gawking at his moves.

But then again, Guy#1 obviously does know one of the central rules of marketing and sales: Location, Location, Location. He chose a beauty of a spot at the edge of the Gorge concert site, lots of room and prime visibility to the 10's of thousands of others attending the Sasquatch Festival (it's official, I have to go to this concert next year!). Talk about picking THE spot for the birth of a movement. He also knows his audience and timing. It looks like this took place in the later afternoon. The festival goers had probably been partying and listening to bands for most of the day while sippin on rapidly warming American beers. It was a decisive moment for the concert, keep standing and dancing or sit down on your blankets and find something to eat before the next act? Guy #1, 2 and #3 helped make up a lot of other peoples minds. The band should think about hiring them full time as backup dancers.

Guy #2 would have given guy #1 a massive high-five at the end of the song and gone back to his buddies to make sure they got the hilarity on their video phones. Guy #2 has a great sense of humour and likes to have a good time. Kudos to you Guy #2.

But it is Guy #3 who takes this wild tribal dance party to the next level. When he showed up on the scene, everyone else watching said to themselves, "Yup, I should be dancing dancing barefoot on a hillside RRIIIGGGGHHHTTT NOOOWWWWW!!!!!"

So how can marketers identify people as being key influencers of trends? They are those who pick up early on a trend and are not afraid to join in, lend their support and will perhaps be quite vocal about the cause. Do they have other key characteristics? Malcom Gladwell talks about the great mavens or communicators that are at the roots of movements. But the internet is allowing so many more people to influence trends in much more aggregate fashion. What if people don't need to be high profile to influence trends, what if they are just there doing their thing like these 3 dudes? Does that make the influencing process less important or change their role within it?

More to come on this topic in the future. Please feel free to comment or add your thoughts on who or what it takes to grow a movement.