Comments on: The Influencer Myth

By: Jeffrey Henning’s #MRX Top 10: Mobilizing MR for Marketing, Mobile Research & Big Data | UpSearchMR

Sat, 15 Sep 2012 17:01:30 +0000

[...] The Influencer Myth – Ray Poynter of Vision Critical reviews some of the research into influencers and networks, concluding that influence may exist but it has small effects and little predictive power. “If we look at last winter we could examine a town and work out who caught flu first, last year, and call them early adopters. We could look at who tended to catch it from whom, and we would identify some nodal points, people who interfaced with lots of people and who seemed to be implicated in the spread… However, if we try to use this model of flu ‘influence’ next year to predict the path of the next flu outbreak we would probably be wide of the mark.” [...]

By: Simon Shaw

Simon Shaw — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 21:41:00 +0000

Thanks Ray, very interesting

Your point about influencers narratives being “post-evaluations of phenomena, with poor predictive outcomes” hits at the heart of the matter

The same happens when people make confident assertions about their product/brand from quantitative brand image batteries (e.g. “a brand I trust”, “moves with the times” etc). Much of the time people see what they want to see in this type of data (top down interpretation, ignoring any contrary evidence).

As far as Gladwell goes, he has a journalist’s eye for simplifying the argument. As well as taste being hierarchical, I’d take issue with his view on hierarchy being the optimum design option. Bottom up self-organising systems can – counter intuitively – be the most effective solution (see http://wp.me/pWnus-1c).

Cheers

Simon.

By: Clare McKitrick

Clare McKitrick — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 08:29:25 +0000

Very interesting. Are you able to elaborate on your comment that ‘the analogy of these situations in marketing is more likely to occur in B2B or pharma’ – do you mean the theory of influence could be more valid in adoption of drugs/products in these markets?

By: Jonathan W. Siegel

Jonathan W. Siegel — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 13:07:37 +0000

Nice note. There is another problem with focusing on influencers: often their preferences are different from those whom they seek to influence. In research David Bakken and I conducted several years ago when we were both at Harris Interactive, for instance, that “influencers”–as measured by the kinds of scales you point out above–liked different kinds of cars and movies than “non-influencers”. So even if conversations occurred, the advice of “influencers” might simply be ignored as irrelevant.