We know some stuff sells like wildfire. More than being a mere commodity, some things, some services and cultural practices are entrenched into our personality and psyche. We need to be involved with them. They are an emotional part of us. Part of our dreams. Our vision for our future. Our self-identity is formed by certain products, services, fads, styles, TV shows, computers games, films, music and art. By what we understand as culture. We might not be consciously aware of it, but we’re doing something because someone somewhere else started doing something first.
The best marketers often see this as the early adopters, those who get stuck into something first, before anyone else, before it feels safe to like it, before everybody likes it…
Written and Directed by PAUL ROJANATHARA & DAVIS JOHNSON, Produced by R+I FILM from An Original Concept by R+I CREATIVE, a brand new 13 minute film released yesterday titled “INFLUENCERS – How trends & Creativity Become Contagious” attempts to explore the outline of where culture develops, new things innovated and how we come to like the things we like. We hope you enjoy this fresh and entertaining study into our cultural influencers.
In 1962, Everett Rogers published Diffusion of Innovations for the Glencoe: Free Press. Rogers the first cultural theorist to propose the following model of innovation uptake. The following chart outlines the general population of consumer societies – it’s named Rogers Adoption / Innovation Curve.
Adopter categories
Rogers defines an adopter category as a classification of individuals within a social system on the basis of innovativeness. In the book Diffusion of Innovations, Rogers suggests a total of five categories of adopters in order to standardise the usage of adopter categories in diffusion research. The adoption of an innovation follows an S curve when plotted over a length of time. The categories of adopters are: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.
- Innovators
Innovators are the first individuals to adopt an innovation. Innovators are willing to take risks, youngest in age, have the highest social class, have great financial lucidity, very social and have closest contact to scientific sources and interaction with other innovators. Risk tolerance has them adopting technologies which may ultimately fail. Financial resources help absorb these failures.
- Early Adopters
This is the second fastest category of individuals who adopt an innovation. These individuals have the highest degree of opinion leadership among the other adopter categories. Early adopters are typically younger in age, have a higher social status, have more financial lucidity, advanced education, and are more socially forward than late adopters. More discrete in adoption choices than innovators. Realise judicious choice of adoption will help them maintain central communication position.
- Early Majority
Individuals in this category adopt an innovation after a varying degree of time. This time of adoption is significantly longer than the innovators and early adopters. Early Majority tend to be slower in the adoption process, have above average social status, contact with early adopters, and seldom hold positions of opinion leadership in a system.
- Late Majority
Individuals in this category will adopt an innovation after the average member of the society. These individuals approach an innovation with a high degree of skepticism and after the majority of society has adopted the innovation. Late Majority are typically skeptical about an innovation, have below average social status, very little financial lucidity, in contact with others in late majority and early majority, very little opinion leadership.
- Laggards
Individuals in this category are the last to adopt an innovation. Unlike some of the previous categories, individuals in this category show little to no opinion leadership. These individuals typically have an aversion to change-agents and tend to be advanced in age. Laggards typically tend to be focused on “traditions”, have lowest social status, lowest financial fluidity, oldest of all other adopters, in contact with only family and close friends, very little to no opinion leadership.
Five stages of the adoption process
- Knowledge
In this stage the individual is first exposed to an innovation but lacks information about the innovation. During this stage of the process the individual has not been inspired to find more information about the innovation.
- Persuasion
In this stage the individual is interested in the innovation and actively seeks information/detail about the innovation.
- Decision
In this stage the individual takes the concept of the innovation and weighs the advantages/disadvantages of using the innovation and decides whether to adopt or reject the innovation. Due to the individualistic nature of this stage Rogers notes that it is the most difficult stage to acquire empirical evidence.
- Implementation
In this stage the individual employs the innovation to a varying degree depending on the situation. During this stage the individual determines the usefulness of the innovation and may search for further information about it.
- Confirmation
Although the name of this stage may be misleading, in this stage the individual finalises their decision to continue using the innovation and may use the innovation to its fullest potential.
Diffusion of innovation theory seeks to explain the spread of new ideas. First developed in the early 1950s using research in rural sociology, it continues to be widely used. Rogers proposed 4 main elements that influence the spread of a new idea: the innovation, communication channels, time, and a social system. That is, diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system. Individuals progress through 5 stages: awareness, persuasion, decision, implementation, and adoption.
Elements of diffusion of innovation.
The key elements in diffusion research are:
Innovation
Rogers defines an innovation as “an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption.”
Communication channels
A communication channel is “the means by which messages get from one individual to another.”
Time
“The innovation-decision period is the length of time required to pass through the innovation-decision process.” “Rate of adoption is the relative speed with which an innovation is adopted by members of a social system.”
Social system
“A social system is defined as a set of interrelated units that are engaged in joint problem solving to accomplish a common goal.”
I hope thinking about this stuff doesn’t take all the fun out of your life. We know it’s the big picture view of kicking some arse to make hot sales..
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Here’s a cute little video which displays the letters of the alphabet using a font named with the same letter of the alphabet. It’s going fairly viral on vimeo right now. Take a squizz -
As you can see – not a bad little collection of hits! We’ve seen much more from other videos. But the recognition gained for the creator of this video is worth much more than it’s number of pixels in gold!
