Pushing Fitness Toward the Tipping Point in West Virginia

A couple weeks ago, in support of Jason Keeling's West Virginia Day project at A Better West Virginia, I put forth this fragment of an idea. I postulated that we could shift the perception--and even influence the behaviors--related to fitness in WV, simply (yet purposefully) by elevating the level of conversation. As the title suggests, this is all based on Malcolm Gladwell's tipping point theories.

Well, guess what ... it's working! Thanks to a core group of "Mavens" - (ref. Gladwell), this initiative (now dubbed #fitwv - read on for explanation) is taking off.

Here's what I offered for those who wanted to get on board. You too can begin, simply by doing one or more of the following:

• Tweeting your workouts on Twitter ("Just had a great run along the boulevard!")
• Utilizing your Facebook status update to note your fitness activities ("Heading to the gym!")
• Used fitness topics as a conversation starter ("Hey, have you been to the new zip line course in the New River Gorge?")
• Support fitness-minded leaders - search and follow Twitter leaders who are into fitness and health; subscribe to blogs and RSS feeds from bloggers who write about exercise, nutrition and wellness. ("Check out this great new yoga blog I found.")
• Make it a personal priority--if not already--and begin advocating for fitness as a healthy lifestyle. Talking about it. Encouraging others. Inviting others to engage. ("Hey, do you play tennis. Wanna play sometime this week?")

Now, as for the #fitwv thing, I absently mindedly added a "hash tag" to my first post on Twitter about this idea. Following is my Tweet from June 20th:

Happy WV Day! Let's make a Fitter West Virginia using tipping point tactics to overcome obesity. http://tinyurl.com/nxj7y8 #abetterwv7:53 AM Jun 20th

It caught on. Folks began using it. The neat thing about hash tags in Twitter is that they can be "sticky" - short and memorable. If you want to appreciate the power of the #fitwv hash tag, just go to search.twitter.com and type #fitwv in the search box.

Following Gladwell's theoretical model, what we need now are some fitness-minded connectors to come on board and tell a couple dozen of their friends. Once that happens, we'll shoot from 30 to 300 advocates of #fitwv lickety-split.

Frankly, I am amused and excited to see where this goes. The payoff, of course, is when this movement really causes some movement ... and that's when our little project inspires a few more West Virginians to adopt the fitness mentality and lifestyle.

Before you go, please take a minute to check out the wonderfully written related blog post by my good friend Elizabeth Damewood Gaucher over at her Esse Diem blog.

A Fitter West Virginia

Happy West Virginia Day! Like many, I love West Virginia. So it's tragic, to me, that West Virginia is the most overweight state in the nation. (The depressing stats are at the bottom if you need a reminder.)


Hey - I want you all to feel good, look good and live good, long lives! In support of A Better West Virginia, and in honor of West Virginia day, let's create a fitter Mountain State. It may appear a daunting challenge, but we can do it if we work smart and work together!


Obesity is a complex, multi-factor health epidemic, requiring a comprehensive solution. Right? I'm not so sure. I contend that we don't have to make this so complicated.

According to theories put forth in Malcolm Gladwell's best-seller, The Tipping Point, change begins with a spark of action or a transformative idea (often from a maven) and spreads through communities via connectors and salesmen. The change builds momentum, gaining acceptance and attracting support, until it tips (i.e., becomes prevalent, becomes the new normal). He uses such examples as Paul Revere's midnight ride, the clean-up of crime and vandalism in New York City and the return of Hush Puppy shoes. Gladwell postulates that a group of perhaps as few as 150 people aligned around a cause, and constituted with a blend of salesmen, connectors and mavens, can affect bold transformations. He cites example after of example of tipping-point victories.

How might we apply "Tipping Point" techniques to make a fitter West Virginia?

What if ... 150 (or more) of the most connected, Web savvy West Virginians began talking about fitness? [If you are reading this article, there's a good chance you might be just such a person, by the way.] Consider the potential impact of weird, new ideas like these:

• Tweeting your workouts on Twitter (Just had a great run along the boulevard!)


• Utilizing your Facebook status update to note your fitness activities (Heading to the gym!)


• Used fitness topics as a conversation starter (Hey, have you been to the new zip line course in the New River Gorge?)


• Support fitness-minded leaders - search and follow Twitter leaders who are into fitness and health; subscribe to blogs and RSS feeds from bloggers who write about exercise, nutrition and wellness. (Check out this great new yoga blog I found.)


• Make it a personal priority--if not already--and begin advocating for fitness as a healthy lifestyle. Talking about it. Encouraging others. Inviting others to engage. (Hey, do you play tennis. Wanna play sometime this week?)

None of this requires new systems or much extra work or time, really not even any money. I'm not urging you to join a gym or even to exercise more frequently. What I am urging you to do is to commit to elevate the conversation about fitness and to main it consistently. When you work out - put it out there across your network. Keep the conversation going. Support others. Simple and easy!


Imagine the power of 150+ visible, opinion leaders focusing on fitness! Others will take notice. It's leadership by example. It's advocacy. One by one, across social networks (both real and virtual) people will begin to think: Maybe I need to get going with this fitness thing. Behavior modeling will begin and change will occur. Powerful!


I believe that once West Virginia addresses its education and obesity challenges, everything else is easily tackled and overcome. To me, these are the two "biggies" (no pun intended). I will rely on others for educational ideas and reforms; there's already some good stuff underway.


When I turned 40 three years ago, I was 40 pounds overweight. My waist was 40 inches. My cholesterol was 240, and my blood pressure was 140-something (the top number). Not a healthy picture. Since that time, I've made some huge changes in my lifestyle with exercise, fitness and supplementation. Today, those efforts have paid off, and I will be around for many more years to enjoy my wonderful family, friends and beloved Mountain State.

While that's a happy story, it's not what's most relevant to this example. During the course of my fitness transformation, I casually, almost haphazardly began communicating about my workouts and fitness lifestyle on Facebook and Twitter--not in a zealous way, just conversational and without agenda. I did this mostly to hold myself accountable and to focus on my fitness.

This is the big surprising insight: over the past two years, I have heard from more than 30 or more people that they have been inspired and motivated by my fitness blurbs and quips. That's wonderful! Such feedback has helped me to stay focused and committed. It's an upward spiral. It's synergy. A community of enriched relationships is so powerful!

Are you ready to make this tip? I hope you'll join me!

I look forward to your comments and suggestions here or on Facebook and Twitter.

___________________________________________________________________

Here are some background stats on obesity, culled from the report "Obesity: Facts, Figures, Guidelines" - WV DHHR, 2002.

Obese West Virginians are more likely than their healthy weight counterparts to have suffered a heart attack, been diagnosed with hypertension, diabetes, and/or asthma, or been limited in their activities because of back pain.

The economic costs of obesity are tremendous. The National Institutes of Health have estimated the total cost of overweight and obesity to the U.S. economy in 1995 dollars at $99.2 billion, including 39.3 million workdays lost annually to obesity-related causes.

The obesity prevalence in West Virginia has been consistently higher than that in the United States as a whole. In 1990, the West Virginia rate of adult obesity was 15.0%,
compared with a U.S. rate of 11.6%. By 2000, the state rate was 23.2%, compared
with 20.1% nationally. The obesity rate has increased in virtually all of West
Virginia’s 55 counties over the past decade.

Sticky - Are Marketers Obsessed?

Friend, blogger and fellow marketing genius, Jennifer Wood pointed me to this thought-provoking commentary over on the Fast Company Web site:

The sticky-wars have arrived. Yesterday AdAge's Matthew Creamer introduced Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociology professor from down under who's challenging The Tipping Point's Malcolm Gladwell to a battle at the mic.

Armed with a mathematical and computer modeling arsenal instead of anecdotes, Watts debunks Gladwell's "influencer" theory. Writes Creamer: "The crux of Mr. Watts' argument is that even if influentials are several times as influential as a normal person, they have little impact beyond their own immediate neighborhood -- not good when you're trying to create a cascade through a large network of people, as most big brands do. In those cases, he argues, it's best to skip the idea of targeting that treasured select group of plugged-in folks and instead think about that group's polar opposite: a large number of easily influenced people. He calls this big-seed marketing. Sounds a lot like mass marketing, doesn't it?"

Oy veh. In the high brow stratosphere of marketing theory, one day it's all about the niche ("long tail"), the next it's all about the mass ("big seed"). Between Gladwell and Watts (who in 2003 penned the book, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, to much less fanfare), and Fast Company's very own Made to Stick columnists, Dan and Chip Heath, it seems an entire academic generation has emerged around the study of: how to get our ideas, products and brands to stick. You could argue it's the obsession of 21st century marketers.

Creamer goes on to interview a couple marketers who have discovered that Gladwell's "tipping point" theory (which, as I wrote about in my January 2005 profile on Gladwell, has become fully operationalized at companies like Pepsi and Coke's VitaminWater), is a hell of a lot more difficult to recreate, than it is to admire from a far. (Please, why is anyone surprised by this? Didn't you learn by second grade that doing is always harder than pontificating?)

But my favorite line from Creamer's piece is this: "An irony of our age is that, though everyone acknowledges consumers are in control, marketers still believe they're running the show, right down to trying to plan for virality as any creative told to "just go make a viral video" will lament. Virality is an outcome, not a channel to be planned." It's similar to a point I made in "Down the Rabbit Hole," a November 2006 story that deconstructs the labyrinth campaigns the Blair Witch Project's stunt-men architected for Audi and Sega. Creating a tipping point phenomenon is not just some algorithm on Google or a magic widget you can click--it requires tireless hard work and attention, relentless strategy and creativity, and a deep respect for your audience so you can give them want they want, or better yet, what they don't even know they want.

Where do you stand in the Gladwell vs. Watts smackdown?