• Brandweek, Monday, October 19, 2009 10:39 AM

Todd Wasserman takes a look at the way that athletic shoe marketers have been going out of their way to stir up chatter about their brands among bloggers known as "sneakerheads" and asks if this is the future of marketing. He refers to Malcolm Gladwell's 2001 book The Tipping Point, which postulates that ideas get spread and movements grow when people who know a lot of people -- called "connectors" -- cross paths with "mavens."

"Nine years down the line, it seems that the connectors are unnecessary," Wasserman writes. "Give mavens a blog and access to Facebook or Twitter, and they will rule the category."

Several shoe industry heavyweights confirm the influence of sneakerheads on their marketing efforts but, in the end, Wasserman's advice is to not get into a dither if you're peddling other widgets. "The influence of bloggers on the sneaker segment appears to be not only singular, but even on the wane," he writes. "There are parallels in other industries, but in those cases, bloggers have more limited clout."

Read the whole story at Brandweek »