The Influentials

by Ed Keller

"Who are they? The most influential Americans - the ones who tell their neighbors what to buy, which politicians to support, and where to vacation - are not necessarily the people you'd expect. They're not America's most affluent 10 percent or best-educated 10 percent. They're not the "early adopters," always the first to try everything from Franco-Polynesian Fusion cooking to digital cameras. They are, however, the 10 percent of Americans most engaged in their local communities ... and they wield a huge amount of influence within those communities. They're the campaigners for open-space initiatives. They're church vestrymen and friends of the local public library. They're the Influentials ... and whether or not they are familiar to you, they're very well known to the researchers at RoperASW. For decades, these researchers have been on a quest for marketing's holy grail: that elusive but supremely powerful channel known as word of mouth. What they've learned is that even more important