The book’s best and most original contribution is a chapter that patiently demolishes the idea that cultural products ever actually 'go viral.' The disease model, in which people infect other people who in turn infect others, simply doesn’t explain massive hits ... he has conducted a lot of interviews and read some original research. Yet occasionally he does seem to hang a lot on a single, rather obscure study that may not warrant such confident extrapolations, and he sometimes slips himself into the zombie semantics of marketing speak ... So is Hit Makers a hit in the making? Well, one of the key things the author wants us to understand throughout is this: 'Most consumers are simultaneously neophilic – curious to discover new things – and deeply neophobic – afraid of anything that’s too new.' Or, to put it less pseudo-scientifically, people want something that’s a bit new but also deeply familiar. It is surely no coincidence that Hit Makers, a book of a very familiar type with a couple of good new twists, is the ideal kind of product for such an audience.
Thompson has written a wonderful book full of such wonderings. He wonders all over the place, as befits a man who likes Shakespeare as well as the movie Dumb and Dumber ... Thompson tackles this mystery with solid research, ready wit and catchy aphorisms ... Thompson shows how the melding of innovation with familiarity, as well as exposure of various kinds, applies to other successful creations.
Although often fascinating, this book is ultimately frustrating. It offers the promise of disclosing popularity’s secret but concludes that so many factors must coalesce in so unpredictable a way that, in the words of William Goldman, the Hollywood writer, 'nobody knows anything.' Thompson has huge enthusiasm for his topic and has amassed an amazing amount of material, including many offbeat and engaging stories. What he does not have is the answer. In a sense, this is wholly unsurprising. If there were a secret to hit-making, everyone would exploit it...This is not an argument for ignoring Hit Makers, but for tempering expectations: it is to be read for insight and provocation, rather than the 'aha' feeling a consumer has on encountering an unambiguous hit. One of Thompson’s appeals is that he admits to having sought a foolproof theory without success.
Thompson is a gifted writer and has a knack for finding intriguing stories. But rather than dwelling on any one in particular, or taking the time to fully unpack it, he often flits to the next sexy example. This quickly gets overwhelming. It makes it hard to remember what the main point is or how it relates to the overall theme ... We’ve all seen juicy gossip dash around a schoolyard or through an office. But Thompson provides few insights into how this builds and spreads. This kind of person-to-person sharing gets short shrift in his book ... Thompson takes well-worn research that has often been covered elsewhere and tries to give it new life through novel stories. It doesn’t make for the most revelatory book, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
It’s a fascinating story, and it’s backed up with plenty of evidence, both psychological and historical. While Thompson occasionally gets tangled up in questions of causality — did this make this object famous, or was it that? — he develops a compelling lens to analyze the weird, borderline inexplicable phenomenon that is mass popularity ... Thompson’s project is to synthesize the findings of these different disciplines into a single analytic lens, and he does so relentlessly. The downside of that project is that it can lead to pat simplifications, but the upside is that its scope is impressive, and the insight it offers is compelling ... Hit Makers is thoughtful and thorough, a compelling book — and one that knows why it is compelling.
