The message or the messenger?
I was going through some old papers and found a pamphlet that a well intentioned officer made me read at my first command. Elbert Hubbard's A Message to Garcia. It's a short article about initiative and pretty much blind obedience. The officer was quite proud of himself when I asked if I could make a copy of the pamphlet. Little did he know I was not awestruck by the original story, but by the way it had spread around the world. Elbert Hubbard had written the short article in about an hour or so, basically filling space in a newspaper he helped publish. Pretty soon they were getting requests for copies of that edition and was amazed that his Message to Garcia was the article everyone had requested. The day after he received a request for a thousand copies he received a request from the president of the New York Central Railroad for 500,000 copies. Hubbard then gave them permission to reprint the article themselves in pamphlet form.
A Russian Prince who was the director of Russian Railways read the pamphlet, had it translated in Russian and gave a copy to every Russian Railway employee. From there it spread to Germany, France, even China. It was translated into every major language.
During the Russian Japanese war, every Russian soldier was given a copy of it. The Japanese found the pamphlet on Russian Prisoners, had it translated into Japanese, and gave it to every Japanese government employee, civilian or military.
After you read the article you can see it is not very complex, and in my eyes not very inspiring. What is it that caused this article to have over 40 million copies printed by 1918, a feat that had not been accomplished by any author of that time while they were still alive. Was it the message? The Author of the message? Or key messengers who knew how to deliver the message? (And for the Marshall McLuhan fans we'll totally ignore the idea that the medium is the message.) I find it intrigueing how simple ideas are spread under the right conditions.
posted by Jason at 5:19 PM
2 Comments:
ah yes -- but think of how differently this was spread compared to, say, "all i ever needed to know i learned in kindergarten." this was a bit of wisdom that people photocopied, calligraphied, put into their family newsletters, taped to the refrigerator. it was all ground-up -- people spread it because people loved it.
now look at how the "message to garcia" article spread: princes, railway presidents, governments, armies. quite a difference, no? these are the very people who have it in their best interest to encourage all those "frowsy ne'er-do-wells" to hurry up and do what they're told.
how about a "message to berea?" when the apostles first took the news of a new religion to berea, the people there didn't just swallow it whole; they also didn't just beat the guys up or throw them in jail. instead, they picked up their copies of scripture and read for themselves, testing what the apostles said to see if it rang true. it did, and there they are, sitting on your bookshelf in the book of acts, waiting to be an inspiration to the world.
You're right, many messages spread just because the truth of the message rings true. They have what Malcolm Gladwell would say that "sticky" factor.
And I guess just because someone forced someone to read something, doesn't mean that the message was received either. I just got caught up in the numbers.
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