About 10 percent of U.S. adults are opinion leaders. Identifying, reaching, and
influencing opinion leaders is a major challenge for companies. Some firms use actors or sports figures as spokespersons to represent their products, such as actor
Leonardo DiCaprio and tennis player Maria Sharapova for TAG Heuer watches.
Others promote their products in media believed to reach opinion leaders. Still others use more direct approaches. For example, a carmaker recently invited influential
community leaders and business executives to test-drive its new models. Some 6,000
accepted the offer, and 98 percent said they would recommend their tested car. The
company estimated that the number of favorable recommendations totaled 32,000.