Why fame pays

Why wanting to be famous pays

In the grand scheme of things, people don’t care about brands that much. If we want people to pay attention, ‘like’, tag, ‘participate’, share and everything else it’s worth bearing in mind that we face the most terrifying of all human emotions. It’s not contempt, infatuation, love, hate or anything else. It’s indifference. Most people have something better to do.

So little no wonder that when the IPA mined their Databank of Effectiveness Papers-20 years of rigorous case studies- they found one kind of communications strategy outperformed all others. Fame.

Much, much more successful than rational ‘persuasion’ or ‘information’. What’s more, they’re incredibly good at raising quality perceptions, without delivering ‘facts’ about the product. What’s even more startling is that there’s quite a lot of evidence in the case studies that delivering ‘facts’ about product and service benefits can drastically REDUCE the effectiveness of a campaign.

When we say ‘Fame’ campaigns, by the way, we don’t mean ‘using celebrities’ (of course making use of celebrities is perfectly fine!), we mean getting the brand talked about. Actually, above all else, looking to make it famous for something. This goes way beyond ‘brand awareness’ and is all about being seen to be making waves in the category. This gives the brand a sense of authority and leadership.

This all seems to go against conventional marketing theory of course, where people make rational decisions on what they do and buy based on the information they have. Surely, information based campaigns should be the most effective?

Well, not when the biggest fight isn’t being ‘clear’ or ‘better’ it’s people taking notice at all. ‘Fame’ campaigns that seek to create talking points are much more likely to ‘cut through the clutter’. But that’s not the whole story.

Fame campaigns engage the emotions, they provoke and emotional response . Which is the key to how real human beings make decisions rather than the claims in economics textbooks. Decision making is largely instinctively and emotional. TA the extremes, patients who suffer damage to the emotional centres of the brain are fully capable of rational thought, but are virtually incapable of making decisions.

Also, emotional stimuli is recorded in our brain much better than memories about facts. We simply remember how we feel about what someone said much better than we remember what they actually said. This is the second hit in the fame double whammy, they influence purchase behaviour more powerfully because they not only engage the part of your brain that REALLY makes decisions, they also have a longer lasting effect because we remember them better.

Finally, we live in a world where the social web is making conversation and participation is the most potent social currency. To truly become something people want to share and get involved with, communications that makes ‘getting talked about’ isn’t a nice to have, it’s the most commercial marketing decision you can make.