The Unthinking Good Choice: Why It's Better To Be Famous Than It Is To Be Better

Here Leif Stromnes, managing director of strategy and growth at DDB Australia, explains why sometimes it's better to be famous rather than better than your rivals.

In 2009, American Sports Illustrated posed a hypothetical question to the 500 professional NBA basketballers at the start of the season:

“With a game on the line – where one shot will win or lose it – which player would you choose to take that last shot”?

The results weren't even close.

One player got 76 per cent of all nominations.
In fact, he got 25 times more votes than each of the three runners up. Combined.

Like most of us, the pro basketballers were in awe of the late Kobe Bryant. Not only was he handsome and incredibly athletic, his fame and presence transcended the sport.

Playing for the biggest team in the league (the Los Angeles Lakers), in the biggest media market in the country, meant they were exposed to endless images of Kobe making clutch baskets at crucial times in games.

He wasn't just a good choice. He was the only choice.

But he was a bad choice. Statistically, there were players much better suited to winning the game on the hooter. Kobe Bryant wasn't in the top 50. In fact, he wasn't even average at making THAT shot. And the basketball players knew it. They play 82 games a year, week in, week out and are exposed to all the player numbers and statistics. They knew that Kobe was the wrong choice but they still chose him. Why?

People are heavily influenced by the choices that others are making. If everyone has already made a decision that feels right, it's an emotionally easy “good decision” for us as well. This fame effect works even when we know the decision we are making may be sub-optimal for us personally. By being the most famous and magnetic person in basketball, the choice of Kobe Bryant was emotionally easy and utterly predictable. Sports Illustrated knew it, the players knew it and the public reading the article knew it. Even before the votes were in.

Being famous is an incredibly powerful growth strategy for brands. Arguably it is the emperor growth strategy in that it pays back more consistently and with more very large business effects.

This works in a number of ways.

Firstly, famous brands are not only attractive to current, heavy buyers, they are attractive to lapsed and light buyers as well. And as penetration, not frequency, always produces the greatest growth effect, being famous, or thought of first, tends to produce an outsized effect.

Secondly, most of a brand's customers are busy, distracted and don't think much, if at all, about why they choose the brands they do. So when a brand is famous, it is a signal that it's chosen by many other people, and on probability a good decision for me too.

This eases the cognitive burden and gives people an emotionally satisfying yet rational response when someone asks, “Why did you buy that one?”

I chose Kobe. End of discussion.