The Web Shreds Brands' Fame (But Only If They're Lucky)

Fame is a biggie in advertising.  One smart agency even built a company around it.  After all, what brand doesn’t want to be famous?  Fame suggests glamour in a way that makes recall and recognition feel like a science lesson.  However, while blockbuster fame through the power of mega-media is a familiar concept, it can take on strange shapes when projected into the shadows of the web and networked media.   Many big brands are shocked to discover that their fame is almost irrelevant online.  The exchange rate for the fame shekel drops off a cliff when moved from broadcast country to the networked environs.  And there’s the rub.  Fame is a massive asset online.  But only if used in the right way.  Brands that arrive, entourage in tow, to share their wonderful insights, experiences and views on world peace look like a wide-eyed reject from the Big Brother house.  People may show up but only to point and snigger.  However, if you take your hard-earned offline recognition and offer it to the world as a ladder up the board, a place for people to show their own star-quality, fame can take on a whole new value.  It’s the equivalent of your favourite actor, sports star or musician, lending you their halo for the day.  Will you look after it?  Oh yes.  Hell, you’ll give it a shine before you hand it back.  But there will be bumps along the way.  In fact, a brand might be shredded - but only if it's lucky.  If a brand puts its fame online, it’s highly likely that someone will rip it apart, if only to prove they can put it back together in better shape.  That will be a disturbing moment for a brand manager, not to mention his or her legal team.  However, this is where the smartest online operators ride powerful peer-to-peer waves straight up the beach and into the bar.  That’s because most remixes of your brand will go unnoticed but the fan you handed over control to will appreciate that you let them have a go.  But the odd one or two will add a special or surprising tweak of their own and enjoy sharing it with friends and family.  And at that point the web has done its magic.  The brand's foreign offline fame wonga will have exchanged into local currency that is instantly recognised, trusted and circulated.  Yes fame is a valuable asset for brands online.  But only if they’re prepared to share the limelight.

Comments

[david cushman]

It all comes down to being prepared to share out the attention, right?
The tough gig is working out how better to do this.

Couple of contributions from me: Discussion of Fame (inspired by Clay Shirky's chapter on it in Here Comes Everybody - and including comments from Clay) and a slidedeck shared with me by some ex-MIT dudes who I believe first showed it at sxsw - about the addictive nature of discovery.
1. Clay and Fame:
http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2008/05/its-not-how-famous-you-are-its-how.html
2. Discovery: http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2008/07/are-you-building-love-machine.html

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks David, yep, terms of engagement - right? Nothing new under the sun....! ;-)