Why talent doesn’t always equal fame and what marketers can learn from it
Opinion
Talent and fame are frequently governed by three levers of ‘attention’, namely scarcity, pattern reliance, and distribution. Phil Rowley breaks it down.
Are the best things the most famous things? How about the other way round: are the most famous things the best things?
To put it into marketing-speak: does high quality naturally drive high awareness? If not, why not? Let me illustrate this further with a specific example.
If I asked you to nominate the greatest living guitarist, you might say, for instance, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, or Steve Vai. They are solid answers.
Some might say a ‘popular’ guitarist like Noel Gallagher, who can write catchy songs better than he can play guitar. But at Gallagher’s own admission, he’s no Jimmy Page.
For me, the best living guitarist is probably Guthrie Govan; the Da Vinci of the guitar and technically one of the most supernaturally gifted musicians of all time, who can play in any style, performing near-impossible feats of string bending and improvisation.
Why, then, have you heard of Noel Gallagher, but (probably) not Guthrie Govan? Because talent and quality aren’t enough to drive fame.
Rather, talent and fame are frequently governed by three levers of ‘attention’ – scarcity, pattern reliance, and distribution.
And only by pulling those levers back and forth can we make ourselves heard.
Let’s look at them:
Scarcity of attention
In his book Stolen Focus, Johann Hari discusses the epidemic of lost concentration. Chief among the reasons is the sheer amount of information we are exposed to daily: streams of emails, video feeds, and interminable Teams calls. No wonder that for many of us, PDF stands for ‘Please Don’t Forward’.
In the marketing world, we have the same issue. We talk about how to get eyeballs on our brands as our attention fragments across devices; not a ‘hall of mirrors’, but a ‘hall of screens’. We talk of differentiated and distinctive assets as our tools for cutting through the tsunami of noise.
However, because we simply don’t have time to process every message we are exposed to, talent and excellence are often casualties, drowned out by sheer busyness, chaos, and noise.
Pattern reliance
Related to the above is the notion that in that info-maelstrom, we choose the path that is least cognitively expensive, leading to an over-reliance on our existing network connections
In his book Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson proposes that the more interlinked a network is and the more opportunities for cross-fertilisation between its nodes, the more original its output. New permutations create new solutions. This is why coral reefs teem with life, and cities are factories for trends.
Unfortunately, as humans, we have evolved to form neural pathways that, once established, are firmly set. In short, it takes effort and energy to learn new things. We stick to what we know to reduce stress and lessen decision fatigue.
That means we often see the inverse of Steven Johnson’s thesis play out: without the bandwidth to proactively expand the scope of our investigations, and without exposure to different parts of the networks, we forsake originality and ‘go with what we know’.
In business, change is effortful, and organisations default to familiar routes. Shortcuts and heuristics rule. For consumers, tried-and-tested is safe. The label ‘challenger brand’ exists precisely because we naturally default to our retail presets – and to disrupt that takes huge effort.
Again, the point: when our existing networked connections are too well-established, or even over-established, then discovery stops.
Fame is distribution
Last, fame is often about compatibility with the system. Though we’re often drawn to rebels, disruptors and those who speak truth-to-power, we only remember the successful exceptions. What about those whose non-conformity resulted in them being abandoned or blocked? You’ll never hear from them in the first place.
We are still operating within systems that reward those who optimise towards their requirements. The reality is we are living in a data-led age where algorithms are the gatekeepers of our experiences. Even anti-capitalist rock-rap agitators, Rage Against The Machine, are listed on Spotify (with over 2bn streams, by the way). Political rebels? Yes. But platform algorithm rebels? Hardly.
In fact, there are no ‘platform algorithm rebels’ of the modern era. If you disagree, try contravening rules on video length, keyword and meta-tag use, or the time of day you post. See if your content is discoverable. It won’t be.
Granted, bands like Gallagher’s Oasis first achieved fame in the pre-Internet era. What’s The Story Morning Glory was released on 2 October 1995 – the day after I arrived in Manchester to start university, and a week before I used the internet for the first time (it was Netscape by the way).
Whilst I’m not an Oasis fan, I can acknowledge that they embodied an attitude that aligned with a cultural algorithm. Something was in the air. As 18 years of Conservative rule were coming to an end, there was newfound confidence in ‘Cool Britannia’ – a movement both forward-looking and proudly informed by the Swinging Sixties.
Moreover, the band’s laddish antics kept them in the tabloid headlines – the social media feed of its day. Last, the songs were ‘mobile’ and could be belted out in pubs, football stadiums and weddings. Zeitgeist-y, noticeable and mobile. Three perfect drivers of pre-Internet virality.
Thus, fame was, and continues to be, driven by distribution. And distribution rewards formats that fit, messages that are repeatable and showcases values that chime with culture.
Learning for marketers
There are two learnings here for the marketer. First, internally, check that your organisation is set up to surface the best work, the best ideas, and the best people, and that they are not drowned out by administrative noise.
Ask:
● Is there a resource we’re NOT tapping into? Are there ideas we’re NOT hearing about?
● Do we have objective, meritocratic scoring for ‘quality’? – so our people can optimise?
● Can we free up time to proactively locate brilliance within our network?
Second, whilst every brand is proud of its product, it’s worth acknowledging that quality might not be enough to secure consumers’ attention.
Ask:
● Are our communications designed to overcome attention deficit?
● Can our messaging be easily distributed and discovered?
● Will it rhyme with culture?
The lesson? Setting out to gain fame is not just about how good the product is. It means asking difficult questions about how the game is played.
Game knows game
There is an enlightening coda to this story, however. One day, multi-Oscar-winning movie composer Hans Zimmer came across a YouTube video of then-44-year-old Guthrie Govan’s jaw-dropping guitar work. He knew immediately he wanted him on his team.
Govan is now Zimmer’s guitarist, co-writing weird and wonderful sections of music for the Dune films, and is centre stage on Zimmer’s global tour. Zimmer stated: “This guy is the best. No one’s at the level he’s at”.
The counterpath to fame, then, is discovery by peers. Sometimes it takes expertise to spot expertise.
In short, there is one final way to fame: game knows game.
Phil Rowley is head of futures at Omnicom Media Group UK and author of Hit the Switch: The Future of Sustainable Business. He writes for The Media Leader about the future of media.