Quantifying Popularity

There are people we like, and there are people we don't. Much of the time, we don't quite know why we don't like certain individuals ... we just have a sort of gut feeling that this person or that person isn't quite for us.

But advertisers care a great deal about knowing why we like (or don't like) certain celebrities, because there's a lot of money to be made (or lost) on the right celebrity endorsements. How do those who worry about convincing us to buy the right soap or beer, stay in the right hotel, eat the right cornflakes, or rent the right car decide who to hire to sway our opinions?

They conduct surveys, of course. One firm that does these surveys is E-Poll Research, a market research agency that ranks celebrities and brands to assess their popularity and, hence, marketability. E-Poll surveys thousands of consumers, asking them to rank stars and icons on a lengthy list of attributes, and then crunches the data according to formulas that consider every possible combination of the demographics of the respondents. What they get in the end are the numbers on which advertising and celebrity endorsement decisions are made. Here is the chart which summarizes the "most-liked" celebrities:

And here are the "least-liked" celebrities:

You can read the full article on this fascinating topic here. As for me, I'm glad to know that I now have hard data to validate my contempt for people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Nancy Pelosi; on the other hand, I can also quantify my crush on Pauley Perrette, the world's coolest scientist (at least on TV).

I wonder how my numbers are. No, I don't. I'd rather just be paranoid about whether or not everyone likes me, without the data to prove it one way or the other.

Unless you want me to be your spokesblogger.

Have a good day. Keep your poll numbers up. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo