new sports stars

Steve Outing observes:

For years, sports enthusiasts have read about their sports in magazines, mostly — with advice and celebrity profiles written by professional journalists and freelancers, and the occasional athlete. But what we’re seeing with the EG sites [here] (which are primarily about climbers/bikers/runners/et al sharing their own stories and images) is that people like being the writers and photographers themselves, and viewing the amateur musings of fellow enthusiasts who they can interact with easily and directly.

Some recent research is consistent with this view:

Advertisements featuring endorsements by celebrities such as David Beckham are less effective than those featuring ordinary people, new research suggests. This is because keeping up with the Jones’s rather than with famous people is the main motivation behind many people’s choice of which product to buy.[1]

Personally, I’m keen to keep up with my brother Dwight. But he is, in fact, a celebrity.

Note:

[1] Quoted from University of Bath press release (separate paragraphs condensed). The research that is the basis for this press release seems to be Torsten Tomczak, Daniel Wentzel, and Martin Brett, “Consumer Susceptibility to Normative Influence,” forthcoming in Journal of Advertising, 2007. While that journal bills itself as “the premier journal devoted to the development of advertising theory and its relationship to practice,” not making the paper and associated data freely available on the web makes this research less credible.