Trawling my own Facebook feed just recently I found myself glued to a celebrity image a friend shared on her own timeline. It was such a simple photo, a very real photo which seemed to give so much away and drew everyone in with. The photo was posted by Jada Pinkett Smith of her husband the incredibly bankable box office hit Will Smith cradling his daughter on what looked to be a long haul flight.
After having stumbled on the above photograph I found myself immediately drawn into it – and I began to ask myself why? It’s not like I’m a avid fan of Will Smith and I am not a celebrity ‘lover’ per se. Yet, the more I looked at it the more I felt connected to him, on some level I felt I could relate to that – we’ve all taken long haul flights and found ourselves staring out the window in thought.
The photograph was a simple family photo – yet it had over the course of 2 days attracted over 500,000 likes and over 10,000 comments. It wasn’t a planned photo, it hadn’t had hours of photo shop rendering or staging – it was as pure and normal as one could find.
The magic was in it’s purity, it’s normality and it was a big star. That was a the hook – the more you stared at the image the greater you felt for Will Smith and his family, you could almost feel like you knew them.
Fan numbers no question grew, the engagement towards the star grew and most important the likability of the star intensified.
Simple real images delivering unreal results.
Game on.