Bob McCarty Writes

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Though it was reported yesterday in Advertising Age that President Barack Obama has displaced Academy Award®-winning actor Tom Hanks as the nation’s most-influential celebrity, perhaps the most-newsworthy aspect of the article — purported to contain “the latest data from the consumer-research firm Davie Brown Entertainment” — is that nine out of the Top 10 list of celebrities are African-Americans.

Joining Obama and Hanks on the Top 10 list of influential celebrities are the following people, shown below in order of their rankings:  Will Smith; Michael Jordan; Morgan Freeman; Denzel Washington; Michelle Obama; Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods.

Created by Dallas-based Davie Brown Talent, a top provider of celebrity talent and music licensing for Fortune 500 companies and ad agencies, the report — known as the “Davie Brown Index” — includes more than 2,000 celebrities and is powered by a 4.5-million domestic consumer research panel.  Respondents evaluate celebrities across eight key attributes:  Appeal, aspiration, awareness, endorsement, influence, breakthrough, trendsetter and trust.

In an e-mail to Davie Brown spokesperson Chris Anderson, I asked him (1) to explain why the numbers skew so heavily toward African-American celebrities and (2) to comment on the possibility that his 4.5 million-member research panel does not reflect accurately the demographics of the United States population.

In a lengthy e-mail response, Anderson assured me that the panel is consistent with U.S. demographics and offered some other observations about the DBI.

“As for why there are so many African-American celebs in the top 10, according to the data,” he said, “these are the celebs who U.S. consumers find to be appealing, trustworthy, inspirational, etc.  The overall DBI score is also driven, in great part, by awareness.  So, being well-known certainly helps drive up a celeb’s overall DBI score.

“At the same time,” he said, “there are celebs with high overall DBI scores that aren’t particularly well liked or respected by U.S. consumers.”

Though his appearance on the list now is due mostly to his meteoric rise to prominence, I predict President Obama will fall out of the Top 10 soon, joining the ranks of celebrities who “aren’t particularly well liked or respected.”

Cartoon courtesy My Personal Litmus