Gene Kranz was one of thousands of Apollo workers, and a handful of high-level managers and flight directors. However, pretty much anything I've seen about Apollo includes him — I couldn't name any of the other flight directors save Chris Kraft. Was it Kranz' work in saving Apollo 13 that bought him into the limelight, or something else?
My perception is that Gene Kranz's prominent role during Apollo 13 incident gave him a much higher public profile than most other NASA personnel of that era and level. Kranz seems to have enjoyed the media attention and embraced it.
Feeding on the above point, unlike most of the other NASA team members of that era, Kranz made a point of giving interviews in the years afterwards with journalists, and made a post-NASA career for himself as a public speaker and science advocate.