Introduction:
Everyday that we sit down and scroll mindlessly online we can observe the ways in which businesses and many business people use gifting as a sort of leg up on competition. It’s more difficult to recognize than you would imagine though, as it is disguised as a truly thoughtful act from someone who cares about the well-being of other people suffering through this pandemic. That is exactly what a lot of online celebrities seem to have done anyway. My focus is on YouTube star and makeup-artist, Jeffree Star and how he has used this pandemic and gift giving culture, to gain more of a following. I will do this by observing maybe some of the reasons why he would do this as well as how it is done and what we can see from the data collected.
Literature review:
This has been a recurring idea for a very long time. Probably since the beginning of time. We can look at ideas like this and call them mutual exchanges but how far are we willing to take this before calling it exploitation of the people? There are fair deals that can be made and then there are very unfair deals that we can observe. The way that I observe them is looking at my feed on Twitter every single day, watching the regular advertisements for Star products as well as the tease of a giveaway that he dangles in front of thousands of followers. This matter is important because to be able to recognize when a business or business person is attempting to gain your trust or following in order to gain more revenue, we should at least be aware of what exactly it is they are doing to exploit people. To find out how exactly Jeffree star has done this on Twitter I did comparisons between the amount of likes before and after his first giveaway. I believe this targets the heart of regular exploitation and using this pandemic to reel people in for a chance to win a few bucks but forcing marketing in between the giveaways. This is important because Jeffree Star is large on all platforms however, Twitter is typically used for random life updates or to let people know when the next new video will be coming out. On his YouTube channel as well as his Instagram, there are always links and advertisements to his brand and so we expect there to be giveaways. We expect the normal “like, follow, subscribe, comment in order to be entered into a pot where you may win my newest item” kind of thing but Twitter? This only happened very rarely on his Twitter so to whiteness giveaways simply out of the kindness of his heart but showing the entire world how kind he is, defeats the purpose of giving away for kindness at all. To clarify what I mean by “gift-giving culture”, I mean the idea in which the business, or in this case the business owner, uses gifts as a way of gaining the trust of his or her audience. The idea itself is a strategy that many businesses use to keep people from leaving. An example of this could look like when people visit a job fair. At the job fair, there are multiple tables attempting to do the same thing. In order to catch your eye and make you feel more comfortable, a table may give you a gift from their company. The goal of this is to grab and keep your attention, create free advertising by the logo of the company on the side of the item, and to gain trust that they will provide what you seek. There are small sacrifices made in hopes that this new trustee will eventually commit to this company and create more revenue than what was initially given to them as a gift. This is an example of what Jeffree Star has done on his Twitter platform to raise his following and then continue to throw advertisements in these followers' faces.
Research questions:
Some questions I had going into this were questions like, “how should I even start” “what is considered to be exploitation” and “how much did the content on his Twitter page change”. After analyzing some of the data I had questions like “what ways could Jeffree use his platform to promote actual support”. All of these questions will be addressed in the data analysis as well as the conclusion portion of this.
Method:
At the beginning of this study, I had no idea where to look for this idea of gift giving. As a follower of Jeffree Star before this project, I noticed a change in the Twitter content being provided. I decided to analyze tweets starting 3/1/20 all the way until 5/1/20. After looking at many many tweets, I decided this was much more than what was actually needed for this project. To find where the initial change started, I first went to look for the first tweet that mentioned anything about giving away money. I did this because this was abnormal behavior for his account and this way I could see what before used to look like as well as the after. I finally found the tweet that began the entire gift giving process.
From this picture we can see that Jeffree has used his power and his platform to address the fact that he has given money away voluntarily during these difficult times. This shows his already existing viewers that he is someone trying to help people in need and that it is coming out of the kindness of his heart. After finding this initial tweet on 3/21/20, I decided to shorten the amount of data that I was initially going to analyze to ten days before the first giveaway post and the ten days following the first giveaway post. So, now that I have shortened the time frame, I figured there would be less “fluff” to go through and try to help my argument when I coud simply use the ten days prior and after. What I analyzed from these photos was the content that was posted in the tweet itself as well as the number of likes that correlated. I chose to only do likes because to retweet something on twitter is to show you really committed to the post so i decided likes would be just fine. What I analyzed within the tweets were anything that showed advertisement, what kind of advertisement, the language being used, and if there was anything else special or noticeable about that tweet in particular. I chose to analyze it this way because I think language has a direct correlation to how well a bond of trust is and if anything was out of the norm, to see how his audience would react to it in the first place. I chose to analyze the amount of likes on each tweet, to come to an average that we can use to correlate posts before and after the initial giveaway. This shows how many people that the tweets have potentially reached and how much they have either increased or decreased according to the tweet. I did this, tweet by tweet and came to an average of 75 thousand likes per tweet prior to the giveaway and 120 thousand likes after the giveaway.
Data Analysis:
The first picture I chose to analyze in the ten days prior portion was this photo:
From this we can see that he is still using #Star as promotion to his brand as well as linking the website to shop for this particular item. This is not anything that we haven't seen before for Jeffree Star or for other businesses in general. Linking the website directly above the product would be the most efficient way of selling that particular item, something that we have all seen on Facebook or Instagram. The hashtag #Star is self branding, promoting his own brand and connecting others who have maybe not seen the tweet or want to make connections in that particular genre. Again, this is something that we see all of the time, the hashtag can be used to connect similar tweets and group them together for an easier search. Something that we can see from this initial tweet is that it only has 22.9 thousand likes. From the previous information given in the method section, I determined that the average number of likes prior to the giveaway was 75 thousand. This number is obviously much less than 75 thousand likes which was surprising to me. On a general advertisement, there were below average likes than on posts where he was sharing personal information. This could be due to the lack of connection with the audience.
The second picture that I wanted to analyze is a combination of three tweets that tie into the idea of more likes for personal tweets rather than advertising.
From this picture we can see the first post at the bottom, sharing that there is going to be a camera crew filming his next video. This is very impersonal but he wants to at least let his followers know there is going to be a post ready for them to watch. The words “huge reveal” portray an idea of importance so this tweet can be seen as a teaser for those who do watch the videos he creates on his other platforms. That post received 34.7 thousand likes which is still below the average that we have previously calculated. The post after is a picture of a doormat with a Pomeranian dog on the front that contains nothing that has to do with advertising his brand or his wealth or anything of that nature. That post received 97.1 thousand likes which is interesting because it seems as though it made much more of an impact to his followers to see this than it did to know there was going to be a video released. Finally, the last post on this picture shows him once again advertising his own brand. He is displaying how well the product works by letting others know just how awesome it stayed on in the pool as well as the rain. He follows this with a hashtag to once again reach a bigger audience with the connection of the hashtag itself. #JeffreeStarCosmetics is his own brand once again being displayed on the front page. This post went back down from the previous Pomeranian post from 97.1 thousand likes, back down to 46.2 thousand likes. This was a combination of personal life adventures, showed through the action of swimming, and business “I love testing new #JeffreeStarCosmetics on myself first”. The combination of personal and business created an in between liking from the audience as well. The numbers were not as low as the first post but not as high as the second. Maybe the goal was to find the sweet spot.
The next two tweets I analyzed involved the pandemic itself.
The first tweet is announcing the filming of a new video, which as we have seen before is nothing that is abnormal but he uses interesting language here when he says “Jeffree Star quarantine”. This is the first mention of the quarantine itself and this may also be seen as him dipping his toes in the water, testing what he can and can't say on Twitter to get a positive response from his audience. This tweet ended up with 54.7 thousand likes. After announcing the filming of the video, he tweets a link to his new video still including something that mentions the pandemic itself. Essentially this tweet is saying “come watch what I do during quarantine”. Although this isn't advertising his brand, clicking on his video on YouTube is still another source of income. This tweet received 50.7 thousand likes. Both of which are below the average still, but not as bad as the simply branding of his new merchandise did previously.
Now that we have gone over a few tweets ten days prior to the giveaway, we can look at the post right before.
This post is important because this is the first mention of gift giving in general. He is showing not only does he have money to give away, but he wants to be seen as a good person through the eyes of the public. Flaunting the money he tipped the driver is the need for validation from the public as well as another test to see how far he can take it. The reaction from this post was significantly higher than the advertising post he was previously posting daily. 171 thousand likes is what this tweet received and I believe this was Jeffree Star's green light to continue this kind of posting. This is the first stage of gaining his audience's trust as well. Showing he has money and that an average pizza delivery boy was blessed with his grace. This is relatable to the audience because most of his followers are regular people that do not have that much money to be throwing around like he does in a lot of his videos. The audience is seeing this gift exchange between him and the average person and now he has a leg up on where he can take this. He does exactly what a lot of businesses do once they have given the gift, they expose the idea of free advertisement as seen in the following picture.
“Drop your cash app below with hashtag #JeffreeStarApproved” this is in fact the free advertising or favor that businesses ask in return for their gift. With this particular case, there is a chance that whoever does exactly what they’re told to do still will not receive anything but will still have promoted Jeffree Star and his brand for free. This post received 134 thousand likes which is still above the average likes for the ten days. The final tweet I am going to analyze still is including the idea of giving away money just waiting for it to happen.
This tweet shows that he has realized the reaction from his audience has increased significantly so keeping them on the hook is the goal. “I will be doing this a lot” and “Tomorrow I will be doing something even bigger” is influencing the audience to continue to stick around to possibly be picked for the donations he is giving away. He is using the idea of a gift as bait to keep the audience he has gained from this giveaway. After one has replied their cash app in the comments and used the hashtag required, essentially advertising for Star, their return is being entered to win. This tweet received 161 thousand likes which is well above the average for the after 10 day period.
Conclusion:
From the data that has been displayed above, we can see that Jeffree Star has a very large platform that he has been using to his advantage for a very long time. Coming from personal experience, he does this more prominently on his other platforms which is why it caught my attention in the first place. To add onto this, he is using this pandemic as a reason to promote his brand through hashtags that are required to be entered into a drawing full of thousands of people. Can we call this exploitation? It really depends on how we look at this. Because this is already an older strategy that businesses have been using to gain the trust of their audience, we can see this and analyze it from a business perspective and realize this was the smartest move that could've been made in terms of promotion. He is promising the potential to win in return for promotions through hashtags and likes. This is the fastest way to make connections through hashtags as well as spreading promotion itself. If every person who entered used the same hashtag, it would be trending which would then land on the trending page. This would create an even bigger audience to promote his brand. If we look at this from anything other than a business perspective it seems wrong. Using other people for promotion with empty promises that they might be able to win money through this pandemic? Something about this does not seem right, especially in times like these. The idea that to do something good for other people without promotion does not exist for online celebrities, the need to feel validated for their kind actions turns those exact kind actions into something for themselves. I understand that in order to stay afloat the idea of branding is the best strategy, but to convince oneself that they are doing this out of the kindness of their heart is the biggest lie. If he truly wanted to help those who need it, he could simply walk to the nearest Walmart and do the same donations face to face without promoting anything online. Mentioning this selfless act makes the action less heartfelt and person and turns it into something that is directly correlated to advertising and to me, that does not seem like the right motives to have during times like these.
