A cultural opportunity can be defined as an opportunity that leverages a particular phenomenon or behavioral shift. In this blog post, we’re looking at selfies, seen today as the pinnacle of narcissism (which literally translates to “self love”). Marketers began incorporating selfies into their campaigns as early as 2014, with Samsung having a seminal moment in 2013 during Ellen Degeneres’ selfie at the Oscars that year.
Let’s start with this question: What do you think to yourself when you see someone taking a selfie? Do you take into account the context, or do you immediately dismiss it as narcissistic, selfish, life-threatening, an act of showing off? Perhaps you’ve noticed that many people frown on selfies until they are taking one themselves.
The selfie is oftentimes defined as a social epidemic that gleans its power from our rising narcissism. Many of us attribute the rise of narcissism to social media, but scientific studies show that narcissism had been steadily rising long before the maturation of social media. A Psychology Today article recognizes that “A wide range of cultural data also suggests growing individualism and waning collectivism, including changes in pronoun use in books and song lyrics, agentic words and phrases, decreasing moral words and more emphasis on fame in TV shows for children.”
Etymology of the Selfie
From a historical perspective, the selfie can be framed as the modern-day self-portrait of younger generation. Let’s not go too far back, but it used to be that individuals and families performed the ritual of going to a professional photographer’s studio for their annual self-portraits. The photographer would have all kinds of props like mirrors, hairbrushes, toys and costumes. It was a social occasion that gradually turned inward and became the quintessential act of identity sharing. Throughout the ’90s and early 2000s websites like Myspace and Facebook encouraged us to exhibit ourselves digitally. And we couldn’t resist the temptation to show how clever, beautiful, creative and engaging we could be. In many ways, these social sites told us it was OK to be self-centered, they rewarded us for it. And just when we thought culture was going to take a break from all the narcissism, a new generation of visual social media exploded with the emergence of Instagram, Snapchat and Tinder, where selfies are a mighty engine that drives so much activity. Suddenly Facebook and Twitter felt text-heavy, overwhelming, inauthentic and so on.
Why Marketers Must Embrace Identity Sharing
In the past few years, selfies have proven to be a resilient, consumer-generated, platform-agnostic photo format that garners some of the highest responses online. Why? Well, people find selfies engaging for different reasons. On a biological level, we know that faces are an attention-grabbing mechanism.
Despite considerable criticism, they continue to be an ultimate expression of authenticity, empathy, presence and mood. Asking the consumer to take a selfie is asking them to get in the mindset of thinking about themselves, which humans are wired to love doing anyway. This is perhaps why Purina used doggie selfie and Dove extended its Real Beauty campaign through a “selfie short film.” Other brands have installed selfie-encouraging spaces and selfie-designated areas to facilitate feedback from friends and encourage the sharing of products socially.
Moreover, new innovations are also making their way to consumer hands: the selfie stick, the selfie spoon and autonomous aerial drones. While it’s not entirely clear to anyone which apps and products will stick around beyond these selfie-crazed days, it is only reasonable to believe that the selfie (and identity sharing, more broadly) will prove to have lasting power and continue to influence marketing campaigns.