Brands At the Point of No Return: Understanding# Dressforyourselfie [PDF]

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Brands At the Point of No Return: Understanding #Dressforyourselfie Culture As Post-Postmodern Branding Paradigm Vimviriya Limkangvanmongkol, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA This research examines #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE contest as a case study that the brand uses selfie-related activities responding to the post-postmodern branding paradigm. Three emerging themes: consumers as citizen-consumers, selfie as post self into being and Instagram as a play place, explain why the selfie culture provides an avenue for brands to reconnect with consumers.

[to cite]: Vimviriya Limkangvanmongkol (2015) ,"Brands At the Point of No Return: Understanding #Dressforyourselfie Culture As PostPostmodern Branding Paradigm", in AP - Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 11, eds. Echo Wen Wan and Meng Zhang, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 51-56. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1018957/volumes/ap11/AP-11 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.

Brands at The Point of No Return: Understanding #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE Culture as Post-Postmodern Branding Paradigm Vimviriya Limkangvanmongkol, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

ABSTRACT

tension of the antibranding movement by unpacking the case study of Kenneth Cole’s #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE. In analyzing datasets, I recognized that the notions of self-presentation from the work of Goffman (1959) and self-identity from the literature of Giddens (1991) provided useful conceptual underpinnings for understanding the phenomenon of selfie culture in the post-post branding paradigm.

The emergence of selfie culture provides an avenue for brands to respond to the post-postmodern branding conditions. In the postmodern branding paradigm, consumers “peel away brand veneer,” making brands unable to hide their commercial motivations. The capability of brands to provide an original perspective contributing for consumers’ identity formation is questioned. The situation calls for the need of brands to create and deliver their values more creatively (Holt 2002, 87). Given the importance, the rise of the post-postmodern branding paradigm aims to deliver such demands as a part of the consumers’ project of self (Giddens 1991). In this era, consumers rely on brands for the roles of citizen-artists who show concern for civic responsibilities and communities. As such, brands in today’s world serve as a form of “expressive culture” (Holt 2002, 87), inspiring consumers’ imaginations. Brands are expected to provide cultural materials that consumers can rely on while making sense of their everyday lives as a part of the world that surrounds them (87). Since the rise of smartphones with a built-in front-facing camera in 2010, taking and sharing selfie photos online have become tremendously popular as socially oriented activities. Selected as Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year for 2013, the term “selfie” refers to “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website” (Oxford 2013). Up to date, more than 250,000 images with the hashtag #selfie can be tracked on Instagram (iconosquare 2015). Although selfie culture is perceived as a product of social media, its prominence spans the commercial worlds. Kenneth Cole, an American fashion brand by Kennth Cole Productions, Inc., is one of the most successful pioneering brands in 2013 (Digital Insights 2014; Postano 2014) in attracting consumers to join their selfie contest launched from January 31st to March 31st, 2014. The #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE sweepstakes encourage consumers to enter their selfie photos for a chance to win a pair of Kenneth Cole shoes every month for a year. The steps go as to follow @KENNETHCOLEPRD on Instagram and take a selfie with a printable message strip, such as Selfie Obsessed, Outfit Change or #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE. The last step is to post it on Instagram using #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE hashtag. Prior works have focused on consumers expressing their selves in digital environments (Belk 2013); a form of conspicuous presentation of selves on personal websites (Schau and Gilly 2003), and the branded selves as fashion tastemakers on fashion blogs (McQuarrie, Miller and Phillips 2013). In all of the studies, selves are crafted and branded as online personas attracting imagined audiences. However, none of which can provide an insights to fully understand the performing of online personas through selfie. Particularly, the selfie culture itself has never been studied as a part of post-post branding paradigm. I developed theoretical claims by qualitatively investigating Kenneth Cole’s #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE contest as a case study that the brand uses selfie-related activities to connect with consumers and promote brand visibility. Previously, the antibranding movement resists brands that acted as cultural engineers in the modern branding paradigm and as (not) authentic cultural resources in the postmodern branding paradigm. Illuminated from datasets, this research investigates why the selfie culture can help resolve the

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

The fact that the Internet has become mainstream and everyday life (Marwick 2005, 186) changes the way online identity is presented and perceived. People “write [online] self into being” (Markham, 2013) and at the same time, are consumed by other audiences (Marwick 2005, 2013). As a part of late modernity, online media users negotiate the construction and shaping of their identity toward reflexivity through daily life experiences. Online identity is, thus, constantly reflexive, negotiated and far from traditionally bound by the virtue of class, nationality and ethnicity, as Giddens explains, “The individual’s biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing ‘story’ about the self” (Giddens 1991, 54). In this era, communication technologies come into play for the process of self-formation. Various experiences from mediated communication expand symbolic resources, place a new demand of self, and change symbolic points of reference (Thompson 1995, 212). Such lived experiences are situated in the temporal flow which possesses the quality of immediacy, continuousness and reflexivity. As such, the core self is extended (Belk 1988), and performed in multiple online personas (Belk, 2003). Selfie is, thus, a way to perform online personas through sharing one’s photos, as well as creating captions, using hashtags, and setting geo-tagged locations

Performing Online Personas

The presentation of online personas is a performance. Drawing from Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphors, the networked platform is a theatre where every social media user is on stage playing a part (Goffman 1959). By referring to the theatre, this research refers to an online setting that is not “the bodily-material place” (Rasmussen 1997, 1) or a physical environment, such as, cafés, parks and schools where recurring co-present interaction influences routines, rituals and other conduct (Rasmussen 1997). Yet, the theatre becomes phantasmagoric (Giddens 1999), characterized by the empty time leading to the emptying of space, influencing the distant communication of agents mediated between remote locales. Through an imagined communication process (Rasmussen 1997, 3), one is reading the posts, commenting on images or typing as to chat by staring at the screen of one’s laptop while imagining as if their conversation partners were physically in front of them. In presenting oneself via digital media, one is the “producer, director, and star” (Turkle 1995, 26) of the performance. By defining the term performance, Goffman (1959) refers to “all the activity of given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants” (p.15). By performing on the front stage, the presentation of self on social space serves as a means for impression management (Goffman 1959) in front of audiences. The front stage is defined as “the expressive equipment of a standard 51

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52 / Brands at The Point of No Return:Understanding #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE Culture as Post-Postmodern Branding Paradigm kind intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual during the performance” (32). One would carefully construct and control the consistency of an idealized image or persona in terms of the setting (e.g., scenic, location, etc.); personal front (e.g., size, looks, race, speech, etc.); appearance (e.g., social status marker); as well as manner (e.g., the way an actor conducts himself). In a way, the front stage is where the performance is “given.” In the back stage, on the other hand, one would be placed away from the watchful eyes of other people and become more of their authentic selves. The back stage is defined as “a place, relative to a given performance, where the impression fostered by the performance is knowingly contradicted as a matter of course” (114). It is where the performance is “given off.” The distinct performance in the front and back stages of online selfpresentation relies heavily on the symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1969). Online identity is, thus, constructed not by only one own self but co-constructed through feedbacks from interactions with others (Belk 2003; Marwick 2013). The presentation of online self can be understood as branding one persona (Marwick 2008, 165) as a salable product. Everyday media users as producers “write self into being” (Markham 2013) and allow their online identity to be consumed by other audiences or as customers. Rooted from branding literature, self-branding (Hearn 2008; Peters 1997) or as known in other terminologies as personal branding (Lair et al. 2005), human branding (Close et al. 2011), or self-marketing (Shepherd 2005), is primarily a series of marketing strategies applied to the individual. The term was first coined by Tom Peters in 1997 in his article, The Brand Called You, in the online magazine Fast Company (Peters 1997). Peters encourages that an individual should look to create their “own micro equivalent of the Nike swooch” (Peter 1997). Predominantly, Peters implies that self-branding is not optional but seemingly obligatory in the Internet world. Ordinary media users should make use of the new democracy of free space online to make themselves become visible. Most importantly, one should ask, What am I famous for? As such, self-branding strategies in web 2.0 serve as an individual’s mind-set and a means to gain attention as to have “recognition, identity, and meaning, in the eyes of those around [us]. It provides sustenance to spirit, mind and body, in just about any form” (Marwick 2013). Unlike branding a real product or service in a material economy, gaining online status rather than monetary profit becomes the ultimate goal for branding an online image or persona in immaterial attention economy (Senft 2008, 9). Presumably, the attention that online media users strive to gain is a currency which makes create value of self. As a result of using the self-branding practice, the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley sell themselves successfully, living as famous rock-stars among their peers. The advent of the Internet mainly contributes to the successful discovery of a version of self or selves that might not be previously uncovered (193). Reading posts, posting tweets, sharing links, images and videos, as well as online interacting with one another in any communities serve to identify and brand oneself. At this point, the self-branding practices do not only involve with an individual self to be sold as a commodity but also to be adjusted and constructed according to the structure of each online community. This study explicates Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphors as a starting point to conceptualize the selfie culture as a way to perform online personas. In order to present oneself, we also argue that selfie is collective and social rather than individual. The study argues that self-branding strategies serve to manage the front stage of performance (Goffman 1959) for selfie-posters. As a marketing strategy applied to the individual, the self-branding techniques allow online media users to execute what and how they can attract real and imag-

ined audiences’ attention. Although the #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE lasted only two months and the winners were chosen from sweepstake system, selfie-posters attentively crafted one’s online personas for their own identity works as salable products to gain social currency in the forms of calculated number of likes, comments and number of followers (Marwick 2013). The way they filter the reality through shared photos, name their account names, use the captions and hashtags, as well as the geo-tagged location represent their online personas crafted for the #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE contest. Drawing on insights from these literatures, we address the question why the selfie culture can help resolve the tension of the antibranding movement. This research aims to explore the role of selfie culture as a part of post-postmodern branding paradigm.

METHOD

Visual materials can reveal the ordinary hidden or taken for granted messages (Rose 2011). Following this stance, the research primarily relies on grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967) to approach publicly available Instagram photos on www.iconosquare. com where users can access viewing and interacting with Instagram posts as using the Instagram mobile application. Beginning with the data-driven approach, 476 photos with the #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE hashtag posted from January 31st to March 31st, 2014, were qualitatively analyzed to bring out repeated concepts and underlying elements across posts. I consider posts as media texts in discourse that contain items in both written form (e.g., username, captions, comments, number of likes) and visual material (Fairclough 1995; van Dijk 1985). Guided by the framework of visual discourse analysis approach (Albers 2007), my coding and analytical memos (Saldana 2012, 50) aim to identify “the discourses that emerge within visual text, the text itself, the macro and micro conversations surrounding the making and viewing of texts, and the visual text as a communicative event” (84). This research offers a methodological contribution as the visual discourse analysis is located in multiple approaches; artwork, visual, and discourse analyses. Located within artwork analysis method, the visual discourse analysis approach is known as the structural approach for analyzing art as a language. I define visual texts following Albers (2007) as “a structure of messages within which are embedded social conventions and/or perceptions, and which also present the discourse communities to which visual text maker identifies” (84). Like artwork, selfie posts have their own underpinning grammar systems (88) which are communicative. Initially, I began with reading visual elements that are visible to the eye (88), and recorded the structure of objects in visual texts: the composition of the face and body in the posts (whole body, half body, from head to only a chest level, or only some parts of the body); how photos were taken (hold handheld devices at arm’s lengths or reflected from mirrors); the persona looks (casual, working suits, homie); strip messages used; and types of filters used (eg., nofilter, Valencia, X-Pro II, Sierra). In this research, a written text is intertextually related to extend an understanding of visual images. Thus, I also recorded captions, numbers of hashtags, likes, and comments. In the further stage, I interpreted how social identities played out in visual text productions and what social meaning visual and textual elements across posts have taken on (Albers 2007, 88). I read, reflected on, and reread my coded works and analytical memos; emergent themes are salient to understanding Kenneth Cole’s selfie contest by focusing on theory of self-presentation (Goffman 1959) and self-identity (Giddens 1991).

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DISCUSSION

Data analyses led to the identification of three emerging theme conducive to Kenneth Cole’s selfie contest as the successful social media brand communication. These themes explain why the incorporation of selfie contest can help Kenneth Cole respond to the postpostmodern branding conditions.

Consumers as citizen-consumers

Kenneth Cole takes the role of citizen artist showing concern for civic responsibilities and communities. While taking this role, the brand allows consumers to become citizen-consumers who make use of the new democracy of free online space to express themselves under the conditions of the brand. By following @KENNETHCOLEPRD on Instagram, consumers are eligible to join the selfie contest. The brand asks consumers to take a selfie with a printable message strip, such as Selfie Obsessed, Outfit Change, or #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE, and post it on Instagram using #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE hashtag. As the brand does not indicate that consumers need to take selfie photos of themselves with clothes, accessories or shoes by Kenneth Cole, consumers can freely create the unique element in their selfie photos by themselves. Thus, they are willing to turn themselves into participants allowing the brand to become a part of their life experiences posted online. Their posts for the contest show that they have positive feeling taking their own selfie photo(s) for the contest (analytical memo 2015), as their captions read; “I’m loving kenneth cole! #DressForYourSelfie,” and “Its a miracle, babe doing selfie mode ?!...#DressForYourSelfie.” Evidently, asking people to take their own photos engages participants because taking photos is perceived as easy and fun (Darbyshire et al. 2005). Furthermore, their fun moments are mixed with an excitement of a chance to win the lucky draw as their captions read, “@kennethcoleprd #dressforyourselfie hope I win some shoes wish me luck” (colevirgo), “#dressforyourselfie Flipped for optimal performance and shoe- winningness” (@burt_hindy), and “Free shoes every month for a year! *fingers crossed* #DressForYourSelfie” (@lando1414). Here, the term “citizen-consumers” implies civic minds and citizenship of free space on the Internet. The value of civic participation empowers consumers, becoming an important facet for brands to reconnect with consumers in the contemporary era.

Selfie as Post Self/Selves into Being

Posting selfie can be understood as posting self/selves into being, rather than “writ[ing] self into being” (Markham 2013). The presentation of online identity through photography for the Kenneth Cole contest allows one to test and try as part of the constructing and reconstructing their self-project (Van Dijck 2008). In this study, we argue that the selfie is a way to perform online personas by using the self-branding practice. Thus, the selfie contest provides the space for interested consumers to craft a version of their multiple personas (Belk 2003) for the contest. Instead of following the styles by celebrities on media, consumers from different cultures (eg., African, White, and Asian) can freely express their own personal styles through clothing, shoes, accessories and strip messages. The female winner with username @kissmycolor did a full makeup and wore a flowery green necklace and white earrings. Her outstanding painted orange lips made her look very confident. However, she did not have any message strips in the photo (Figure 2a). Presumably, the brand is not very serious about having a message strip in selfie photos but expected that selfie-posters can use it as a prop (analytical memos 2015) While most of them hold a message strip under their neck or at the face level, some play with the strip creatively; by circling it around her neck (@zyasha_sp), putting it on the floor between two

unmatched shoes (@dbillyp), or sticking it to his smartphone (@ harper1210). While selfie-posters in Kenneth Cole’s sweepstakes have equal rights to win the lucky draw, each post is creatively curated to represent their own personal styles. A selfie photo, thus, serves as a prosthetic possession that “become[s] (re)embodied parts of self” (Belk 2003, 490) in D-I-Y cultivation. The important part is that the brand is allowed to be a part of that posted self/those selves.

Instagram as a Play Place

Instagram is a photo-sharing mobile application available for the iOS and Android mobile operating systems. The app has attracted more than 300 million monthly active users (Instagram 2015). Consumers using the app instantly turn their mobile snapshots into visually appealing images, which are then shared with others on the networks. Instagram is a play place for participants’ identity project because posts shared on Instagram are user-generated contents portraying digital selves in order to document their outfits, foods, cars, vacations, and any activities of the moment users want to record (Marwick 2015, 138). Not only visual contents but also textual captions, the use of hashtags and geo-tagged location also contribute to the performance of online personas and documentation of a life moment in daily lives (Rettberg, 2014). On Instagram, people need their audiences to like their photos (Marwick, 2015). As such, Instagram serves as a play place for users to craft their own personas and become co-constructed from their audiences’ feedbacks in terms of giving likes or comments. Through self-branding practice, selfie-posters can evoke a different message communicated of their selfie images (Hochman and Manovich 2013) by manipulating filters and Photoshop-like tools. Most of them posted their photos with no filters yet Valencia or X Pro II filters are the two most popular filters for posts with filters. Interestingly, #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE participants used at least one hashtag - #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE, and other co-hashtags, such as #shoes, #fashions, #selfie. A participant with username @iamjcarson (Figure 2b) used up to 25 hashtags, allowing his photo to receive more than 100 likes and 10 comments. Arguably, using many hashtags strategically lead to receive more likes or new likes and followers (Titlow 2012). As a part of the Kenneth Cole contest, participants also use @kennethcole or @kennethcoleprd in their captions to call attention to the brand to see their posts. In return, @ kennethcole responds to each post by giving likes. The brand also gives a comment on posts that win the lucky draw as “Congratulations! You’ve been selected to win a Kenneth Cole gift card for your #selfie. Please email us at [email protected] to claim your prize.” As such, Instagram is a play place for participants’ identity project, and for the participants and brand to directly get connected for a period of the contest.

CONCLUSIONS

The emergence of selfie culture provides an avenue for brands to respond to the post-postmodern branding conditions. Previously, the antibranding movement resists brands which acted as cultural engineers in the modern branding paradigm and as (not) authentic cultural resources in the postmodern branding paradigm. The post-postmodern paradigm aims to create and deliver their values creatively, becoming a part of consumers’ project of self (Giddens, 1991). This research investigates why the selfie culture can help resolve the tension of the situation by unpacking the case study of Kenneth Cole’s #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE, as shown in the dialogical model in Figure 1. Kenneth Cole takes the role of citizen-artist who allows consumers to become citizen-consumers. The brand shows concern for civic responsibilities and communities by not asking consumers to

54 / Brands at The Point of No Return:Understanding #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE Culture as Post-Postmodern Branding Paradigm FIGURE 1 Dialectical Model of Post Postmodern Branding Paradigm Adapted from Holt (2002, 87)

buy or use the brand’s product to be a part of selfie photos. Consumers enjoy their own freedom as civic participation for not only the contest, but the Internet as a whole. Both brand and consumers value the civic mindedness for becoming a part of the contest. Second, the visual turn of social media represented by selfie is a way to post self/ selves into being. The presentation of online identity for the Kenneth Cole contest allows one to construct and reconstruct their self-project in which their “bodies” and “being” were creatively curated by

their own. Third, Instagram is a play place for participants’ identity project, and for the participants and Kenneth Cole to directly get connected for a period of the contest. Selfie-posters craft themselves by using self-branding practices to manipulate Instagram’s features; filters, Photoshop tools, use of hashtags, and geo-tagged locations. This research does not discuss geo-tagged locations as not many selfie posts for this contest had not turned on the geo-tagged function. Kenneth Cole’s selfie contest were launched in the period that the presentation of online personas becomes everyday life. The selfie culture, whereby the self is performed in Goffman’s (1959) front stage using self-branding practices provides an avenue for brands to reconnect with consumers amidst of antimovement branding. While consumers are aware that brands are usually driven by commercial motivations, the selfie contest allows both consumers and brands to benefit one another. The case study explains the post-postmodern branding paradigm that brands do not need to hide their commercial motivations and consumers do not need to avoid or resist brands. Instead, brands and consumers can work together, particularly, by using online platforms as space for consumers to control power and for brands to connect with consumers. Given the importance, con-

Figure 2 Figure 2a Username @kissmycolor is the winner of Kenneth Cole’s #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE sweepstakes,receiving a pair of shoes every month for a year

Figure 2bUsername @iamjcarson used 25 hashtags in his caption and comments

Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 11) / 55 sumers’ posts become a symbolic exchange in two ways; first, they exchanged their self/selves as personal brands with the potentiality to attract more audiences resulted in a calculated numbers of likes and comments, becoming more recognizable online. Second, they exchanged their self/selves with the chance to win 12 pairs of shoes. Although they are not the winners of the sweepstakes, their posts portray a version of their self/selves recorded as a part of their everyday lives. For Kenneth Cole, the selfie contest allows them to connect with their customers and become a part of their identity projects. Importantly, brand visibility is enhanced when selfie-posters post their pictures wearing accessories or shoes by Kenneth Cole, use the #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE hashtag and other co-hashtags to enhance their own visibility. The final conclusion extends theory of self-presentation (Goffman 1959) and self-identity (Giddens 1991) in that performing online personas as part of one’s identity projects on visual-based social media platform enhance the visibility of both personal brands, and corporate brands that consumers are willing to work with. This research relies on findings which are limited to only one case study of Kenneth Cole’s #DRESSFORYOURSELFIE contest on only the Instagram platform. However, the insights gained shed light on how consumers test, try and play with the online personas as part of identity project as to enhance the visibility of themselves and corporate brands in the digital environments. It is ironic that when brands give the power to consumers to choose whether to join the contest and ask consumers to complete minimal tasks, consumers tend to be willing to join the contest and be controlled by brands. The research lends itself to brands and social media policy makers to understand how to effectively persuade consumers to become a part of their social media communication campaigns. However, the research does not suggest that incorporation of selfie-related activities as parts of brand communication is exhaustive for brands to be liked and valued by consumers. The selfie activities would be only one of many other promising and creative ways that brands can help consumers create value; serving as an expressive culture in consumers’ everyday digital era lives. Moreover, examining similar activities on other platforms might yield different results. While Facebook mainly aims to bridge weak ties and bond strong ties (Ellison, Charles and Cliff 2010), Twitter serves “ghostwriters” (Marwick 2015) whose content can be the most talked about or buried in a real-time (Bruns and Stieglitz 2012). Instagram works well for campaigns using visual posts to enhance visibility of brands and people.

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