Selfies: Their Evolution and Marketing Implications

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Selfie Day was celebrated on June 21, which is a great opportunity to remember the first selfie in the world, successful campaigns centered around this form of photography, and the changes it brought about in the context of copyright.

From the famous selfies of Ellen DeGeneres from Oscar Awards in 2014 and astronaut Chris Hadfield, who took a photo of himself on a spacewalk, to our everyday portraits taken with the front camera of a smartphone, this form of photography never stops changing and surprising us with its possibilities.

The selfie changed our view of photography, angles, and recording time forever, and that is why it is worth going back through history to say that the first selfie (the first photographic portrait) was taken by American photographer Robert Cornelius in 1839, and he wanted, like us today, just to see what it looked like.

The name selfie entered the Oxford dictionary in 2013 when the use of this term on the Internet increased by 17,000%, and the explosion of such photos in our everyday life occurred with the arrival of smartphones. They made it easy and quick to capture moments, with the growing popularity of Instagram, as well as hashtags like #iwokeuplikethis and #duckface.

All in all, we enjoy being able to experiment with different identities—that is exactly what the selfie allows us to do. We all want to try something new and imagine how we would feel if that new thing were a part of us.

Notable Selfie Marketing Campaigns

In 2013 alone, social networks received 57 million #selfie hashtags, so seeing the opportunity for creativity and using diverse user-generated content (for example, Dunkin’ 2014 Shark Week selfie campaign) the selfie has become practically irresistible for various brands, and thus a large number of interesting campaigns appeared.

#DeadYourself (The Walking Dead)

The Walking Dead, one of the most famous TV dramas, is among the most watched series in history, primarily because of its epic content, but also because of innovative digital marketing campaigns. AMC Network designed an app that turns fans’ faces into zombies, so everyone who wanted could share their zombie photo on Instagram with the hashtag #deadyourself, which led to a spontaneous massive engagement of the online community.

#SoloSelfie (Beats By Dre)

Beats By Dre found the inspiration for promoting Solo2 headphones in 2014 in Karen X. Cheng’s viral video: “The donut selfie”. Here too, fans immediately reacted to the company’s incentives by taking selfies, so the campaign was seen 10.6 million times in a few weeks.

#SelfieForSafety (Volvo)

In 2019, Volvo launched the #SelfieForSafety campaign to emphasize its position that safety is paramount.

The task for the online community was simple – take a selfie in the car with a seat belt on, along with the hashtag. In this way, Volvo not only encouraged people to potentially research their offer and purchase but also gained important insights, because, through the examination of images, it was observed that 4 out of 10 people do not wear their seat belts in the correct way, which influenced future improvements of the brand.

Ways to Use Selfies for Marketing

Let’s explore some of the many effective ways you may include selfies in your marketing plan:

To Express Who You Are

Selfies are inherently private photographs that capture your current activities. This enables your audience to develop a stronger relationship with your brand and get to realize you better.

Selfies have the capability to yield customers a window into your world if your marketing strategy is based on you personally or your team. In this scenario, a selfie might depict you participating in an event, getting ready for an event, at a beautiful or fascinating location, with a fascinating person, or merely going about your day.

To Be an Example of What You Do

Selfies can be of people doing things as well as being merely about people. This means that a selfie can show you engaging in daily activities or observing something intriguing while at work.

Additionally, they can demonstrate how your products operate while being used. They may be before-and-after pictures, or they could show your team in honor of the part they play in your enterprise. Again, the combination of all these photographs enables a viewer to obtain a more genuine understanding of you.

To Shed Light on Your Business’s Functioning

People tend to feel like they know you intimately, and they also want to understand what you do, so taking a selfie may be quite beneficial to business.

Selfies can include unguarded shots of your production line, office setting, the team at work, or you getting ready for a product release or release. In order to provide your audience a better idea of how your items are manufactured or how your services operate, it could also include a sequence of selfies that show the full process of making your products. This has the effect of generating buzz and curiosity about what your company does. It also encourages your audience to believe in your strategies.

To Increase Involvement

In the age of social media, marketing has become a two-way street where participation and interaction are essential goals, as opposed to the past when it was all about delivering your point out there.

When you encourage the crowd to turn the camera on themselves, the selfie has the ability to brilliantly harness this power.

Selfies can be used to engage people in various ways, such as:

• Initiatives or contests that nudge your audience to snap selfies while utilizing your goods or services.
• Contests that encourage selfies at your business to get attention to a physical location like a store or office.
• The best selfies of each week in which fans upload photos of themselves for display on your website or social network.
• Selfie campaigns that promote issues or causes by having people take pictures and tag them.

To Create Hype Around People and Products

Hype may be created through engagement as well as through the usage of selfies of individuals and items. If you are preparing to release a new product, you might upload a selfie of it and solicit feedback from your audience. Or, let’s assume you are introducing a new team member to your customers with a selfie.

Selfies are a new level of using images in email marketing campaigns too. Emails with images allow companies and organizations to communicate in ways that text-only emails can’t. They give your message a personal face. You want the experience clients will have when they enter your door to be reflected in your emails in addition to how your company operates. A simple method to accomplish this is by including a selfie of you or your employees.

A recognizable face can assist boost the amount of time readers spend with each email if they already know, like, and trust you. A bridge to a lasting relationship can be built with new customers by giving that modest personal touch. Even while they may not now be familiar with you, the next time they visit your store or office, they will. As a result, people are more inclined to introduce themselves, pose questions, and, ideally, offer feedback.

Of course, you ought to be sending promotional emails to a listing of recipients who have expressly consented to hear from you via email. A well-known and highly suggested email marketing platform, VerticalResponse, may assist you in getting excellent clicks for your email marketing campaigns. Because it comes with interesting email designs that display beautifully in all popular email clients, it is also one of the finest free email marketing options.

Is the Selfie Still Relevant in 2022?

Although we all like to take a selfie from time to time, if only to check the outfit and hairstyle, we have to ask ourselves if it is still popular. For example, in 2016, 24 billion selfies were posted, and studies have shown that in 2018, 94 million selfies were posted every day. By the middle of this year, 92 million selfies have been posted, counting all mobile devices.

The selfie brought not only new ways of keeping memories but also legal challenges, such as the ‘Monkey Selfie’ when the monkey Naruto took a selfie using the equipment of the photographer David Slater, who after discussions and trials did not become the owner of his beautiful selfies, but this case triggered many unexpected copyright issues.

Years of selfies have created space for research and new, not always positive discoveries, such as the fact that this form of photography can cause depression and eating disorders, among other things, due to our constant desire to look prettier and better. Contrary to these claims, a completely different angle is given by selfie lovers who claim that it relaxes them and boosts their self-confidence.

Selfies not only offer the possibility for endless user content generation but also refute the opinion that such a trend is a bit outdated, especially when it comes to a lot of travel selfies. An example of this is the situation during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic when photos of people with medical masks of various designs appeared on social networks known as ‘maskies’. Additionally, some institutions, including banks, have decided to combat potential cyber fraud by using selfie verification.

Although the famous front camera photo is not at its peak of popularity these days, it can still be a good opportunity for research in the field of marketing, for raising awareness, activist campaigns, and fighting against cybercrime, and we can always count on its power to inspire us and help us have fun.

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