JMS Project

Kylie Jenner

Introduction/Background:

At the age of 20, Kylie Jenner has already become a world famous icon. From her young start on “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” at age nine, to the 2016 launch of her makeup company, Kylie Cosmetics, Jenner continues to dominate the spotlight through her strategic marketing and social media use. Jenner is a social media influencer due to her young age and fame. Teenagers, the main users of social media, look up to her as an icon. Her selfies and body images are causing teens to feel the need to post the same images of themselves on social media, changing the content of social media today.

Use of Social Media:

Much of Jenner’s fame can be attributed to her popularity across numerous different social media platforms. One of the ways she capitalizes on her social media fame is by using her influence to advertise for her now wildly popular makeup brand “Kylie Cosmetics”. This advertising consists of her posting pictures of her makeup packaging, her makeup on herself and close friends or family, and launch dates for new products.

(Retrieved by Danielle Seran on November 25, 2017)

Jenner also uses social media to publicize her daily life. She frequently shares more personal parts of her life on social media in order to connect to her fans. This allows her fans to get a peek into her glamorous lifestyle, which will hopefully compel them to buy her products in an effort to be more like her. Jenner frequently expresses how grateful she is for her fans through social media, especially on her Twitter account. On Thanksgiving, Jenner tweeted that she was thankful for all her fans, and interacted with some followers who showed her support.

(Retrieved by Danielle Seran on November 25, 2017)

Jenner’s social media posts are far reaching and often get lots of interaction. Jenner has impressive followings across many different social media platforms, with 99.5 million Instagram followers, 1,340,565 subscribers on YouTube, 20,354,892 followers on Facebook, and 23.5 million Twitter followers. Kylie Jenner also has a snapchat, but the number of followers is not publically available.

Jenner’s online presence breaks a cardinal rule of social media use. According to author Erik Qualman, an individual should not have more than one account on any given social media platform (2015). As such, Jenner breaks “Rule Number 10: Have One Digital Identity” because she uses more than one account on each site (Qualman 2015). Her secondary media presence is that of her makeup brand, “Kylie Cosmetics”. Jenner also reaches many people through her Kylie Cosmetics social media presence. Kylie Cosmetics has a following of 15 million on Instagram, 583,907 on YouTube, 604.7 thousand on Twitter, and 3,713,032 on Facebook.

Jenner advertises for her makeup line as well as connects to her fans through her personal (@KylieJenner) social media account. On her personal accounts she shares the everyday life of Kylie. By contrast, the @KylieCosmetics social media pages are used purely for advertising her makeup line. She advertises when and where her products will be available, as well as showing how her makeup looks on her and others.

Jenner is the lead social media person for Kylie Cosmetics. We attempted to reach out to her on Twitter regarding how she manages her media presence, but we have yet to receive an answer.

(Retrieved by Danielle Seran on December 6, 2017)

Impacts:

Kylie Jenner is one of today’s biggest social media influencers. She can sell out of a product within seconds, whether it be her own merchandise or that of another brand. For example, in 2016 she released a music video to promote her lipglosses. With over 13 million views, the video boosted sales and the new lip gloss colors were an instant success. However, the content of the video itself sparked some controversy. In the music video, she and other young women are shown committing a robbery. This reflected badly on Jenner’s image since her audience is mainly comprised of younger females.

Jenner’s social media presence has definitely contributed to her rise as an international influencer. She has impacted the industry in so many different ways, and is looked up to by young girls. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. She gets a lot of attention from the media, but with good media coverage comes scrutiny. Part of the reason she has such a high following is because of how controversial she is. As a teenager she got lip injections, which made her a source of controversy. She has made plastic surgery look like a quick fix for self esteem issues, resulting in a rise of plastic surgery procedures because her highly publicized relationship with it has made plastic surgery seem cool (Cavaleri,2017).

Also, Jenner and her sister Kendall's clothing brand is currently in a lawsuit with photographer Michael Miller. The lawsuit is about how the the brand used Miller's photo of Tupac without permission and then superimposed their own logo on top of it. Jenner also became the source of controversy when she responded to a copyright lawsuit as “completely false” and “baseless” (Kreps, 2017). According to Art Neill from New Media Rights, it is illegal to use someone else’s copyrighted work without their direct consent (October 16, 2017). After the incident, Jenner did not own up to her mistake. This violated yet another rule from Eric Qualman’s book, in which he states that owning up to your mistakes on social media is “flawsome”, which can turn a negative situation into a positive learning experience and show your audience that you have humility (2015).