How many ‘selfies’ are taken in a year? Nobody knows so I thought I’d try and work it out.
After searching ‘#selife’ on Twitter, I counted 41 tweets in just one minute. According to my (very scientific) method, that works out at 2460 selfies an hour or a whooping 21, 549, 600 selfies a year! And that’s just Twitter – what if I included Instagram and Facebook?
That’s an impressive number and I’m sure that the peacocking ‘selfie’ will be remembered as one of the biggest social media trends of the digital generation. With that in mind, there’s no wonder why big brands have been trying to jump on the ‘selfie’ bandwagon.
Most famously, Cancer Research UK recently generated £8m in donations within just six days with the hash tag ‘nomakeupselfie’. Donors were ‘nominated’ by friends to take barefaced selfies and donate £3 to charity at the same time. Although the link between wearing no make-up and cancer research is a tenuous one, the campaign was a great success and pricked up the ears of marketing gurus across the nation as a result.
However the campaign’s success wasn’t the charity’s own doing. Although Cancer Research UK were quick at identifying and promoting the trend, the idea itself was completely consumer generated.
Interestingly, the same can be said for all of the ‘selfie’ trends. For example ‘#telfie’ (selfies with your tongue out), ‘#catselfie’ (selfies of your cat), ‘#sellotapeselfe’ (selfies with sellotape around your face) and ‘#aftersexselfie’ (you get the idea), were all initiated by the public.
Why do you think brands haven’t been able to hijack the ‘selfie’ trend? Do you know of any brands who have?