The New Rules of Social Engagement
The rise of stan culture & fancams, and what brand marketers can learn from it
As our cultural discourse and interactions move online, the ways in which we discover and experience cultural products are becoming correspondingly elastic and algorithmic. In short, all culture is digital culture now, and digital culture comes with its own set of rules and customs that are dynamic and fast-evolving.
The rise of stan culture, and its resulting phenomena such as fancams and fan accounts, is deeply rooted in celebrity culture, and it offers interesting insights into marketing and community building in the current era of social media. To keep up with this ongoing cultural shift and avoid social media faux pas, brand marketers need to understand and adhere to the new rules of engagement in the age of social media.
Digital Word-of-Mouth
As we transition from a top-down cultural propagation model dominated by one-to-many mass media to a bottom-up “culture pops” model driven by distributed networks on social media, the old guards and gatekeepers no longer have total control over the messages they put out (with the exception of censorship), nor the direct relationships with their audiences. The days of monoculture, dictated by mass media owners, are long gone. Instead, the vocal fans are the ones driving the conversation and shaping the overall cultural discourse.
Vocal fans are the ones driving the conversation and shaping the overall cultural discourse.
For example, Netflix’s docuseries Tiger King became a true breakout hit during the quarantine era. But it didn’t stand out against the flood of new content that Netflix releases and grab the eyeballs from 64 million households because Netflix spent the campaign budget to heavily promote it. Instead, it is a true “word-of-mouth” viral hit, as it debuted with lower-than-average numbers and gradually built up its viewership over the following weeks, per Nielsen data. And since the nation is on lockdown, the word-of-month mostly traveled via social media and messaging apps.
Social media users are now spending an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes per day across an average of eight social networks and messaging apps, according to Global WebIndex. It’s hardly a surprise that social media has become the ground zero of culture.
Because social buzz is now crucial to the success of cultural products, it is natural that social media has become the primary battle ground of fandoms. Fandom culture has long been a thing, even before social media came around. But in recent years, in tandem with the rise of meme culture, the rise of fandom culture, especially the rise of stan Twitter, is changing the rules of cultural propagation.
Stans Run the Show
Stan is a neologism that refers to dedicated, hardcore fans, derived from an Eminem song about an obsessive fan. Stans are the new evangelicals, eagerly preaching the gospel of their favorite celebrities to strangers on social media. One hardcore fan is not enough to make much of a difference, but a connected collective of stans is basically an unpaid PR force. The Little Monsters (Lady Gaga stans) repeatedly ran scams of free online promotions, often in the form of Starbucks drinks, on social media to trick people into streaming Gaga’s music, while the Beyhive (Beyoncé stans) are notoriously tough on anyone who is critical of the celebrated entertainer.
One hardcore fan is not enough to make much of a difference, but a connected collective of stans is basically an unpaid PR force.
Standom is fandom on steroids, not only because of the heightened level of dedication and group mind hive, but also because they have a direct feedback loop with the artists and entertainers they are advocating for. This has become especially true over the past ten years as many celebrities used social media to establish a direct line of communications with their fans. Through this direct feedback loop, artists get direct feedback from their fans and fans get to interact with their idols. This level of two-way interactivity was unprecedented — fame and fandom have previously always been mediated by talent agencies and media — and it is pushing some celebrities to cultivate performative online personas over executing authentic artistic pursuits.
Two noteworthy new phenomena that came out of stan Twitter in recent years are the proliferating fancams and fan accounts dedicated to celebrity updates.
A fancam is a short video, usually under one minute long, that stans create to promote their favorites on social media. It is a subgenre derived of what is typically regarded as “fan-made videos” that have long populated the less-visited corners of YouTube, and usually consists of a supercut montage of a celebrity set to an up-tempo rap song. Sage Anderson at Mashable has written a great piece on the K-Pop stan roots of fancams, how it spread to other corners of Stan Twitter, and how the indiscriminate spamming of fancams in Twitter replies has been weaponized to shut down all criticisms, regardless of their validity, leveled at the celebrities. The views accumulated by fancams have even become status symbols among stans, propelling them to further spread the fancams, sometimes even outside the confines of Stan Twitter. The rise of fancams correlates to the ongoing shift towards short-form video-driven UGC output today (best represented by the recent rise of TikTok and the Story format), and represents a grassroots force that has become a complementary component for the traditional PR exposure via official channels and mass media outlets.
The rise of fancams correlates to the ongoing shift towards short-form video-driven UGC output today.
Then, there are the celebrity fan accounts, which are unofficial social media accounts, typically found on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, dedicated to a specific celebrity, that act like an aggregator of all the official news and unofficial updates about them. Typically named as “[insert celebrity name] Daily and/or Update,” these accounts are the new fan-blogs for the social media age. They are usually managed by an individual stan, or sometimes a small group of stans, and act as a super niche new source to bring all the fans together and offer them a place to obsess over every little thing a celebrity does. They are the de-facto community organizers that turn individual fans into a hyper-connected congregation of stans, and they are the key to understanding stan culture and social engagement today. Because they are, in most cases, unaffiliated with celebrities and their teams, their relationships with the celebrities and the larger star-making machinery of the cultural industry can be quite equivocal and dynamic. Although largely unpaid, they do sometimes amass a large enough following that they can monetize.
Overall, how to leverage the fancam formats and the stan communities organized around fan accounts is something the entertainment industry has yet to even start to grapple with, let alone figuring out how to capitalize on the organic impressions they generate. However, some artists have been actively experimenting with different ways of engaging with their fan communities to some interesting, varying results.
The Three Modes of Stan Engagement
By and large, here are three distinct modes of engaging fandoms that celebrities are deploying to navigate stan culture and maintain their relevance.
1. Direct Engagement and Co-Creation
First up, there is the kind of hands-on approach deployed by young artists who are digitally savvy enough to essentially run their own social media account as if it were a fan account, which means social media is not just a simple promotional channel with occasional interactions, but rather a place where they are constantly sharing and engaging with their fans to build a direct relationship that is close to that of a social influencer.
British popstar Charli XCX is a good example of an artist opting for this mode of fan engagement. Working on a “quarantine album”, she expertly uses her Twitter account to solicit fan feedback on which songs to put out, which pictures should become the artworks for her singles, and host virtual dance parties and listening sessions via Zoom. This kind of direct collaboration gives the fans a heightened sense of agency and sharpen the incentive to stay engaged, but it can be a tricky thing to pull off. Sometimes when artists try to exert their creative control, fans could voice countering opinions to sway their decisions.
2. Surveillance and Reward
Another approach that is taking shape is to use social media as a tool for fandom surveillance, offering a chance to interact with celebrities, but without the kind of constant engagement that some artists may find difficult to manage. Taylor Swift is a prime example, as the popstar uses Tumblr and Twitter not as a channel of direct engagement, but primarily as a source to scout out who her biggest fans are, and then reach out to them directly to reward them with personal messages, gifts, backstage meet-and-greets, and even invitations to fan events hosted at her house. This selective approach puts more incentives on the fans to be vocal and active in spreading their support for her, in hope of being rewarded with direct interactions with their idol.
3. Fan Accounts as Publicists
Lastly, and this is a relatively new phenomenon, we see some celebrities try to establish a direct relationship with their fan accounts to leverage them as middlemen to connect with the fandom without direct involvement. This way, they can preserve their mystic aura while also have a channel to indirectly interact with fans. For instance, Fiona Apple, the reclusive singer-songwriter, recently released her first new album in eight years to rave reviews, including a rare, once-in-a-decade 10/10 score from music site Pitchfork that got social media buzzing, with fans celebrating the release with funny memes and heartfelt endorsements. Outside the handful of interviews conducted over FaceTime, there are no TV appearances or magazine covers to round out a launch campaign like a normal album release would.
Despite the importance of social buzz in making this album release a success, Fiona Apple herself is curiously absent from the social conversations. Instead, all the new videos and updates of hers that have emerged in the past few years usually come from FionaAppleRocks — a Tumblr fan account that has direct access to her and her team. Effectively acting as a social media manager and publicist for Fiona, this fan account helps the media-shy artist to authentically get her messages across to her fans without an official social media presence, and give fans a channel to send in their questions for Fiona to answer in homemade Q&A videos.
How Dis-Engagement Backfires
Most celebrities still choose not to engage directly with fan accounts and stan culture, for better or for worse. But the least they should do is to just leave them alone. Active dis-engagement would inevitably backfire, as is the recent case with a fan account for Ana de Armas.
Ana de Armas, a rising Hollywood star with multiple high-profile movie roles scheduled for release later this year after starring in the surprise hit Knives Out last year, has been largely playing in the traditional celebrity fame machine. She has an Instagram account that she mainly uses to share promotional materials, but mostly maintains her press exposure via paparazzi shots of her daily strolls with her boyfriend, Ben Affleck. Those “pap walks” during a global pandemic received some gentle mocking from one of her fan accounts, @ArmasUpdates, which led to Ana blocking her own most popular stan account on Twitter.
Quickly, the story went viral across Stan Twitter (with dozens of fancam replies, naturally) and beyond, prompting much mockery about the cluelessness and insecurity of Ana de Armas and made the fan account more visible than ever. While one could argue that no publicity is bad publicity, the fact remains that when one disengages with their fans on social media, they self-sabotage by cutting off a crucial channel of PR and communication to build a long-lasting relationship with their fans that are independent of the media apparatus. With the media landscape continuing to diversify and traditional media channels waning in reaching younger audiences, ignoring the fandom community on social channels is not a decision to be taken lightly.
When one disengages with their fans on social media, they self-sabotage by cutting off a crucial channel of PR and communication.
Takeaways for Marketers
Building a loyal customer base is a long-term goal shared by most brand marketers, and that starts by actively engaging with fans. Some sports teams are joining Reddits to engage with fans and build a more engaged fanbase. The recent developments in stan culture should provide some valuable insights as to how to engage with the modern audience on social channels. Here are some thought starters to consider:
First, videos should be front-and-center in your communications. Unless you’ve got some killer one-liners, short video assets should be amply supplied to allow your fans to remix and share, because this is the default format that fans circulate, and it is the format that social platforms’ algorithms tend to prioritize. The mindset that brands approach creative assets needs to be recalibrated for today’s video-driven digital culture.
Second, it is important to figure out which mode of fandom engagement is right for your brands. How high of a level of active involvement is right for your audiences depends on what your brand is selling and who you are targeting. Each mode of engagement comes with different levels of distance from your fandom, and it needs to fit with your overall brand values and objectives. While it can be hard to get people excited about a generic product as a celebrity would, attaching your brand to interesting activities or good social causes is a good way to mobilize your audiences, as evidenced by brands like Outdoor Voices and Patagonia.
Lastly, brand marketers should learn to involve fans on social media in ways that go beyond basic customer service and promotional giveaways. It is paramount to remember that social media puts fans on equal footing, and it would be smart to treat them as such and learn to harness that creative energy. For example, Taco Bell Quarterly (@TBQuarterly) is a fan account for the eponymous fast food chain, but it is also a self-proclaimed literary e-magazine, dedicated to all the literary (and not-so-formal) writings about Taco Bell. Two volumes have been produced so far, containing fan submissions of poems, essays, and short stories centered around Taco Bell. It may look like a publicity stunt organized by Taco Bell, but it is in fact unaffiliated.
Our culture has evolved to the point that no brand can possibly control the message if they don’t actively engage with the fans on social media. Today, most brands have already built their own loyal customers, and with the right approach, brands can activate some of them to build their own stan communities and mobilize them as brand ambassadors. Of course, all these have to be done with a level of finesse and authenticity to avoid the potential backlash and “silence, brand” memes.
