Question

Case Assignment: CoverGirl

For years, CoverGirl has been featuring celebrities (including the likes of Zendaya, Pink, and Katy Perry) in their ad campaigns as the faces of CoverGirl. But in an unprecedented move, the beauty company announced in October 2016 that their newest CoverGirl is a boy.

            His name is James Charles. He is 17 years old and a high school senior from Bethlehem, New York. He lives with his parents and younger brother, and now on top of juggling high school classes and applying for colleges, he must also handle the pressure of being the first ever CoverBoy.

            It all started a little over a year ago. Charles was doing his friend’s hair before she attended a military ball at a local school. After she missed her makeup appointment, Charles volunteered to do it for her. She agreed. Her makeup results were stunning, and Charles found a new interest.

            He bought a makeup starter set online and started doing his friends’ makeup for fun. Then he started charging $5 or $10. He used the money to buy new brushes and equipment. After three months, he started his Instagram page. A year later, Charles had accumulated 650,000 followers on his Instagram account and 90,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel. He uses YouTube to post makeup tutorials for skills ranging from creating fake freckles to layering chunky glitter around the eyes. He had a full lineup of Halloween makeup tutorials planned for October.

Katy Perry revealed the news of James Charles’s selection on her Instagram page. She posted a photo of the two of them captioned “Just wrapped another great @CoverGirl shoot. Honored to have the pleasure to announce the very first COVERBOY, James Charles! Follow him @JCharlesBeauty!”

            Charles will appear in campaigns for CoverGirl’s newest mascara, “So Lashy.” The brand announced in a press release that the new mascara is designed to work on all lash types, making Charles the perfect face for the campaign.

“All of our CoverGirls are role models and boundary-breakers, fearlessly expressing themselves, standing up for what they believe, and redefining what it means to be beautiful,” stated the press release. “James Charles is no exception. One year ago, he boldly chose to launch his Instagram to the world, using transformative, dynamic makeup looks to showcase the many facets of his personality, serving as an inspiration to anyone who might have been afraid to do the same.”

            The selection of Charles by CoverGirl comes during a time of wide-scale questioning of traditional gender boundaries in fashion and beauty. A young group of men have made their way into the beauty industry through home-grown efforts using social media and media sharing sites such as YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.

            While some of the men in the beauty industry identify as transgender, Charles explained that for others makeup is used as a form of art and creative expression. "My parents started questioning me about whether or not I was transgender," said Charles. "It took a lot of thorough conversations to explain that it's an art form for me. I'm still confident as a boy and I will always be a boy. I can be confident with bare skin and with a full face.”

            The announcement of Charles’s selection was celebrated on social media by users who called the decision a step in the right direction for the beauty industry. “I see new guys on my Instagram feed every single day rocking amazing makeup looks and crazy out-of-the-box stuff. It’s a growing industry, and the population of boys in the industry is growing as well,” said Charles.

Question 12 pts

1. YouTube is not considered a social media platform.

True

False

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Question 22 pts

2. By CoverGirl reading posts of fans’ reactions after the announcement, they were practicing social media monitoring.

True

False

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Question 32 pts

3. Social media has the potential to revolutionize the way organizations communicate with stakeholders.

True

False

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Question 42 pts

4. While businesses use social media for marketing, it has not created a shift in the advertising business from a mass-media model to a conversation-based model.

True

False

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Question 52 pts

5. The best social media plan for any business is to create accounts on all social media platforms and post as often as possible.

True

False

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Question 62 pts

6.  Social media allows businesses to ________________________________.

a. share experiences quickly and with large numbers of people.

b. listen to what their customers are saying about them.

c. measure how marketers meet and interact with customers.

d. All of these

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Question 72 pts

7.  The official photographs from James Charles’ campaign are __________ media, while their social media posts announcing the campaign are __________ media, and comments on those posts are __________ media.

a. owned, earned, earned

b. paid, owned, earned

c. paid, owned, owned

d. owned, paid, earned

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Question 82 pts

8. Katy Perry’s Instagram post generated a high volume of new follows for Charles’ Instagram page. What social media metric would deem the post a success because of these results?

a. buzz

b. influence

c. participation and engagement

d. interest

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Question 92 pts

9.  Prior to joining CoverGirl’s “So Lashy” campaign, James Charles was primarily a __________ on social media.

a. creator

b. critic

c. collector

d. spectator

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Question 102 pts

10.  If CoverGirl posted on one of their social networking pages asking fans to vote for candidates for the next new face of CoverGirl, this would be an example of __________.

a. networking evaluation

b. social media monitoring

c. social commerce

d. crowdsourcing

Answer 1

False: It is considered as a social media platform and this is evident as Charles used YouTube to promote his makeup tutorials. =============================

True: They were trying to understand and analyze the response of the audience on social media.

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True: Communities and forums can be created using which large audience can communicate.

============================

False: It is now gradually moving towards conversation based model in which the role of social media becomes even more important.