Influencers: David Dobrik & The Power of the Modern Media Celebrity
You probably don’t know who David Dobrik is. But to over 17 million people, he is so famous that the Wall Street Journal called him “Gen Z’s Jimmy Fallon”:
To understand how this happened, though, we need to follow and dissect David’s career and use that as a lens to understand influencers. Specifically…
How influencers master social media aggregators for discoverability
Why influencers are similar to traditional celebrities, once they have an audience
How influencers leverage their audience to build lucrative careers in entertainment
Why you should stop dismissing social media influencers
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But first:
Who is David Dobrik?
David Dobrik is the perfect example of a modern-day influencer who built a colossal following without the help of traditional, big-media channels.
As of this writing, David has…
He has collaborated with other celebrities, like Justin Bieber, Charlie Puth, and Kylie Jenner.
David drew his first following on the now-defunct platform Vine before hitting it big with his YouTube channel. Like Vine videos, his YouTube channel features clickbait headlines and short, punchy, comedic skits that are 4 minutes and 20 seconds long (yes, that’s on purpose).
A few more distinctive features of his vlogs:
Each video includes the Vlog Squad, David’s friends who are influencers in their own right and they add a lot of flavour and story to David’s vlogs. (Verge has called David Dobrik’s vlogs the “modern-day sitcom” with him as the laugh track and his friends as the main cast.)
David enjoys surprising his friends and family with cars, ala Oprah
The giveaways are backed by his “sugar daddy” sponsor, SeatGeek, with which he has built an aspirational sponsorship relationship (more on that later)
But beyond what David is, the most compelling part of David’s career is what he’s not. He’s not an actor, a Grammy award-winning musician, or even a reality TV show star. He’s just a guy who quit school, moved to L.A. to become the next Jimmy Fallon, and ended up becoming that on YouTube.
Despite his lack of credentials, he has surpassed his traditional media heroes in viewership. Each of David’s videos get over 10 million views each. For comparison, The Hollywood Reporter notes that traditional late night talk show hosts like Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel average 6.76 million viewers each.
And this is how that happened.
How Influencers Master Social Media Aggregators For Discoverability
Social media aggregators, like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, give influencers and creators everything they need to make content and build an audience, including discoverability. The problem with aggregators is that influencers are at the beck and call of their algorithms.
Successful influencers master more than one of these social media aggregators. But they usually learn the ropes and become internet famous from one social media channel, first. For example:
Billie Eilish found her first fans after posting posting “Ocean Eyes” on SoundCloud
Kylie Jenner launched her billion-dollar fashion empire off of her massive following on Instagram
David Dobrik found his first audience members on Vine
These influencers then take what they learn from one channel, and use that to grow on other platforms. For example, David Dobrik used what he knew from his Vine days…
7-second cuts
Short, funny sketches
Zero filler content
First person point-of-view
… to grow his audience on YouTube. He even used his Vine friends as his initial cast, recycling his Vine videos into compilations.
On the surface, this just seems like an efficient way to recycle content that people already love. But if you dig deeper, it’s a content flywheel.
David’s short, entertaining skits encourage people to watch until the end. And his viewers click on his sitcom-like vlogs as soon as he uploads them — much like how you’d watch a new episode of your favourite TV show as soon as it airs.
Here’s the difference between TV and YouTube: the latter has discovery. With TV, you just watch what the network feeds you. YouTube, on the other hand, is incentivized to recommend videos you enjoy to keep you on its website.
YouTube rewards creators whose videos are viewed all the way through. As a result, creators who retain viewers are rewarded with even more organic discovery. Thus accelerating their content flywheel.
Why Influencers Are Similar To Traditional Celebrities Once They Have An Audience
Before the internet, becoming a traditional celebrity — an actor, a pop musician, an athlete, or a royal — was the only way to build a media empire. The radio, the big screen, or the television screen were the only ways you could put yourself out there. But thanks to the internet, anyone can build and grow a fanbase, become an influencer, and parlay that into a career in traditional mass media.
Don’t take my word of it. Check out this video of Jimmy Fallon and David Dobrik, casually chatting as equals:
Much like their traditional counterparts, modern internet celebrities like David have mass market appeal. They rely on their talent, looks, or personality for entertainment value to grow their audiences. They’re masters at giving people what they want, whether that’s a clickbait title:
... A heart-wrenching story:
... Or a hilariously relatable experience:
Paired with their mastery of aggregators, modern-day influencers develop taste. This lets them create digital content that relates to the majority of the human experience. Simply put, aggregators reward creators and influencers who make memorable content for the people who make up the bulk of the human bell curve.
And much like their classically beautiful/funny/talented counterparts, modern influencers tightwalk to differentiate themselves and commoditize their offering to reach as much of the market as possible.
In other words…
If your mouth laughs, you’ll laugh with David
If your ears listen to music, you’ll listen to Billie Eilish
If your eyes enjoy beauty, you’ll follow Kylie
How Influencers Leverage Their Audience To Build Lucrative Careers In Entertainment
You’ll quickly figure out who David Dobrik’s audience is if you scan his YouTube channel:
They can be one or more of the following:
People who watch episodic reality television
People who follow the lives of traditional celebrities
Millennials and Gen Z who know about David and the Vlog Squad and care about what happens to them (see previous points)
(Ironically, if you’re reading this, you’re probably not one of those. But more on that later.)
Like the popularity of shows like The Bachelor or the NBA Finals, influencers are masters at giving The People what they want — entertainment, drama, controversy. An escape.
Because of this, just like our favourite movie and TV stars who endorse cereal, skincare products, and junk food, influencers attract both traditional and digitally native brands who want to capitalize on their fame and mass market followings.
The difference is that modern media celebrities have control over their audience. They have more leverage to bring to the negotiation table.
A traditional celebrity would be paid to be featured in a commercial for a brand. An influencer would be paid to feature the brand in a sponsored YouTube video, Instagram post, or tweet.
In the past, brands would ask a media outlet for the key to their audience through buying commercial spots on TV. Today, brands ask (beg!) influencers for access to their audiences through paid brand deals and sponsorships.
This new model benefits both the influencer and the brand.
David Dobrik, for example, genuinely loves finding ways to natively incorporate brand sponsorships into his content. Because of this, his main sponsor, SeatGeek, and his sponsor reads for them have become such an iconic part of his content that his fans have made parody videos of his reads.
Says Ian Borthwick from SeatGeek, “We love that David's fans have his SeatGeek read memorized. Being able to recite the read has almost become a meme, an inside joke. What other brand has its ad read memorized by fans?"
Why You Should Stop Dismissing Social Media Influencers
So what does this mean for you?
If you’re reading this, then you probably don’t spend a lot of time watching videos on YouTube. Like me, you might even call the process of reading articles, watching YouTube, and listening to podcasts “consuming content”.
Here’s the thing: weirdos like us dismiss social media platforms and the entertainment industry as trashy time-wasters and as the vapid enemies of deep work — and past a certain point, they are.
Too many people mindlessly binge-watch cute puppy videos to avoid hard work.
Too many people spend their evenings watching reruns of The Bachelor and spend endless time chatting about it the next day at work.
But on the other extreme, deep work knowledge workers often miss the sheer brilliance required to crack a joke that makes — in David Dobrik’s case — over 10 million viewers laugh.
Think about the genius Google engineers who built and optimized YouTube and its ad platform, AdSense. Well, this high school graduate has managed to solve every algorithm change, every discovery puzzle, every revenue-killing business problem they’ve thrown at him since he started on the platform.
We overlook the fact that online entertainers like David are masters of storytelling, audience-building, and online business models.
We don’t stop to acknowledge that their creative savvy rivals those of Silicon Valley’s brightest VPs of marketing.
The internet has turned traditional media on its head and has completely transformed the modern media zeitgeist, masquerading marketing geniuses as shallow influencers.
David Dobrik could (and would!) dance circles around a Harvard Business School MBA in any marketing-related case study. In fact, he’s probably made a lot more money with a lot less starting capital.