On Valentine’s day 2018, Swedish watchmaker Daniel Wellington posted a photo of a gay male couple followed by a caption celebrating the love between the two subjects. The photo was posted to the brand’s Instagram account reaching an audience of four million followers. The brand’s followers responded with great amounts of engagement ranging from excitement and support for featuring a same-sex couple, to almost equal amounts homophobic disapproval. This thesis, a case study of Daniel Wellington’s social media and social media staff, examines the effects of including same-sex couples in social media marketing. Previous research on LGBTQ+ representation in advertising has identified the polarizing reactions same-sex couples in marketing usually evoke. Using existing literature on the subject as a theoretical framework, this thesis analyzes the effects of including two photos of same-sex couples, one male-male couple and one female-female couple, in Daniel Wellington’s Instagram account. A statistical analysis of the reactions to these photos on Instagram will be followed by interviews with the brand’s social media staff in order to explore the corporate response to the reactions to the social media representations of same-sex couples. This thesis will suggest, partially in line with previous research, that the social media content featuring same-sex couples created a lot of engagement among its followers, with comparatively high levels of polarization. The data identified a significant difference between how the gay male couple and the same-sex female couple were evaluated. Additionally, the interviews with the social media staff suggest that, despite the high levels of negative reactions, including same-sex couples in their social media channels did not have a deterring effect on their commitment to include more types of diversity in the brand’s social media feeds. The interviews with the social media staff indicate that the experience of including same-sex couples in the brand’s social media marketing efforts had the effect of raising awareness of issues of homophobia among the staff members.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-152000 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Kallur, Martin |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Tema Genus |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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