How Mariah Carey saved herself and Xmas
All I Want For Christmas is spectacular brand management.
Success in terms of a social media depends on the central goals of the person or team behind them. Sometimes, there is a focus on promotion, others on informing key audiences. But one of the central aims of pretty much any social media campaign is brand management. Maybe the biggest success story in terms of online brand rejuvenation is Mariah Carey, who has seen considerable shifts in how she is perceived by the general public in regards to her persona both as a performer and a public figure.
In 2016, the general consensus surrounding Mariah Carey was that she was a washed-up pop star who was embarrassing herself. Following a poorly received reality television series, a failed engagement to James Packer and allegations of sexual misconduct after falling out with her team, Carey was at a crossroads in her branding. Having seen her career revitalised in the mid-2000s, she had essentially been running on fumes through the 2010s. Her album ‘Me. I Am Mariah. The Elusive Chantuese’ (2014) had failed to produce the level of hits she was accustomed too, her marriage had ended and, ultimately, her reputation was suffering.
The 2000s obsession with fame (now back and better? than ever) had allowed Carey to lean into a diva reputation to the point of parody. But social media was lifting the veil, and she struggled to find a foothold. December 31st, 2016 proved the lowest point, with Carey unable to hear herself onstage, uncomfortable in nude illusion, shouting aimlessly into the crowd and onto the television screens of millions.
That is why the shift in public perception of Carey from 2017 to 2020 and beyond is remarkable. Initially and obviously upset by the reception to the performance, saying in an interview “I was victimized and villainised”, she struggled to maintain her façade of perfection, which has sustained her public persona for over a decade. So instead, she evolved.
While retaining many of her diva behaviours, she began to use her online presence to suggest a depth of personality that had been missing in her more traditional media presence. Focusing on engaging her audience initially through nostalgia and comedy, she pushed her image into something akin to a diva-by-trade, rather than by nature.
Increasingly domestic images began filling her Instagram feed, showcasing her family life with her children. She rereleased her album Butterfly for the 20th anniversary and used that as an opportunity to remind people of her skill as a hitmaker. The holiday season allowed her to re-instate her position as the self-proclaimed Queen of Christmas, and then a successful 2018 New Year’s Eve performance proved the finale to a successful rebranding effort. Carey’s performance was praised, her joke about tea on stage well received.
A 2018 album campaign was the logical next step of this rebrand, engaging more seriously and directly with her musicianship. But there was a balance maintained between art and persona, and parasocial relationship building. For the first time taking her album cycle online, she did interviews with online publications like Genius, reposted pictures with fans, and saw a swell of support.
2019 and 2020 would prove that the rebrand was to be consistently successful. She joined the bottle cap trend to spawn a viral video involving her singing the cap off, rather than kicking, in a post from July 8th, 2019. A viral trend concerning her 2008 song Obsessed allowed Carey to lean further into nostalgia to great returns. Christmas 2019 allowed her to drum up hype for the sale of her song “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, which finally hit number one after over twenty years of circulation, eventually remaining into the first week of 2020. This made her the first artist to have a number one single in four separate decades. It repeated this the following year, and may do so every year since.
The Mariah Carey rebrand should be taken as one of the most effective uses of social media in a public relations context because it is one of the strongest cases for online persona for traditional media stars. Carey, in 2022, is a 52-year-old woman (or 53, who knows) whose last top ten hit, outside of her Christmas staple, was in 2008. Her persona is not one that should easily transfer online easily, and it just didn’t for a long time. But unlike many of her contemporaries, Mariah Carey -and her team- learned how to mould her image to be palatable on this new platform of TikTok, as well as the general social media landscape. She was able to bring herself new relevance to popular culture not by giving up the principles of her persona, but by working an effective social media strategy in context to it, much like a business must with their own social media content.
By allowing her online persona to become self-aware, almost winking to the audience that who she’s been for decades is merely an act, Carey was able to essentially undo years of bad press. She was brought in on the joke and went from punchline to comedian.
Once comfortable, the positive feedback allowed her a modicum of sincerity she hadn’t enjoyed in years prior, while her skit style comedy brought levity to the towering legacy she represented. Carey and her team recognised the media’s need for images of celebrities for content, the hunger of audiences for sincerity, and was able to cater her content for key audiences to project her modernised image.
Since her 2017 low point, Carey has been allowed to reposition herself within the public eye and has done so with grace and ease. Many cultural figures have attempted to be, as the saying goes, “down with the kids”. But Carey has found a way to acknowledge online culture, engage with it and thrive, without seeming desperate.
At the start of 2017 she was essentially a relic of pop music with a failed reality television show and increasingly poor publicity. In 2020, she managed to produce consistently viral content, push a 24-year-old song to number one (which now looks to do so every year around Christmastime) and change public perception surrounding her into a very positive place.
That is incredibly impressive.