What Your Favorite Celebrities Got for Christmas

You’ll be hard pressed to find friends and family who aren’t posting their gifts to social media during the holidays. And Hollywood—where promotion and status is king—is no exception. We’ll be sure to pop onto social media, and celebs will be doing their fair share of Tweeting, Instagramming, Snapchatting, etc. But while this could be dismissed as vapid and self-indulgent, how and why celebs take this route says a lot about the state of marketing.

Oprah is one celebrity who probably isn’t hard up for material possessions, but that didn’t stop her from taking to Instagram to thank Jimmy Fallon for the Christmas-themed dog sweaters he sent her way. “Look what @jimmyfallon gave me… Christmas sweaters for my doggies. Best gift ever! #FallonTonight,” the 2014 post reads. While some influencers will plug where products come from, Oprah only tagged Fallon and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” which kicked off earlier that year. For nighttime talk shows like “Conan,” “@midnight” (whose #HashtagWars segment trends on Twitter quite often) and “The Tonight Show,” effective hashtagging opens a brand to a whole new audience.

The medium is just as important as the message. And when it comes to Instagram, Oprah (whose net worth was estimated at $2.9 billion) plugging the growing brand was a strategic move. According to Keyhole, “The Tonight Show” doesn’t get as much buzz on Instagram as Twitter. All the more reason why this post wasn’t as impromptu as it may have appeared.

While places like Instagram seem like the best place to promote a product, it’s important to understand that sometimes a post’s reach and success cannot be measured solely by likes and shares. This is proven by actress Emma Roberts’ 2013 Christmas Instagram post, where she showed off her Hermès holiday grab. These Hermès H bracelets, which run in the upper $600 range, created quite a buzz when the “Unfabulous” actress showed off the jewelry with the caption “A Merry Christmas indeed!”

Unlike Oprah, Roberts didn’t thank anyone for the bracelet or give a formal shout out to the retailer. However, she did something just as valuable: She pointed her followers to a brand. And it looks like it worked. The days following and before Christmas, there wasn’t too much interest in the luxury item. However, Google’s measurement of the term “Hermes bracelets” shows that interest was piqued on Christmas day when Roberts posted. Though it’s impossible for us to fully gauge the conversion rate of these inquiries, it does provide some interesting evidence of how social media turns its users into active consumers.

And what would an article about social media and celebrities be without branding queen Taylor Swift? After all, a couple of years ago she had her fans wondering where her mom nabbed cat carriers embroidered with “Doctor Meredith Grey” and “Detective Olivia Benson.” However, it became apparent that Swift wasn’t advertising the carrier (whose brand was never disclosed), but rather essentially selling herself. Plug in the name of these two TV heroines and stories about Taylor Swift’s cats and their eye-catching carriers flood the top results. But this is nothing new to the “1989” songstress, as marketers have long been in awe of how her camp carefully curates her online and offline presence. What should resonate with posts like these is how human and relatable they are. The “just like us” angle rarely gets old, and makes a celeb or company seem accessible—just ask Taylor.

So what’s the takeaway in all of this? When it comes to celebs and Christmas gifts, it’s less about the boast and more about the brand.