Consumption. Mark Hudson

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1The Meanings of Consumption

      Coachella is a music and arts festival that happens every April in the city of Indio, California. Coachella is so cool, so self-explanatory that the answer to the number one question on the website’s FAQ “But Why?” is “Because.” Its 2019 music headliners featured heavy hitters such as Ariana Grande. It puts the festive in festival with the Pantene Styling Lounge, which encourages people to “be at the top of your content game & get your hair styled with glittery gold accessories,” and the “Sound + Sun = Fun” experience, where “Wearing Bose Frames & pairing them with your phone doesn’t just give you music for hours & style for miles – it also unlocks exclusive audio content in the official Coachella app.” Its 2019 sponsor list runs from Absolut and Amazon to Uber and YouTube. The UK’s Sun deemed Coachella “one of the most ‘FOMO’-inducing events of the year” (Wakefield, 2019). For those, like ourselves, who need the urban dictionary to understand even outdated terms, FOMO is fear of missing out – the anxiety you experience from missing a crucial event, often brought on by viewing posts on social media.

Part of the story of Coachella revolves around the importance of the festival as a vehicle for marketing. The sponsors not only appear prominently on the webpage but they are integrated into the very event itself, putting their names on parties and activities. This may represent a change from some concerts of the distant past, such as Woodstock, but this marketing path has been well travelled by big events such as Lolapalooza, which debuted way back in 1991.

      What is also notable about Coachella and many similar culturally important events is that they are no longer merely events that people enjoy as consumers. They are also inputs into the production of something that had barely been conceived when Lolapalooza first grunged its way on stage. The 2019 Coachella festival was attended by the likes of Kendall Jenner, Olivia Culpo, Hailey Bieber, Gigi Hadid and Emma Chamberlain, some of the biggest influencers in the world. To take one from the list, Emma Chamberlain is an eighteen-year-old who, in 2019, had 8 million YouTube subscribers and another 7.7 million followers on Instagram. By some estimates she was earning around $2 million from the ads on her YouTube channel alone (Lorenz, 2019). Her product, distributed on social networks such as Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, is herself, or at least an infotainment version of her life. Influencers like Chamberlain make money by signing contracts with brands eager to have their products associated with people’s real life stories. Of course, the more followers an influencer has, and the better able they are to create sales for their sponsors, the bigger the contract. Chamberlain, for example, has a partnership with Hollister, which involves her posing for Instagram posts in its clothes. Our interest in their daily lives really functions – from their point of view and that of their sponsoring companies – only to make us into more enthusiastic consumers.

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