Final Project: David Dobrik

Introduction:

For those of you who don’t know David Dobrik, he is a 23-year-old YouTube sensation. He was born in Košice, Slovakia, and then eventually moved to Vernon Hills, Illinois when he was six years old, and since he was not born in the United States, Dobrik is protected under DACA. Dobrik first got his start on the popular phone app ‘Vine’, the company eventually shut down in January of 2017. He began to post his videos on YouTube in July of 2015 and since then has created over 600 daily vlogs. The friend group that Dobrik vlogs with is primarily known as the ‘Vlog Squad’, they all are featured in each other’s videos and constantly support one another with their successes. As well as having a popular vlog channel, Dobrik also hosts a podcast called ‘Views’ with his co-host and friend Jason Nash. He and Nash started this podcast in 2017, and have put up 140 episodes, which can be found on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. On top of everything. Dobrik has been able to brand his name and his company by not only having a YouTube channel and Podcast platform, he is also able to brand himself by creating merch for people to buy. One of the things that David Dobrik is known for, is his use of ‘Clickbait’ and the way he words the titles if his videos to get people to watch them, thus the creation of his ‘Clickbait’ merchandise.

Social Media Presence Overview:

Social Media Platforms:

Number of Followers:

  • Instagram: 11.2 Million
  • Twitter: 4.3 Million
  • YouTube: 15.3 Million Subscribers
  • Facebook: 758K Likes; 1.3 Million Followers

Extra Activity:

Analysis and Evaluation:

When you Google ‘David Dobrik’ the first thing that comes up is his YouTube channel, which is where most of his following comes from. If you look to the right of the webpage it lists out various things about the YouTuber, for example, it states that he was married to his friends mother, Lorraine Nash, and yes this is his friend whom he co-hosts with on his podcast. Dobrik had married Nash’s mother as a joke for one of his videos. The joke went as far as the couple marrying in Las Vegas, then honeymooning in Hawaii. Sadly, after a little over a month, the two decided to call it quits, however the two remain to be good friends. The farther down you scroll the only things that pop up are the other social media platforms that Dobrik is currently on, such as his second YouTube channel, as well as his Twitter and Instagram pages. One of the things that pops up is the newest app that he had come out with called ‘David’s Disposable”. In many of his videos you see him use a disposable camera, where he then develops them and shares them on social media. For the first few weeks of the app being released, it was as the top of the charts on the app store.

Instagram:

On both Instagram and Twitter, Dobrik has the same profile picture and bio. The bio is ‘Sexy, Gorgeous, and Humble’ and along with that he also lists his Snapchat and Twitter handle, as well the link to the website where he sells his merch. His profile picture is just a simple headshot with a yellow background. In two of his recent posts, you can see a picture of Dobrik with Justin Bieber, and another with Nicole Scherzinger from the Pussycat Dolls. In many of his videos, he brings in famous celebrities to surprise his friends and fans with. I would, say he is quite active on Instagram, especially after he posts one of his vlogs.

Just a few weeks ago he posted an Instagram story of him putting out a contest where he was going to be giving one of his followers a Tesla, this caused for an uproar of people reposting the picture in order to try and win.

On top of having his main Instagram page, he also has a second account that is dedicated to him posting all the pictures that he takes on the disposable cameras (@davidsdisposable). This account only has 3 million followers, but it gives the followers a look on how Dobrik spends his time with his close friends when he’s not busy filming his vlogs, not to mention it leaves behind great memories.

Twitter:

As previously mentioned, the profile picture on Twitter is the same as the one on Instagram, a simple headshot with a yellow background, as for the header its just a plain yellow background. On Twitter he interacts with fans occasionally, usually he announces that one person to retweet one of the tweets regarding his next video will get a shoutout. A lot of the content that we see on Twitter, you can also find on his Instagram page.

Facebook:

This is probably the one social media platform that he is least active on, he normally posts the usual updates about his new videos going up. Like Instagram and Twitter, the profile picture and header are the same photos.

YouTube:

This is one of the most active forms of social media for Dobrik, he usually tries to post a new video every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. However, it seems that the scheduled posting times have changed from Thursday and Sunday. There was a point in time where Dobrik had temporarily stopped the videos to work on a big project. There were a few statements that were said, talking about how this big project was going to be his last vlog. The reason that it was not the last vlog was because Dobrik was working to try and turn his channel into a television show, the plan fell through and he had decided to continue with the daily vlogs.

As of right now, Dobrik most viewed video is titled, ‘we broke up’ with over 60M views. This was the video that Dobrik and his ex-girlfriend, Liza Koshy, had posted to announce that they had decided to separate after two years. Note: this is the only video that is in all lowercase, when all the other videos are in all caps. In an earlier vlog, he had mentioned that the only time he would do an all lowercase caption was if something serious were to happen, and this was a shock to everyone. The two continued to be friends, but you could tell that things were different in the videos, however, it was not a bad thing, you can tell that even everything he went through, he still is happy with the content that he is putting out.

Commendations and Recommendations:            

I genuinely think that David Dobrik is much different then any other YouTuber I’ve watched; he seems to care about his work and friend group. In the past few years, he’s given away a little more then ten cars between his friends, and even a few people who he didn’t even know. There was a video when he bought a whole bunch of iPads for the kids in the neighborhood, and he even surprised a girl with 5 thousand dollars to help pay for her college tuition. I feel that this is something that I don’t feel you don’t see all the time; he likes to be able to give back to people. I think that he does a good job with his self-branding, he can put out content and merchandise that he is proud for people to see/ have. I think for a 23-year-old, I’d say he’s doing well for himself. For his social media platforms, I feel that he is most active on pretty much all of them except Facebook, I do think it would be nice for more fan interaction, but overall I don’t believe there is much more that he should do for his image, his digital footprint doesn’t bring up anything bad that could potentially ruin the career he made for himself.

Published by Caitlin O'Reilly

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