Getty Kris Jenner, Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner, and Kim Kardashian.
Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner have built sweat equity through social media and television.
This type of popularity is not new, however.
On last week’s episode of the Scoop B Radio Podcast, Fred Mwangaguhungahe, founder of Mediatakeout.com checked in an discussed the Kardashian effect and who could be the next.
Check out our Q&A below:
Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson: When you look at the Kardashian effect of just the blurring of influencer, move maker, celebrity and more, do you think that — I guess the next wave newsmakers are that regard. Who do you think will replace that or have that “Kardashian” wave when it comes to bloggers making their payday off of newsmakers like them? Who’s next?
Fred Mwangaguhunga: Well I think a lot of times people look at it like – Take a look at someone like Kim Kardashian or Kylie Jenner and say wow, this is something new in the social media era. It really isn’t. We’ve always had celebrities and we assumed that the people that we thought were celebrities were the people that we thought of were artists. Either recording artists, actors, you know – sports stars… or that’s the way we think that, that’s the way it was you know, like 30 years ago. In the 1980’s let’s say. And that’s partially true and that’s partially not. You think about who the big stars in the 1980’s were… there were stars that were. Michael Jackson. He was a singer and star. And then you look at other people like Elizabeth Taylor. She was a HUGE star in the 1980’s. What is it that Elizabeth Taylor did in the 80’s to make her a star? I think her last movie was like in 1969. So she was a retired older movie star and she is one of the biggest movie stars in the world. How is that possible? She wasn’t making any movies, she wasn’t singing, she wasn’t an athlete… how is she one of the biggest stars in the world? And the thing is, she was actually using a lot of the tactics that you see the Kardashians using now. Think about it. She had like, eight husbands, she made friends with people like Michael Jackson, she had a huge bunch of celebrity friends, she had a ton of scandals in her personal life, and she was just really an interesting person. Because it was a name that everybody knew as a movie star from earlier and she had this really crazy interesting life. So what she did in the 1980’s is very close to what Kim Kardashian is doing right now. She [Kim] obviously wasn’t a movie star from 12 years ago but she’s a name that everybody knows that lived for a large portion of her life, a scandalous life. And she was good to look at and so she became a star. And so what I think five years from now or ten years from now who’s going to be the next person? It’s going to be someone just like that. Another good looking woman with a scandalous life, that there’s some aspirational value to her. Maybe she hangs around with a bunch of celebrities. And what medium she uses, where you know – Elizabeth Taylor used tabloids like National Inquirer. Kim used social media and blogs. The next person is going to use whatever it is available at the time.