The system embodied through social media is definitely one rooted in branding. Social media is an open ended platform for people to post any kind of content mostly without any boundaries which gives people freedom to be creative and personalize their account. One thing for sure is that social media is a very carefully curated ground: no one just posts arbitrarily, posts are selected and deliberate. This system can maybe be called brand strategy.
I think Anshu, like me, always wants to highlight the best in herself and in her life. She shares with her audience the good happy moments. She also uses a lot of humor in her captions and this could be a strategy to show that she is a very easy-going and laid-back person. However, maybe, like me, she is afraid that if she reveals too much about herself like the lows in her life, she will get criticism.
I think Anshu’s target audience is her friends as the posts and captions she shares seem like interests and activities she would like to share with her friends. Since there aren’t a lot of people in her photos, it could mean that she chooses her friends wisely and maybe she does not have a lot of friends, but a few quality friends. The theme of food tells me that she doesn’t care too much for diet or fitness and lives life to the fullest.
So after understanding that Anshu is an easy-going, intellectual, passionate foodie, I decided to make her ladoos (Indian dessert balls) out of paper and write my favorite Rupi Kaur poems on them. I put them in a Laudree macaroon box but covered the “Laudree” to say “Ladoo” instead. When I thought of how she is Indian but raised in another country (like me), I wanted to share some of these poems as Rupi Kaur is also an Indian Canadian.
After I gave Anshu the gift, she was extremely happy and was smiling the whole time. She thanked me multiple times and showed a lot of gratitude. I think she really liked the gift because she said she loves ladoos. She even said that she would get me a gift back.
Analysis:
Analyzing the photos: When I first look at the images, I notice a certain vibrancy. This might be due to the fact that Anshu is smiling in all of the photos of her and her colorscheme of her photos are quite colorful. One parallel in all of the photos of Anshu are that she is smiling and she is doing so with her teeth showing in most. In one photo, she uses both of her hands to draw attention to her food. In another, she is using her hands to touch a can of food in a grocery store. In the photo of her playing Jenga, she is squatting to carefully remove a Jenga block while smiling. In two more selfies, she is holding up food to the camera. Another photo is of her back to the camera looking off into a landscape. Anshu seems very comfortable in her own skin and always tries to stay happy and motivated. She is also an activist and wants to help spread awareness on the issues she cares about. She wants to explore and seek more experiences in life as she keeps posting throwbacks from her trip to Portugal. This could also indicate that she practices showing gratitude and this has a direct relationship with happiness.
Counter Gift Strategy for Max: Initially, Max was absent in the class in which we were to exchange our gifts so I did not receive a gift that day. There was no communication from him his side but I was expecting that he would bring me a gift next class. When next class came, he didn’t bring a gift so I didn’t really keep an expectation after that. He said he would bring me my gift in the next class but I really didn’t keep any hopes. When we were assigned to counter-gift, I didn’t think I was obligated to counter-gift because I didn’t receive a gift in the first place. I later thought I could give him a ziploc bag filled with salt showing how salty I was but then decided not to do that- I thought it might be insulting him and I didn’t think that would be too fair. I think it would only be fair to reciprocate by not giving him anything in return. I also think that this is another rule of gift-giving: you don’t have to counter-gift if you were not gifted anything in the first place. You don’t owe them anything and there should be no feeling of indebtedness or obligation. I was initially a bit let down to not receive a gift especially because I had worked so hard in making a handmade and thoughtful gift for someone else but then I realized that I really should not expect anything because true gift-giving is from the heart and selfless. I also realized in the end that it was just easier for me to not have to worry about a counter-gift for Max. He gave me a gift in that way- to not have to worry about an obligation. 🙂
