NO doubt about it: YouTube has catapulted local and foreign personalities to stardom.
This didn’t escape King Tongol and Joana Zandra Carasco, both 21 years old.
Tongol, a medical technology student at the Manila Central University and a member of the ABS-CBN Talent Center, says his friends encouraged him to be a fashion blogger. So far, he has 48,000 followers.
At present, Tongol continues to be active in social media by modeling the latest models of Skechers, a major American shoe brand.
Carasco, who just recently graduated with a management degree in an exclusive school, entered the social media via Instagram. Since she is a fashionista at heart, Carasco followed an advice of a friend to open a blog.
“I followed her suggestion to open a personal blog; I don’t need to upload all the pictures I took online,” Carasco says.
Carasco, meanwhile, has around 50,000 a month in terms of hits while she has 25,000 in her Instagram account.
She admits it was not a walk in the park to achieve popularity. It started as a personal hobby, she said, until I got noticed in the social media and later offered invitations to do events.
“I was offered to conduct different campaigns from different clothing brands,” says Carasco, who is currently working on a campaign for a makeup product.
At present, she does social-media events for two clothing brands that are sponsoring her web site targeted on fashionistas.
Tongol and Carasco say they enjoy their job as endorsers of Skechers.
Joseph Asong, PR manager of Skechers, realizes the high market potential of millennials, like Tongol and Carasco.
“Skechers does not want to ride on the bandwagon trend of introducing fancy rubber shoes,” Asong said. “We are creating our own trend starting with the millennials because the millennials understand how fashion works.”
He says Skechers wants to capitalize on the phenomenon called the sporty leisure getup. Expounding, he says the getup is sporty but does not necessarily mean the user will go to the gym instead of the mall.
Since the millennials are also known as the “I” generation, Asong says Skechers want to tell millennials to be true to their selves. With the rise of social media where every millennial has a social-media page, majority of them want to be popular.
However, Asong said millennials would be forced to create a different persona and become afraid to be rejected.
“We want millennials to articulate themselves,” Asong said. “We also encourage millennials to pursue a healthy lifestyle and, at the same time, pursue their own identity through their personal fashion taste.”