Bro appeal: @DanBilzerian & @DjKhaled coming to a screen near you.

By Gonzalo López Martí    Creative director, etc / LMMIAMI.COM

• Why does Dan Bilzerian, aka the king of Instagram, have 16 million followers on said social platform?
• Plus 10 million fans on Facebook and some 1.5 million followers on Twitter?
• Why does DJ Khaled, né Khaled Mohamed Khaled and also known as the king of Snapchat, reigns over 6 million followers?
• Plus 3 million on Instagram and another 3 million and change on Twitter?
• Bilzerian, a supposedly filthy rich man child with a penchant for professional poker, weight lifting, sex workers of the female gender, wild weekends in Vegas, exotic cars, private jets and helicopters, recreational intoxicants, assault weapons and lightweight artillery is in his mid 30s.
• Khaled, a chubby teddy bear with protruding manboobs, is a former radio deejay and current hip hop record producer slash urban lifestyle impresario in his early 40s.
• Their teenage years are far behind yet they both seem to have a keen intuitive ability to master social media content creation with off-the-charts results.
• The two of them are partial to donning bushy beards and they have ethnic origins: the former a grandchild of an Armenian immigrant, the latter the offspring of Palestinian ones.
• The two of them display an inclination to behave with swagger and machismo (in Bilzerian’s case it tends to veer into misogyny).
• They are bros through & through.
• But the commonalities end there.
• To judge by the deadly arsenal he keeps at home, Bilzerian is most probably a diehard Republican and card-carrying NRA member, whereas Khaled is a vocal Obama fan (to the point that he repeatedly and emphatically endorses the virtues of the Affordable Care Act on his Snaps).
• Can we say these guys are the new literary figures, the new auteurs of our age?
• The Dickens, Hemingways, Hitchcocks & Fellinis of the early 21st century?
• Then again, if you ask me, neither of them is particularly talented, witty, clever, articulate, original, photogenic or physically attractive.
• Quite the opposite.
• Bilzerian has the habit of waxing poetic about his outrageous lifestyle, mostly with humble bragging and tongue-in-cheek, subtly nihilistic bon mots.
• Khaled’s persona is a sort of a gangsta Tony Robbins, a self-help guru slash lifestyle coach who expresses himself in a pseudo ghetto overacted brand of ebonics.
• They do have a certain je ne sais quoi, needless to say.
• They can turn a phrase.
• They project a certain devil-may-care self-made success.
• Plus both seem to be quite savvy at managing their wealth.
• Bilzerian allegedly inherited a considerable stash from his convicted felon and fugitive father.
• Khaled produces music and sells clothing under the brand We the best.
• And boy they are prolific.
• Extremely so.
• They punctiliously document every single detail of their everyday lives with their mobile phone cameras.
• They live for and by their social feeds.
• Do you remember, dear reader, when texting was not considered a manly thing?
• Let alone tweeting.
• Let alone tweeting about one’s feelings or emotions.
• Selfies?
• Ugh.
• Totally emasculating, right?
• Well.
• Times have changed.
• Bros have jumped into social media with both feet.
• And what would the root be of the prodigious outbreak of oversharing, exhibitionism & voyeurism we’re partaking of in 2016?
• Bilzerian has an interesting insight: “it does make me feel better about being neglected as a child”.
• However, methinks these social media wildfires usually include a dose of cringe-inducing irony.
• On the follower’s side, that is.
• More often than not we follow these social media influencers in an ironic way.
• Not unlike the fascination of watching a high wire act.
• We want the artist to pull it off but we would enjoy it too if he/she crashes into the floor.
• Maybe even more so.
• Admit it, as much as we worship them we just love it when Kanye or Lady Gaga or Bono or Madonna trip on stage and fall on their rear end.
• See, most social media celebs carry about themselves the ominous mouthwatering anticipation of the train wreck waiting to happen (Donald Trump anyone?)
• When is he/she going to make an fool of him/herself in front of his/her millions of followers?
• When is the hubris gonna get the better of him/her?
• When will he/she put his/her foot in his/her mouth?
• When is he/she going to go too far with one of his/her stunts?
• In Dan Bilzerian’s case, when is he going to literally shoot himself in the foot with one of his dozens of assault rifles?
• It is horrible to admit it but millions of gawkers are waiting with fruition for the day Mr. Bilzerian puts a bullet in himself or in one of her escorts.
• Aka “pulling a Pistorius”.
• On camera.
• In Spanish it is called “morbo” (morbid fascination?).
• Schandenfreude.
• Rubbernecking.
• A filthy unspeakable guilty pleasure.
• As much as I regret to admit it, these days this seems to be the pixie dust, the “talent” to obtain permission from a millions of drooling social media groupies
• So.
• Let’ bring it down a few notches and try to apply the phenomenon described above to our line of business: marketing & advertising.
• If you manage a brand, you might not be willing to cast your lot with loose cannons such as Bilzerian or Khaled.
• Still, you still need real, attention-paying followers on social media.
• In which case, you might want to borrow a page from the Bilzerian/Khaled playbook, to wit:
• -Show your brand’s vulnerabilities.
• -Be prolific and spontaneous.
• -Go out on a limb.
• -Don’t try to please everyone.
• -Pick a fight every now and then to prove that you stand for something (see Apple’s Tim Cook v the FBI)
• -Take risks (calculated risks but risks nonetheless).
• -If it all seems too art directed, too curated, too manufactured, too manicured and too sanctioned by the legal department nobody will give a damn.
• And now for one last rhetorical question: how many advertising creatives do you know, let alone account execs or strategic planners, who even have a tiny fraction of the social media firepower of a Dan Bilzerian or a DK Khaled?
• A tiny weeny fraction.
• Aren’t we supposed to be the ultimate connoisseurs of the deep insights and motivations of human behavior?
• Don’t we sell ourselves as the masterminds & shapers of pop culture tastes & trends?
• Where did we go wrong?
• When did we miss the train?
• As far as I know, the only advertising creative director who actually made it on social media is Eduardo Salles, former ECD at Flock in Ciudad de México, and currently the mastermind behind Pictoline (@pictoline)
• But we’ll leave this existential query for another column.