Last November 1, when the world was barely recovering from Halloween and its pumpkins, singer Mariah Carey posted a video on social networks that illustrates the weight she can have as the end festivities approach. of year. As every year, the return of All I Want For Christmas Is You, recognizable in a few notes, marks the launch of Christmas, including from the beginning of November. A marketing strategy that the American singer has been applying for more than twenty years, to the delight of social networks… and brands.
“She’s the queen of marketing,” explains Marc Jahjah, lecturer in the Department of Information and Communication at the University of Nantes. She has a real talent and an intuition to feel the transformations of an era. »
However, All I Want For Christmas Is You, released in 1994, was not necessarily destined for such success. Inspired by her relationship with Tommy Mottola (21 years her senior), it’s a “small bet” according to Marc Jahjah. “In the 1990s, making a Christmas album was for old artists on the decline. Until the 2000s, the song made its merry way, and would become more and more in demand during Mariah Carey’s concerts. In 2003, its use in the film Love Actually, sung by the young Olivia Olson, will help make the song cult. And the singer will understand how to reinvent it to make it an essential hit.
A marketing and advertising empire
From 1997/1998, Mariah Carey will transform her song, and over the years, associate with other artists to release new versions: more R’N’B, or more pop with Justin Bieber, jazzy with Michael Bublé… “The song will take the form of its environment, it constantly adapts it to social expectations, to its career, to what it feels about society… That is its strength, notes Marc Jahjah. She has been working for more than twenty-five years to make socially, cognitively, and in a marketing sense, her title comprehensible”. From the first musical notes, we know what awaits us. All I Want For Christmas Is You has become inseparable from the smell of the fir tree and the lights in the snow.
“She will play with her own mythology, and she will be helped by the media, which needs repetition and references” develops Marc Jahjah. Mariah Carey presents herself, and is presented as the queen of Christmas: associating her with Christmas makes it possible to identify her, quote her and call on a reference that (almost) everyone shares.
Especially since over time, Mariah Carey is positioned on all fronts, chaining advertising campaigns with McDonald’s or other major brands. According The Economist, the song would earn the singer an average of $2.6 million a year. At the beginning of December 2021, she broke records, since All I Want For Christmas Is You has been streamed over five million times a day on Spotify. The proliferation of platforms and social networks continued to fuel the success of the song, through remix and reuse effects. On TikTok, for example, the flagship song unfolds both to talk about Christmas gifts and trips to New York, while going through many memes and parodies. “It contributes to the construction of the public” according to Marc Jahjah. And then use All I Want For Christmas Is Youit is the certainty that the reference will be understood by the greatest number, even in several years.
An idealization of American society and its symbols
As Marc Jahjah explains in a long documented thread, “Mariah Carey has become a figurative element of Christmas – in the same way as the Christmas tree, hot chocolate… – which today populates social memory”. Because yes, now, Mariah Carey’s flagship song haunts our social networks like the big shopping centers as the holidays approach: it has become a central element of the Mariah Carey icon. “The little high note with the finger on the ear, his dance, the red coat, the background of snow and fir trees…” lists Marc Jahjah. So many elements that combine to make the diva the queen of Christmas. For all time ? Not necessarily, according to the researcher. “The song will cross the ages but not Mariah Carey. It’s the paradoxical ransom of fame: the songs end up becoming anonymous,” he points out.
Especially since Mariah Carey does not just produce music, but images: on social networks or in her clips, the star feeds a certain image of the Christmas holidays. “It’s a phantasmagoric celebration of American life, of secularized Christianity, of heteronormative life, a celebration of market life…” develops Marc Jahjah. And the star, mixed-race, distills a utopian vision of the United States, where whites and blacks walk hand in hand. “In an America quite shaken by the Trump years, his music contributes to pacification” adds the teacher-researcher. Supported by the media, mixed and remixed by social networks, would Mariah Carey be more famous than Jesus Christ during the Christmas holidays? “Maybe there’s Jesus and his assistant, Mariah Carey,” laughs Marc Jahjah. In any case, an assistant who leaves the same song in your head for more than a month.