Despite making headlines for recently entering the beauty space – it’s no secret that David Dobrik is most well known for his giveaways…namely of Teslas.
While the viral star’s M.O. is usually to giveaway cars to celebrate birthdays or brand partnerships, his most recent efforts are much more political. Announced on Wednesday, 30th September on Instagram, David shared his intentions to give five white Tesla Model 3’s away in return for proof of voter registration by Monday, 5th October.
In partnership with HeadCount, a non-profit that traditionally works with musicians to register voters at live music events; the giveaway challenged Instagram users to share the post to their story, tag a friend in the comments and verify voter registration with HeadCount via text, online or mail, to be eligible to win.
Testament to the power of the next generation of Internet stars, the New York based organisation has recently reported the collaboration as driving the single largest number of voting registrations since the organisation’s inception in 2004; nearly 120,000.
Despite working with celebrities including Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish for similar campaigns in the past, the founder of HeadCount, Andy Bernstein told Forbes, the result was “Absolutely unprecedented. [I’ve] Never seen anything like it,” he said. “We’ve registered close to 1 million voters over our lifetime, and more than a tenth of that has now come from David.”
As a non-US citizen, born in Slovakia and living in the US under the Obama-era DREAM Act, David has urged his followers to vote as he isn’t able to: “I can’t vote. I’m not a citizen. I think that’s why I wanted to do this,” he explained. Many have noted he has not pressured any particular direction, merely encouraging people to engage in the discussion and use their voice instead.
As an inherently political generation, Gen-Z have had a few major pushes for voter registration in the lead up to the 2020 Presidential Election, unsurprisingly the biggest coming from social media platforms and stars. As an individual, David’s contribution has been unparalleled, challenging even that of Taylor Swift’s 2018 call to action, which saw 65,000 registrations in the 24 hours immediately following. Forbes have also noted, Snap Inc. is responsible for 1 million registration, 85% of which are under 24. Similarly, Facebook’s efforts to push registrations up have seen 2.5 million additions to the voting roll.
The winners of the Teslas have since been selected and were reportedly notified via Facetime by David, himself.
And that’s on the power of viral stars.