Only four years have passed since tweet was announced as the American Dialect Society’s word of the year, back in 2009. How things have transformed in this area over such a short period of time, and to think that the main use of this word five years ago was to describe the sound of a bird. With other previous winners such as app in 2010 and hashtag in 2012, Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013 is selfie.

Selfie is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.” The word has seen an astronomical rise in its use with its frequency having increased by 17,000% since 2012. There are over 57 million photos containing the hashtag #selfie on Instagram, and the word faced stiff competition for the Word of the Year prize, from words like twerk (prompted by the popstar Miley Cyrus) and schmeat (synthetic meat).

Dead Yourself

With the popularity and ever-growing use of selfie, it has led to marketers and advertisers taking note. There have been several approaches to taking advantage of this trend, with AMC Networks being one of the first to respond with a dedicated app for its television show The Walking Dead.

The campaign – titled ‘Dead Yourself’ – encouraged viewers to take selfies and the app would covert their image into a zombiefied version. It generated huge success with over 4.5 million downloads and upwards of 11 million selfies uploaded.

Darth Vader takes a selfie

With Disney having acquired the Star Wars brand, and the first of the new series of films set to be released towards the end of 2015, their marketing efforts have already begun. Posted on the official Star Wars Instagram account was a selfie of Darth Vader. The first Star Wars movie was released 36 years ago, and Disney have adopted this modern approach to capture a younger generation of moviegoers, who will hopefully become as encapsulated in the new series as the originals.

The selfie shootout

Turkish Airlines is also looking to benefit from the word of the year with an advert featuring two of the world’s leading sports stars. Lionel Messi and Kobe Bryant appear in the ad, competing with each other over who can take the best selfie, with lions, mountains, and sharks all involved. This ad quickly rose in popularity and was viewed over 15 million times in the space of two days on YouTube, and at the time of writing this post, has been viewed over 135 million times.

With the word of the year prompting such a loud response, we’re wondering what this year’s trend will be. We’d love to know what you think: what will be 2014’s word of the year? Extra kudos if you let us know with an accompanying selfie.

By Richard Dukes