About 20 years ago, Run-DMC stepped onto the stage at a sold-out Madison Square Garden in their signature white Adidas Shell Tops. Then, with Adidas executives watching, they performed the tune “My Adidas” and asked fans to hold up their Shell Tops.
Smart move. Months later, Adidas signed a $1.5 million marketing deal with Run-DMC. And that was just the start.
Urban music, of which hip-hop is a subset, has since overcome its antisocial “gangsta” image to become a crossover phenomenon. Marketing partnerships with hip-hop acts can cost from $500,000 to $10 million, depending on the artist’s reputation. But there’s a huge potential payoff: African Americans, who constitute the core audience for urban music, are expected to have $1.1 trillion in buying power by 2012, according to a recent study by Packaged Facts. Then there’s the buying power of young Hispanic and Caucasian fans.
“Companies have embraced hip-hop because they want to get cool artists next to the brand,” says Steve Stoute, CEO of Translation Consultation and Brand Imaging.
Case in point: Lexus. It recently shelled out big bucks to sponsor Alicia Keys’ 32-city “As I Am” concert tour.
“There was a natural shared DNA between Alicia and Lexus,” says Steve Jett, the brand’s national marketing communications manager. “She represents something special from an artistic perspective. She represents the highest quality in styling.”
But there was more to it than that. Keys gave Lexus an opportunity to address upscale African-American consumers it hadn’t reached before.
The brand made an impression without doing a hard sell. Its vehicles were displayed at concert-venue entrances and listening lounges were stocked with brochures. In addition, there was signage onstage and complimentary parking for the first 100 Lexus drivers who arrived.
“We don’t want to force the product story on them,” Jett adds. “We want it to be ingrained in the environment.”
Lexus also worked with Keys to create a “Keys to Innovation” campaign. It recognized 10 schools for their green programs, awarding $2,000 grants and a chance to win $10,000.
Brands need one-to-one relationships like this in an era of increasing media fragmentation, says Aaron Walton, principal of Walton Isaacson, which brokered the sponsorship. And it’s not only about money.
“Brands can reach a much bigger audience than some of the record labels could on their own,” he says. “And the brands aren’t changing the artist.”
In fact, urban music lends itself to commercialization, adds Forrester Research media analyst James McQuivey: “The bling and self-promotion of a hip-hop artist is consistent with the promotional side of things.”
But there’s a bigger change going on — what Stoute calls the “tanning of America.” As he sees it, African Americans, Hispanics and other ethnic groups are finding common ground under the urban music tent. And this is having “a cultural effect on marketing brands and products,” especially when combined with the rise of digital media, he says.
Stoute should know. He brokered a landmark deal for rapper Jay-Z in 2002 with another mega shoe brand — Reebok. “The fact that you could sell sneakers through a lifestyle figure was a breakthrough,” he says. And he later scored another milestone by linking Jay-Z and Hewlett-Packard. Recently, Stoute landed Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé Knowles for McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” campaign.
To date, the daring brands have been automobile makers, apparel companies and wireless carriers. But this pool is expanding — for example, Totes recently struck a deal with singer Rihanna, Stoute says.
Moreover, Cover Girl is working with both Rihanna and Queen Latifah. The latter is helping to design a new line of products for the cosmetics manufacturer.
“The stigma of hip-hop music as not being advertising friendly has gone away,” says Ryan Schinman, CEO of Platinum Rye Entertainment. “It resonates globally and [the artists aren’t] afraid to take a chance in the way they market themselves and their music.”
Schinman’s firm counts 30 Fortune 500 companies among its clients, with many open to deals with urban music makers.
Some marketers marvel at how cooperative the hip-hop artists are. They’re willing to make personal appearances, and several help with the marketing. When rapper 50 Cent teamed with Pontiac, he sat down with the automaker’s team, told them how much he liked their cars and brainstormed with them. The result was a long, successful campaign that included a concert-tour sponsorship.
“They’re longer deals, they’re more integrated deals,” Schinman says, adding that unknown artists need this marketing support to find their audiences: “There’s a whole class of emerging artists who want the associations. They need to use some marketing muscle to get their songs out there and get them heard.”
For example, Island Def Jam set up a relationship between then-unknown Rihanna with Procter & Gamble prior to the release of her first album. Similarly, Sony BMG’s Zomba label struck a deal with Champs to screen Chris Brown’s first music video in its stores prior to his debut CD release. Brown subsequently won deals with Levi’s and Ford, which supported his tour last year to highlight its Sync mobile phone/digital music system.
Why should a brand back an unknown? Because of the constant hunger for new celebrities.
“I think that the cat’s out of the bag now,” Stoute says. “Music is more popular than ever. A new artist is a ringtone away from being a tech superstar.”
PURE PROMOTION
The resulting campaigns are a promotional marketer’s dream.
Specialty women’s retailer Wet Seal struck a deal with Geffen Records to promote Prima J with an online sweepstakes. The winner gets a makeover and a barbecue with the duo.
Prima J’s MySpace page features a shot of them in Wet Seal apparel. Tracks from their debut CD will be played in 400 Wet Seal stores around the country, where the disc will be available for $10.50.
Toyota made mileage on a campaign for its Yaris subcompact, bringing rappers Dice Raw and Truck North into the action. It also sponsored local DJ competitions.
“You’re often able to interact with them a lot more,” says Toyota spokesman Chad Harp. “These are the true hip-hop artists. You have to do it the right way and let them discover you.” Toyota is considering a similar campaign for the redesigned 2009 Matrix.
Then there are the events. AT&T Wireless is title sponsor of the Vans Warped Tour, which includes hip-hop artists in its changing lineup. AT&T is sponsoring the Lollapalooza event in Chicago next month and the Austin City Limits Festival in September.
“It makes us relevant,” says Mimi Chan, AT&T’s director of national marketing. “It means we care about what they care about.”
AT&T posts concert highlights on its blue room video site, and makes updates available via wireless.
Sponsorship spending on concert tours and festivals is expected to top $1 billion this year in the United States, according to the IEG Sponsorship Report. And urban music will get its share because it’s “clearly migrated to the mainstream,” says David Bell, Zomba’s director of digital marketing. “Urban is pop music at this point.”
But there are risks, as Pepsi discovered years ago when it dumped a deal with rapper Ludacris after Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly criticized lyrics by the Def Jam artist.
Not to worry. Forrester’s McQuivey suggests that the Madonna method — doing something controversial to attract attention — can work to an artist’s advantage.
Either way, these performers will soon start to resemble NASCAR drivers. “At some point, musicians will be the same type of promotional icons that sports celebrities have become,” McQuivey says.
And, of course, social media can play a large role.
Giant Step CEO Maurice Bernstein notes that his company leverages relationships with IBeam, MySpace and YouTube to “seed” music and information, as it did in a recent campaign for Def Jam band The Roots.
“It’s turned into one of the most significant ways to market new recordings,” he says.
Years ago, Bernstein recalls, artists were reluctant to “sell out” by striking commercial deals. But now the bands and brands are on the same wavelength.
“It gives the brands a point of view,” he adds. “They look smart.”
VARIABLE VIRAL VIDEO
The viral side of music videos just got a bit more so with the advent of SplashCast, a social network gaining traction among the major labels.
SplashCast provides a movable window of a performer’s video with a template to enable messaging. Users can transfer their favorites to a MySpace page and share them. They can post videos, pictures or comments and chat with other users.
The service will soon allow insertion of its advertising into the video streams, thanks to HotSpot technology.
In a nod to the popularity of urban music, SplashCast is setting up a site for an established rap star it declined to identify, and expects he’ll be one among many.
“To date we’ve worked with labels,” says SplashCast CEO Michael Berkley. “Now we’re working with artists themselves, particularly in the urban category.”
The urban music channels created by SplashCast get the most viral distribution. The typical user is a tech-savvy African American ranging in age from 14 to 19. Females are in the majority.
SplashCast already has distribution deals in place with Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Geffen, Warner Bros., MTV, NPR and PBS.
“It’s all about connecting our conversation,” says David Bell, director of digital marketing for Sony BMG’s Zomba label. “It’s about creating new communities, creating communities of our own.”
Bell says songs usually are a bigger draw than artists. But Chris Brown‘s is the most popular of the 40 SplashCast channels featured on Sony BMG’s site. Roughly 40,000 users added it to their MySpace or Facebook pages within a month of its posting. It eventually was embedded in more than 75,000 pages.
Visitors “gobble up immediately” any news about stars like Brown, Bell notes, adding that urban music is the subject of a “huge number” of blogs. He says Zomba hopes to build content sites in collaboration with brands.
SplashCast plans a reality series on its “mystery” hip-hopper’s site.
“Once it’s out there on tens or hundreds of thousands of MySpace pages, the fans will be able to influence the reality show,” Berkley says. “It’s enabling artists to create content in a very efficient, cost-effective manner so they can essentially have a videographer follow them around, create this in real time and edit it.” — RT
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