A Marketing Lesson From Kanye West
September 13, 2009
Zach Wright

Twitter is already buzzing about Kanye West and his stunt at MTV’s Music Video Awards trying to upstage Taylor Swift. I don’t know if this is on purpose or not, but love it or hate it this was a genius marketing move on his part. See something that a lot of people forget in marketing (music marketing especially) is that alienating certain groups of people is a good thing. The good majority of Taylor Swift fans probably aren’t Kanye West fans. Therefore Kanye doing something to alienate her fans doesn’t really hurt him that much. The flipside is where the genius really comes into play. Kanye fans probably aren’t Taylor Swift fans, so what he did only encourages his fan base. When you proudly and publicly exclude a certain group of people who probably wouldn’t like your music in the first place, you energize the people who do. Americans thrive on controversey. We couldn’t stop talking about Britney shaving her head, or even Kanye’s most famous stunt so far saying “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Love him or hate him, the man knows how to sell records and keep his fans energized.

Article originally appeared on Music Think Tank (https://www.musicthinktank.com/).
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