September 13, 2009 A Marketing Lesson From Kanye West
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.
Reader Comments (7)
the sad thing is ur absolutely right 100% but think about what that really means, it means the state of music has gone from "musical genius" to "marketing genius"........ I'm not against marketing in any way shape or form but staged or not it showed how little character he has to use making a young talented artist feel like she didnt deserve the award and I'm assuming it was racially motivated all to sell his terrible records, so where do we draw the line for what is acceptible or does that no longer matter, i've said it before and I'll keep saying it in every aspect of life "it's always just a newer better sales pitch, never just a great product at a great price"
I'm not sure the assumption is correct, that Kanye and Taylor don't share a fan base. They both have a "pop" appeal, and I have to think that he did negatively affect some of his fans. Overall, he comes out looking like a jerk and Taylor (who followed up with a great live performance while running through the subways) came off looking like a pro.
Maybe I should have been a little more clear. I'm sure Taylor Swift and Kanye West do share a fan base of some sort. I would venture to say though that someone who listens to both probably isn't a seriously dedicated fan of either (I may be wrong, but that's what I think). I'm sure some people who like Kanye were turned off but I would guess that his most hardcore fans probably not only agreed with what he said, thought he was a total bad ass for doing it. Of course there's also the flip side that Taylor Swifts fan will come out supporting her strongly because of it. I would guess that this altercation probably will benefit both of them in the end.
I wouldn't necessarily call this move marketing genius. He's already very well established and most people who care about this already have an opinion on his music. I'm a very casual Kanye fan and certainly not a Taylor Swift fan. If it were marketing genius, he'd be gaining something from it. I don't think its going to help him, but it probably won't hurt him much either. The only thing I've gotten out of this is that the dude is an a-hole. I already knew that. It doesn't make me want to listen to his music, but that won't stop me if I'm feelin one of his songs. I certainly won't feel bad for him if his career goes down the toilet.
What project is Kanye pushing, though? I don't think there's any marketing plan behind this. It's just what assholes do when they're on too much cocaine and nobody backstage has the balls to keep them from interrupting the ceremony.
Justin is absolutely correct. How was the enfant terrible of pop music allowed to waltz on stage so easily? Could it be that MTV didn't really didn't care because they knew whatever Kanye was going to do would only help to drive interest in the show? Kanye's outrageous, almost surreal behavior was fueled by nothing more than drugs, booze and narcissism. I think Kanye is in a bad place right now, a la Britney Spears, Mariah Carey... This was the work of a lonely, confused man.
Oh Kanye,
I actually dig some of Kanye's tracks.. I felt like he was actually trying to say something when he first came out. I wonder if he's losing fans because of all this. Sure, it gets people talking, but talking good things? Like i have hardly any respect for the guy these days.. but that's just me.
I think people like watching this type of stuff so the MTV producers might have urged him to do something crazy in exchange for more airplay (like that even matters much today).