Mickey Factz

Recently, Honda enlisted up-and-coming artist Mickey Factz to endorse their Honda Accord. The resulting commercial is displayed below.

AdAge suggests that this is a smart marketing move on Honda’s part, and a great way to authentically incorporate hip-hop into their marketing. They say,

Hip-hop’s decade of bling is popping, and it looks more like the housing bubble than a champagne cork. So why, at this point, would anyone take financial cues from a culture marked by conspicuous consumption? Honda Motor Co. thinks it has an answer.

and

“We wanted the balance of having style, a cool look and a cool lifestyle, but doing it in a way that’s sensible for the times,” said Barbara Ponce, manager-diversity advertising at Honda.

Woooha.com’s Scott Yeti is quoted as saying that he “isn’t sure the campaign will keep hip-hop fans engaged”:

“It’s still too early to tell and maybe Honda has some more tricks up their sleeves with this campaign, but I don’t know if the hook there is strong enough to maintain a strong consumer base that will keep coming back.”

We’ll all have to wait and see. The general murmuring around hip-hop business circles is that it’s a good look personally for Factz, but may not be as effective for Honda, or engaging for hip-hop heads, as Honda would like.

Thoughts?

Jadakiss in Letter to B.I.G.

According to Gawker.com, not only is Coogi aware of the affinity the late Brooklyn rhyme God had for it’s sweaters, they used this connection to their advantage by compensating Jadakiss for the brand-drop in his tribute song “Letter to B.I.G.”

As we have seen in movies and TV, there has been a huge increase in product placement in recent years, the act of integrating a product or brand within actual programming. This practice has been rising exponentially in TV in particular to combat TiVo-like recording, where one can fast-forward through commercials.

As evidenced by Forever, the Chris-Brown-sings-a-four-minute-jingle-disguised-as-a-hit-single deal last year, this practice is increasingly finding its way into the music business as well.

Questions:

1. Is this kind of arranged, corporate-sponsored lyrics going to backfire at some point, as even the most naive-minded of audience members realizes they are constantly being duped and that there may be no “real” music anymore?
2. Should Jadakiss be “called out” for accepting corporate dollars in a song supposedly dedicated to a deceased friend (assuming the rumor is true)?.

As a personal commentary: Between this, and the Vince-McMahon’ing of hip-hop, I am getting very, very disillusioned by the music business, very, very quickly. Even more than before. And before was a lot.

Interestingly, MTV News quotes Jadakiss as crediting “stylist Groovey Lew (Groovey is also credited with giving B.I.G. his first Coogi sweater) for coming up with the idea”, that the idea for the song initially struck Jadakiss as “corny”, but that in the end resulted in a song where, “it’s nothing fabricated on there. It’s gotta be all real on there. Everything was personal.”

Now I think Jada is probably one of the top-5 lyricists out there, and I respect his work and work ethic, but as the Gawker post so eloquently said, “Maybe save the product placement for normal, non-memorial-to-my-deceased-friend songs?”

Nicely written piece

A couple of excerpts:

I’m proposing a stimulus plan that calls on some of hip-hop’s most powerful names to start releasing the music they have been holding back (and, by the way, do it for free). Dr. Dre, we need you right now. Jay-Z, let’s start getting those tracks from Blueprint 3 out to the masses. This message applies to everyone who is holding back gems because they are waiting for the climate to improve. I’m here to tell you the climate for releasing an album is never going to get any better. Hip-hop fans need to be hit by a barrage of new music that reminds us of why we fell in love with this culture to begin with. Our morale couldn’t go any lower.

and

I believe that getting fans excited about the music again is the first step in revitalizing hip-hop culture. It would provide a renewed sense of optimism among hip-hop fans, which I believe would improve conditions throughout the industry. Much like the stimulus plan recently passed by the Obama administration, the results of this stimulus also may not be immediate.

This stimulus plan involves improving our psyche, rather than serving to benefit anyone financially. The money will come, but that’s not what is most important right now. We as fans need to love hip-hop again. Improving the quality of music and providing the industry with something we can truly be excited about will most certainly lead to a revised plan from the hip-hop community as a whole. While sales may not improve, it will actually encourage people to start thinking of ways to become profitable in this new age of music whether it’s from becoming smarter in tour packaging to creating new online revenue streams. The desire to fix the problem will grow stronger once the overall morale is improved.

Right now everyone is dumbfounded, looking for a solution to the problem of the internet. In case you haven’t noticed, the internet is anarchy. There is not going to be a solution, formula or even a game plan that works because we can’t control an environment that evolves through unfettered innovation. The best the industry will be able to do is quickly adapt to change. That means if your label, management company or agency isn’t staffed primarily by a bunch of internet geeks that are able to identify trends, stop on a dime and shift gears in the way they’re working, then you’re fucked.

I’m also working with a client in the journalism industry, trying to convince them to embrace, adapt and adopt new media strategies, and what jumped out at me after reading this posting, is the similar message. Creating excitement. Without the people evangelizing your brand, or your industry, they will undoubtedly succumb to the naysayers and gloom-and-doomers, dragging you down with it. Today’s industries, especially those dealing with different forms of media, MUST NOT WASTE TIME wondering when and if and how. They must plunge in, feet first, and become a part of this new wave of industrialism or they will simply be left behind. No one knows the answers yet, so get in there and figure it out as you go along like the rest of us. Don’t wait for the next company or entity to figure it out. BE the next company or entity.

Good post Xplosive. Read his whole post here.

Michael Steele

Michael Steele, you are a jigga-jigga-genius!

The recently elected token president of the Republican Party states that he wants to “convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings,” with a plan to implement a PR campaign to update the GOP brand that will be “avant garde” and “will surprise everyone – off the hook.”

Steele believes that “Republican” is seen only as the party of the deep-South and red states, and that to turn around their catastrophic failures in the last few years, they simply need to “reach beyond” their comfort zone, out to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings” appealing to “young people and moms” and the all-important voting bloc of “one-armed midgets” (yes, yes he did say “one-armed midgets”).

Doing so, he reasons, will show “who we are for the 21st century.”

He’s right! After all, the Republicans chose a totally unqualified and out-of-touch woman to be their VP candidate, probably simply because she is a woman, to counter the enormous effect that women voters had for the Democrats, thanks to Hilary Clinton. That candidate went on to embarrass herself and her party with her nonsensical statements to the press, proving not only her own ignorance, but the stupidity of the Republicans for putting her there in the first place, and fueling the suspicions about the ulterior motives behind her nomination.

It’s the same party that chose a totally unqualified and out-of-touch black man to be the GOP leader, probably simply because he is a black man, to counter the enormous effect that black people had for the Democrats, thanks to Barack Obama. That party leader went on to embarrass himself and his party with his nonsensical statements to the press, proving not only his own ignorance, but the stupidity of the Republicans for putting him there in the first place, fueling the suspicions about the ulterior motives behind his nomination.

Oh wait. That second one was Michael Steele.

So apparently, if he had his way, he himself would not have been elected. If the Republican Party was so in touch with the hip-hop crowd, and young people, and moms, they would never have elected him as their party leader. They would know that you cannot simply start a PR campaign touting the imaginary hipness of the party, and that it would magically make people forget that they were behind the disastrous shape our country is in right now.

They would know that Barack Obama did not win the support of hip-hoppers, young people and moms, and ultimately the majority of the nation, simply because he was cool (though he is), or led an incredible campaign (though he did), has an awareness of social media and technology (though he does) which was implemented perfectly, using iconic imagery, branding and all the tenets of a good marketing campaign.

They would know that all of those things mean nothing without sincerity.

The Obama campaign touted change, change with a purpose. Mr. Steele must have forgetten that the slogan wasn’t “Change For The Sake Of Change” or “Change Because After All People Will Vote For Anyone Not Named Bush”. It was “Change You Can Believe In.” That was the difference.

Now Mr. Steele says the GOP will change. He stated, “I don’t do ‘cutting-edge. That’s what Democrats are doing. We’re going beyond cutting-edge.”

Hmm. Let’s imagine the mindset at work here.

GOP: “Hey! We can appeal to women and moms too!” the party seemed to say, “Look! Sarah Palin!”

Didn’t work.

Then: “Hey! We can appeal to youngsters too! Look! Sarah Palin’s on SNL and Twitter!”

Still didn’t work.

Then, after losing to President Obama: “Hey! We can appeal to blacks too! Look! Michael Steele!”

Now Michael Steele says they need to do something different. “We are in the crapper now,” he so eloquently stated. So he says:

“Hey! We can appeal to women and moms and youngsters and blacks and hip-hoppers and one-armed midgets too! All we have to do is change!”

Changing the party leader’s vernacular to include phrases like “bling-bling” and “off the hook” may fool the ignorant members of the Grand ‘Ol Party into believing that you are in touch with the hip-hop generation, and can somehow cook up a scheme to wrest them away from the President and his party, but will not fool anyone else.

Pay attention to the advertising business Mr. Steele, before you go off hiring big PR firms to orchestrate your makeover. The same young people and members of the urban-suburban hip-hop settings you wish to target, don’t really fall for the okey-doke anymore.

By miserably continuing to get ahead simply by copying what the Democrats were able to do naturally, you, Mr. Steele, are changing nothing.

In fact, Michael Steele, I’ve changed. My mind. You are an iwwit-iwwit-idiot.

Vibe Magazine

According to Gawker (via ByronCrawford via NicoleBitchie), Vibe Magazine may be in financial trouble.

This, of course, is not surprising in the grand scheme of things, economy, publishing biz, etc.

But a commenter on the Gawker story had a very interesting viewpoint.

Chartreuse says:

Here’s the deal.

The audience who would read VIBE are all on the internet reading sites like Allhiphop.com, worldstarhiphop.com, NecoleBitchie.com and the like.

Their online execution has been awful.

Well, that actually makes a lot of sense. We see others in the online hip-hop world discussing whether blogs/sites are preferred over magazines these days, and in general, advertising dollars continue to drain from print and heading online, which can quicken the demise of print properties (and hip-hop sites do seem to be increasing their viability, and advertisers seem to notice… Check NahRight’s recent Mickey D’s ad takeover!). Could this increase in e-street-cred that these sites and blogs are receiving help put the nail in the coffin for Vibe, The Source, XXL, and the like?

XXLMag.com

Interesting post taking a look at Warner Music Group’s action to remove YouTube videos of artists on their label. Equally interesting comment response from “N DOT C”.

Excerpt:

In late December, Warner Music Group asked Youtube to pull all of its artists videos from the popular video-sharing site. WMG’s argument was that they wanted to see more money from licensing their content to Youtube. In statement at the time, WMG said:

“We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide.”

A month later, I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve tried to find a video on Youtube, not even knowing the artist was on Warner, until I get the “this video no longer exists” message. Which sucks, because if you just google anything, the youtube link that used to exist is what comes up as the first result.

Check out the whole post here

The name change was “effective immediately” as of Jan. 23, 2009.

Interesting that the Koch websites don’t reflect this, a full four days after the announcement. There is no also no apparant E1-branded website to match, although www.e1entertainment.com has a “coming soon”, and seems a possible candidate.

To me, this just seems like a sloppy transition.

Advice? When changing ANYTHING (your name, your logo, your website address, your phone number, etc.) do it swiftly and across all channels as simultaneous as possible. When completely altering the name or logo or conducting other drastic changes, it a good idea to keep the old AND the new during a pre-determined “grace period”, before finally shutting the door on the old. This will allow visitors to acclimate to the upcoming change, instead of potentially causing confusion by the simple flipping of the switch, so to speak.

Be sure to point out on your online properties and any PR efforts what has changed, and in some cases, explain why (even if it’s PR fibbing).

In a day and time when record companies are having such trouble, every effort should be make to maintain the loyalty of a follower, or business entity seeking to do business. Confusion during a major branding switch doesn’t help.