If you’ve been paying attention to social media in the past week, you know that Kanye West has been the trending topic every day for the past week. Kanye’s mic and stage have been Twitter; the audience consisted of the world.
The current result of all the hype is Tidal being number one in the app store. So what did he do that inspired me to write an article on an artist whose album I never buy? The answer is simple, his marketing style.
Kanye’s Marketing antics can be broken down into the 4 P’s of marketing which we all learned about in high school. By definition, marketing is the management process through which goods and services move from concept to the customer. Let’s break down Kanye’s technique using the 4 P’s of Marketing:
(1) Product- identification, selection and development of a product
This is easy part; the album is the product
(2) Promotion- development and implementation of a promotional strategy
Kanye’s strategy consisted of only one thing, offending people. Below are a few examples:
Kanye sent shock waves here (Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa’s Twitter Beef):
Here (Kanye vs. Amber Rose):
And Here (Kanye vs. Taylor Swift)
Mind you the people he offended consisted of that artist that had a cumulative following of 100 million users on Twitter. Although Taylor Swift never responded to Kanye’s diss, her fan base, her brother and media outlets responded on her behalf.
(3) Place-selection of a distribution channel to reach the customer’s place
Kanye used a FREE platform to draw attention to his album. The technology of choice was Twitter, which has a mere 300 million users monthly. As we all know, what’s on Twitter ends up on Facebook (1.59 billion monthly users) and Instagram (300 million monthly users).
Also, Kanye used Tidal to stream his fashion show, listening party and album launch. For those of you that don’t know, Kayne is a co-owner of Tidal. By using free platforms to create a buzz around his album, Kanye marketed Tidal to the number one position in Apple’s App Store.
Man thank you so so so much everyone for signing up to Tidal. Tidal is now the number one app in the world!!! pic.twitter.com/O3r9DkX03R
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 15, 2016
(4) Price- determination of its price
Price in this scenario was a non-factor. Kanye used all of the above to draw attention to a platfom that he co-owns at the price of an app download with a monthly cost of $9.99 a month.
Do the math, whether you like his marketing style or not, you have to admit, Kanye West’s strategy yields results.