Tag: JAY Z

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Are Kanye West’s Tweets damaging his career or just a vehicle to promote his next album?

Kanye West
Kanye West

Recently hip-hop artist and fashion designer Kanye West re-emerged on Twitter.  The outspoken rapper has remained quiet on social media for almost one year until now.  Many have known West to have temper tantrums, be outspoken and stir headlines.  His latest press have alienated his public perception more than ever after praising US President Donald Trump in his tweets.  While many predict he is on the verge of a major breakdown, here are three reasons why I think Kanye is in promotion mode.

He is an artist

Mr. West’s body of work cannot be overlooked. He is a 21-time Grammy award winner and has provided countless hit songs and albums as a producer and an artist himself.  His artistry branched off into the world of fashion with his Yeezy line, including his partnership with adidas, who helped the three stripes brand over take Jordan Brand as the number 2 shoe company in the United States.  As an artist, he expresses his thoughts in music and his visuals through his clothing. With Twitter, he’s using the platform to create a dialogue and engaging others whether his opinion is popular or not.

He is creating a buzz for his new album

Kanye was not happy with the album sales of his 2016 effort, The Life of Pablo.  A lot of it stems from the album being only exclusive to TIDAL.  He has since had a falling out with the JAY-Z owned streaming service, which many claimed hurt his bottom line sales in term of availability to the rest of the Spotify’s and Apple’s of the music industry.  So what better way for people to get Kanye talking about him and his music through Twitter?  While his thoughts are free speech, what he’s really doing is to help build a promotional vehicle for his upcoming album Love Everyone, which is scheduled for a June 1st release.


Not even John Legend can stop Kanye.

He likes to feed his own ego

Nobody loves Kanye West more than himself.  He is a confident personality and is looking for approval.  What we know about ‘Ye is that he is a creator, a producer and designer by trade.  He believes in his own ideas so much, that he’s willing to defend them no matter how controversial they may be.  Even his own close friends disapprove of his alliance with Donald Trump, but he wants people to express their opinion just like he has.  It’s ok to agree to disagree with Kanye West. He has built a career on sheer talent.  And while his artistry cannot be questioned, he accepts that his own antics are always met with bi-polar results.

End Point

People tend to jump to conclusions and question why people do what they do.  What are they motivated by?  What causes them to react and behave the way they do?  Kanye West is no different.  Even if he never released any more music, he’ll be considered as one of the greatest music artists of all time.  Despite his current climate of controversy, Kanye is going to  be Kanye.  You can consume all the hype that makes him who he is…you can continue to buy into all the crazy stuff that he tweets.  Or you can see the bigger picture.  He’s here to create anticipation for his next album.  He is releasing product in his own way and is ok to trip and fall regardless of public perception.  A free thinker will take chances despite what others say because its their path and its their story to tell. This is the life of Kanye.

Kanye West  / Charlamagne Tha God interview (05-01-18)

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Puma is making moves and using Influencer Marketing to compete

JAY-Z / Puma Clyde
JAY-Z / Puma Clyde

Brand: Puma

Audience:  Puma is a long standing German sports apparel and footwear company founded in 1948.  Their products have an established identify, notably in Track and Field and especially in the Soccer industry.  In recent years, the brand has struggled to remain relevant with consumers.  Lack of identity and style are notable factors.  Since 2014, Puma has stated that one of their primary key strategies is to improve their female division if they want to compete with the likes of adidas and Nike.

Puma introduced a new women’s streetwear product line in 2016.  For this concentrated target audience, the brand is focusing on the 18-24 age group.  They want to appeal to the stylish, chic, trend setting and fashion conscious customer.  Spearheading the campaign is brand ambassador and creative director Rihanna.  The international songstress is a notable style icon with over 201+ million combined followers on social media.  In addition to the signing of socialite Kylie Jenner last year, Puma has a duo of formidable influencers for their advertising campaigns to help grow their targeted streetwear audience.

On the men’s side of things, last fall Puma signed R&B superstar TheWeeknd and in March 2017 inked rapper Big Sean to help appeal to their young male audience.  And most recently, Puma scored a major sponsorship, teaming up with rap icon JAY-Z for his upcoming “4:44” tour.  While it looks like Puma has a concentrated strategy on working with some very big names in popular culture today, there will always be consumers at different stages of the life purchase cycle where they might face resistance.   Let’s take a look at them.

The Weeknd
The Weeknd

Life Cycle:

Communities disruptors affect the Consideration stage in the Purchase Life Cycle.

Economic disruptors affect the Purchase stage in the Purchase Life Cycle.

Personal Situational Factors affect the Awareness stage in the Purchase Life Cycle.

Emotional Situational Factors affect the Desire stage in the Purchase Life Cycle.

Influence Disruptors

Communities is the conversation of the same idea with two different groups that have two different meanings.  In this example, an 18-year old female will converse with her classmates on the it factor of purchasing Rihanna’s Puma x Fenty collection and how stylish the attire looks.  A secondary conversation with her parents can turn into a discussion of price, cost and affordability.  This simultaneously becomes an Economic discussion where the parents and daughter get into a debate of need vs. want.  Both Communities and Economic elements have a disruptive influence.  They can change the sentiment course on the decision-making process from considering to buy, to ignoring the purchase completely.  Puma’s target audience is affected from these mentioned disruptors thanks to overall negative sentiment.

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Using Sysomos to find social data…like Beyoncé’s Pregnancy

Beyoncé's second Pregnancy
Beyoncé’s second Pregnancy announced on Instagram

When Beyoncé makes an announcement…

Beyoncé is one of the world’s most famous celebrities in the world.  Entertainer extraordinaire.  22x Grammy award winner.  Fashionista. When she makes any announcement, her audience and news outlets report it.   The Queen B has been known to do things differently like her self-titled 2013 album released without any marketing promotion.

In a previous era where stars would send out a press release through their publicists, Beyoncé took to her Instagram account to share some exciting news.  On February 1st, 2017, she addressed her 96.9 million and counting followers that she and husband JAY Z were expecting twins.   Using a social media analytics platform like Sysomos, you are able to find out various forms of data on what Beyoncé’s audience are talking about.

Sysomos is Insights-Driven

Sysomos is a Toronto based company with their MAP (Media Analysis Platform) being their bread and butter for gathering social media generated content.    It is a very powerful tool for measuring analytics and social engagement.

Some of the benefits that  Sysomos is a great resource of information for Digital Marketers:

  • Analytics
  • Boolean
  • Buzz Graph
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Gender
  • Geography
  • Keyword Analysis
  • Most Re-Tweeted
  • Selected Date Range
  • Sentiment
  • Share of Voice
  • Social Influence
  • Social Media Monitoring
  • Social Trends
  • Web analytics
  • Word Cloud

Sysomos is a great social media analytics tool for a variety of reasons.   A lot of businesses are using this platform to find out audience insights.  While this platform is subscription based, Sysomos is highly recommended for the variety of data it can populate.  Compiling social media data for reporting is simple to perform.  Recently my group did a sample crawl presentation on Beyoncé.  We focused on what her audience’s sentiment was, who the top influencers were talking about the pregnancy announcement and more.