Holy, holy, holy, holy key
DJ Khaled exemplifies a new marketing paradigm
Last December, DJ Khaled became the first celebrity I ever followed on Snapchat. I heard the phrase “major key” used in everyday lingo by a number of my friends and when I finally inquired as to what it meant, I was instructed to watch Khaled’s daily snap story.
I was late to the game, as by the end of last year Khaled had already been crowned the “King of Snapchat” and was awarded the prestigious “most positive” celeb snapchat superlative by Style Caster
We challenge anyone to find someone more inspirational than DJ Khaled on Snapchat. Not only does Khaled offer gems of advice to finding “the keys to more success,” but he also offers lots of encouragement (“Bless up!”) to his followers to keep hustling even if others “don’t want them to succeed.” Look forward to seeing lots of snaps of his garden, his gourmet meals, and Khaled on his jet skis and in the hot tub. Ciroc Apple will also be proffered as the ultimate key to more success.
Through his entertaining, yet inspirational, daily foray into his life, Khaled built up a massive following on Snapchat, which he transferred to equity in his personal brand. He monetized this by selling branded merchandise and collecting sponsorship dollars from brands featured in his snaps.
Fast forward several months. Although the hype around his snaps has faded, he is still able to leverage his brand to promote his new album, titled “Major Key” a catch phrase he coined through his snap stories. Notably, given the dedicated audience he was seeing on Snapchat, Khaled felt his brand was strong enough to launch on Apple Music exclusively for one week. In comparison to other artists who pull off these strategies, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Kanye, and Drake to name a few, Khaled doesn’t compare strictly from a music perspective. However, he made the exclusive move betting that fans of his brand would follow him to his music.
And so far, it looks like he was right. Last week he edged out Drake for the number 1 spot on Billboard, selling 95,000 albums in the week ending August 4 [Roughly 60% of DJ Khaled’s tally — 59,000 — came from traditional sales: digital downloads. The rest came from nearly 42 million streams, along with about 8,000 in sales from individual-song purchases]. I was personally skeptical of the album, but was impressed by several of the tracks and the lineup of featured artists.
Khaled is an example of one new business model for an artist in a digital world:
- Hone in on a unique voice or perspective
- Find a platform that authentically conveys this message
- Build a digital following
- Create brand equity
- Leverage this equity to promote a new record, land sponsorships, sell merchandise
This model won’t work for all artists — particularly those who aren’t interested in putting their personal life on digital display. And it won’t resonate with all types of fans (particularly Songsmiths who are more focused on the music itself rather than the celebrity personality of artists). But through his entertaining personal brand, he has likely attracted hoards of fans who wouldn’t have been interested in his music for the first place. Perhaps his music doesn’t even the usual taste of many of these fans. It is through is persona rather than his musical style that he is able to throw up big numbers on the Billboard chart.
This is an interesting model for artists in the current digital era — using music as another avenue to extend the appeal of a persona or brand. Traditionally music has been the leading product, whereas Khaled treats it as a side product.
Libby Koerbel loves to analyze ambiguous questions, listen to live music, and meet new people. She is an expert strategist with experience at the Boston Consulting Group, Universal Music Group, Muzooka, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital. She currently works at Pandora.
Read some of her research on millennial music discovery and on framing uncertainty in the media industry. Download the full millennial music discovery whitepaper from Dropbox.
These views are my own.
