The Marketing Lesson Kanye West Taught on The Joe Rogan Experience
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It’s 2020. The former host of Fear Factor, comedian, and mixed martial arts color commentator has become one of the most successful podcasters, reaching tens of millions of people monthly. On the other hand, one of the most successful music producers and rappers has become super devout and is a current presidential candidate. They are having a three hour conversation in a spaceship-like room in Austin, Texas. Sounds almost more crazy than flying cars but here we are…
On his episode of the The Joe Rogan Experience, Kanye West said many, many things. But in one his “symphonies” as he calls them, he subtly taught a marketing lesson when he said the line: “They ain’t gonna come for me until he done with me.” He repeated that line a few times and said “I want to make it so if someone wanted to sample it and put it in a beat it’d be like perfect.” Kanye created an opportunity for listeners to create content out of his own.
This is a central lesson in digital marketing — providing opportunities for consumers to remix and create their own content.
By “remix” I mean consumers taking existing content from a brand or person (audio, images, video, written word, etc.) and using the content in a new way to express their own ideas or personality, producing user-generated content (UGC). That’s really what trends on social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter are all about. A certain image, video, meme, etc. catches on and then everyone on the platform recreates it with their own spin. As a brand, it will become increasingly important to provide consumers with the opportunity to remix your content. ComScore recently found that UGC content drives 28% more engagement than standard brand-led content. So, how do you go about stimulating UGC?
How To Encourage User-Generated Content
- Give away the rights to your content. From branded templates to logos, to videos, images, audio, and more. Give it all away. Let users do as they wish with it without any repercussions.
- Reduce friction by ensuring everything is easily available and designed to be remixed. Kanye repeated the line multiple times to ensure there’s at least one clean take that someone can sample.
- Be on the right platforms and understand your audience. If you have an older audience, they most likely won’t be as inclined to create content. However, it’s almost a natural instinct to do so for a younger audience. That’s why TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram are great channels for UGC. Be active on the platforms where you target audience lives.
- Make it easy to remix the content. Create websites, a hashtag, or any other simple method for your audience to submit and create content. Some examples from the music industry is this “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” generator (not created by Drake’s team, to my knowledge), Justin Bieber ‘Changes’ album artwork generator, or when Maroon 5 allowed fans to record a video of themselves and insert it into their music video for “Cold.”
- Encourage creativity. People love to inject their own ideas and personality into a piece of content, as it produces a sense of ownership. This is why TikTok is so popular — although users are generally copying trends, the platform enables them to easily put their own spin on content and make it their own.
- Monitor your brand with social listening and react. If a consumer remixes your content in a fun manner, engage with it, and highlight their content (retweet, repost, etc.) to encourage others to do the same.
- Provide incentive. Whether it’s being re-posted on your owned channels, giving away free products, a cash prize or anything else, at the end of the day, people generally need some incentive in order to take action.
Here are some great examples of UGC campaigns that put the above points into action…
Examples of User-Generated Content Campaigns
Lays — Do Us a Flavor
For Lay’s’ “Do Us a Flavor” contest, the company crowd-sourced ideas for a new flavor of chip. Contestants submitted their flavor idea, catchy title, ingredients, pitch, and bag design, on an easy-to-use website. A panel of judges narrowed down the entries to three flavors, which were then made and brought into stores. Consumers could then purchase the flavors and vote via social media or text message for their favorite kind, with all three winners getting cash prizes. The contest launched in 2012 and ran for several years. In 2015 the contest received 3.8 million submissions, increased sales by 12%, garnered 955 million Instagram Story impressions, and tripled their Facebook following. The barrier to entry was low, content was easily accessible and easy to use via the website, the contest required creativity, and the cash prize provided incentive.
Apple — Shot on iPhone
Another great example is Apple’s #ShotoniPhone campaign where Apple encourages iPhone users to take pictures using their phones and post them on social media with the hashtag #ShotoniPhone for a chance to be featured on billboards across the world. The campaign, which started with the iPhone 6 and has continued ever since, now has close to 17 million posts using the hashtag on Instagram and millions more on Twitter. Once again, this a campaign where there is little friction to submit (upload to social media with the hashtag or email in the photo), involves tremendous creativity and a degree of skill, and has incentive to participate.
Drake
Finally, I couldn’t finish this article without mentioning Drake. He’s perhaps the king of user-generated content. Two years ago I wrote about how he has been so successful at this and the tactics he uses. He makes all of his content readily available and accessible, designs for specific formats, encourages creativity, monitors his brand, and provides incentive by re-posting some of his favorite content.
On his JRE podcast episode, Kanye provided an opportunity and encouraged listeners to sample his voice. He made it easy to do so by performing multiple takes. For marketers it is essential to provide that opportunity as best as possible in order to grow your online presence. Maybe some crazy trend starts from doing so. It’s 2020, you never know what can happen.
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