What Can Brands Learn From London Rapper Stormzy?
What if I told you that a 23 year old South London rapper had a thing or two to teach you about marketing? It has now been a week since Grime artist Stormzy’s flawless debut album, ‘Gang Signs and Prayer’, topped the UK charts. Having closely monitored every carefully crafted detail of the Gang Signs and Prayer campaign, I present 5 key learnings for brands.
1. Mystery
Stormzy disappeared for a whole 10 months before he made his triumphant return for Gang Signs and Prayer. 10 months worth of mystery and anticipation saw Stormzy’s lead single ‘Big For Your Boots’ hit 1 million YouTube views in just 24 hours, followed by a complete sell out of his upcoming nationwide tour. While I am certainly not suggesting that you perform a disappearing act on your brand, consider for your next product launch, that a little mystery can build a lot of excitement. Disclaimer: this tactic is more likely to work if your brand is culturally relevant. No one cares if your supply chain management firm goes quiet on twitter for a few weeks — in fact, we would probably be quite glad of it.
2. Clear and Purposeful Messaging
Stormzy’s campaign message was both powerful and clear from the offset: “Respect me like you would Frank Ocean or Adele”. Furthermore, it had purpose. Stormzy was out to change perceptions on his ability and reposition himself as an artist. This narrative was consistent throughout his campaign, which saw him secure an ad spot on prime time TV (courtesy of Spotify) during The Brits. Something typically only expected of label-backed megastars.
3. Relationships not Partnerships
Facebook’s European Marketing Director, Philippa Snare said last week that “purely transactional” partnerships will fail. Stormzy’s partnership with Adidas is anything but ‘purely transactional’. The sportswear powerhouse, who have supported Stormzy from early on in his journey, promoted his album globally to their combined 51 million social media followers. They even went so far as to stock the album in one of their London stores (#partnershipgoals?). So, make sure your next partnership is based not on an offering, but a relationship.
4. Novel Content
Raymond Blanc and Stormzy. Two names you never thought you would hear in the same sentence. Well, GQ went one step further and put Stormzy and Blanc, together, in a room, on pancake day. Stormzy taught Blanc about ‘creps’ (trainers, for those of you that didn’t know), while Blanc taught Stormzy about ‘crepes’ and attempted to perform a freestyle rap for him. This was all live streamed on Facebook, directly from Raymond’s Michelin star restaurant in Oxfordshire. The live stream clocked up almost 300,000 views in just 3 days. Why was it such a success? The answer is simple, it was novel. According to neurobiologists at University College London, our brains pay extra attention to novelty, and when experienced, novelty can contribute to enhanced learning and motivate us to further explore the topic in question.
5. Corporate Social Restormzability
During an interview with Channel 4 News, Stormzy used his platform to speak out on his secret battle with depression; a topic that is vastly under-discussed in black communities. The point here is that brands also have a duty to use their platform for good. In an age of fake-news and Donald Trump, corporate social responsibility has perhaps never been so important.
By Rachel Holden:
Rachel is the co-founder of youth-led marketing and creative talent agency INTENT.
