KANYE WEST: SHOCK VALUE

He dropped out of college, won 21 GRAMMYs, ran for president, started a church, set himself on fire during a listening party, and amassed a estimated $6.6 billion net worth whilst doing it - making him the richest Black American in history. (Source)

“He” would be Kanye West.

Now, you might be thinking “Kanye West isn’t a billion dollar business.”

Technically, you would be right.

However, you must understand that the ‘Kanye West’ name is a brand in itself. A brand that has a $6.6 billion valuation - that’s 6600 million dollars.

Not to mention, Kanye West is one of the most unorthadox and effective marketers to ever walk on planet Earth.

Now THAT is worth a breakdown!

Brief History

If you know nothing about Kanye West, well you’re in for a treat.

I’ll briefly run through his histroy for you, but it’s probably best you read this biography on Kanye, to get you up to speed.

Ironically, Kanye’s start to life was fairly ordinary. He grew up in Atlanta, Georgia went to an ordinary high school and then moved on to college and studied English at Chicago State.

What seemed like such an ordinary life, quickly turned not so ordinary, when Kanye dropped out of school to pursue his musical dreams.

From here on out it was a roller coaster ride to the top for Kanye.

He went from producing beats for Roc-A-Fella Records, to releasing his own music, then becoming a huge figure in the rap world, to releasing his own clothing brand - YEEZY - to creating a church and then running for president.

He’s done it all and made billions doing it.

But how has he made so many of his ventures so successful?

Answer: unbelievable marketing - of himself and his brands.

Breaking Down The Strategy

If there’s one thing Kanye is good at, it’s shocking the world.

He knows exactly how to get the people chirping, the journalists typing and the internet going crazy.

A prime example of this would be the events that occurred at the listening party for his newly released album “Donda”.

During the event, in front of a sold out arena, Kanye set himself on fire - yes, he literally set himself alight.

This is as well as: having a mock marriage with Kim (who he is in the process of divorcing) and reconstructing his childhood home on stage - then having Marilyn Manson emerge from it.

Not to mention this was a listening party for an album with no release date that no one had ever heard prior.

The large majority of people saw this as another one of Kanye’s crazy antics. But what they didn’t do was look at this listening party from a marketing perspective. The Donda listening party, was one of the best promotions of an album I have seen to date.

The second all this crazy stuff happened it was all over the internet. It was just free marketing for Kanye, as the news networks let the world know that Kanye had an upcoming album.

I say “free” marketing, but as a matter of fact this marketing wasn’t free at all. Kanye actually made an estimated $12 million from his Donda listening parties - that’s $12 million made on an unreleased album. (Source)

What Kanye did here, was utilize shock value.

This certainly isn’t anything knew for Kanye, in fact setting himself on fire was one of the least shocking things he’s done over the last 5 years.

Let’s take a look at some of the other ways Kanye shocked the world and breakdown why he did it!

• Crazy Tweets: Kanye is well known for his crazy outbursts on Twitter - and yes some are just crazy. But some of his tweets are genius ways to bring attention to his name. As the saying goes “All press, is good press”. A prime example of this would be his thread of tweets addressed to Mark Zuckerburg (Founder of Facebook) in 2016. What you have to realise is this thread of tweets was guaranteed to be all over the tabloids the next day, not to mention the crazy retweets it had on Twitter.This is a great example of how Kanye can quickly bring millions of eyes on to his life with a simple tweet. Also, I can almost guarantee that people contacted him after these tweets to inquire about investing in his ideas - you’d be seeing healthy returns right around now if you did!

• Running for President: By far his most prolific act to date was Kanye’s presidential run. Don’t get me wrong, I do think Kanye did and still believes he could be President of the United States. But you have to see the double entendre that the campaign posses. The day’s of President’s pushing their political views during these campaigns are slowly dying off. Nowadays the Presidential race is virtually a pure personality contest. If you asked 90% of American’s they wouldn’t even be able to tell you one policy the candidate they voted for was pushing. They voted because they liked the candidate personally - or didn’t like the competitor (which is often the case).This factor plays perfectly for Kanye, the whole campaign is made up of him simply promoting himself. Not only does he have the crazy exposure of being all over the news, but he is literally touring the country promoting himself - and boy did those speeches go viral.In one of the most notable moments of Kanye’s presidential campaign. Kanye mid-way through his speech began crying and announced that he and his wife Kim had considered aborting one of their children. Then went on to tell the crowd that if he was elected he would “fight to keep abortion legal, but would strongly discourage it by offering people $1 million for every child they have.”Yes, not only did he talk openly about nearly aborting his child, but he also claimed he was going to give people $1 million for every child they have.It’s times like this when you do have to bring into question whether any thought get’s put into how these will go viral or whether that is just simply who Kanye West is. Either way, whether he means it or not, it’s absolute genius from a marketing front and elevated the Kanye West name, to a whole new level of notoriety. Let’s quickly fire through a few other viral Kanye moments:

• Kanye & Elon - A photo of Kanye and Elon Musk went mega viral from the second it was posted. Not to mention the below tweet of support from Elon on Kanye’s campaign, which went absolutley crazy - have a look at those insights!

• JRE Podcast - Kanye had a 3 hour episode on JRE where he told the world all the crazy ideas he had in his head. It was one of Joe’s most listened to podcasts - it’s a must listen. (CLICK HERE TO LISTEN)

• The Taylor Swift moment - In a crazy series of events, Kanye got up on stage at the VMA’s to tell Taylor Swift she didn’t deserve her award and that Beyonce should have received it instead.

Now, I think you get the gist. Kanye makes shocking the world a regular occurrance.

Why you should utilize shock value?

It’s at this point I can admit that ironically, I’ve never been a fan of Kanye’s music…

It’s just not my thing.

Nevertheless, I listed all the viral Kanye moments above, from memory.

My point is, Kanye is one of the most well known musicians of all time and it’s not just because of his music. Kanye’s crazy viral moments are the things that put him on the map and put him in a position where 60,000 people voted for him to run their country.

If you want eyes on your brand or business, it’s probably not a bad idea to utilize a little bit of shock value, just like Kanye does.

How you can shock the world?

Don’t get me wrong, you probably aren’t going to shock the world like Kanye did/does.

However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t bring a large amount of eyes to your brand through following in his footsteps.

When looking to shock the world I’d think of the following questions:

Will newspapers pick this up? - This could just be local newspapers.

Will this go viral on socials? - It’s easiest to go viral on TikTok & Twitter so think about the target audience.

These are the routes your exposure will come through, so it’s vital whatever you do, covers both these questions.

Remember:

You can create shock value with anything, it just has to be so extreme that people want to talk about it.

E.g. Imagine filling a huge inflatable duck - with your brands name on the side - with helium and letting it fly in the sky.

It sounds stupid. But people would be so confused, that they’d remember it and with that they’d remember your brand. Not to mention that all the local newspapers would likely write about the fact their was a huge duck flying over their local town.

There are so many different ways you can implement shock value into your marketing. So, follow in Kanye’s footsteps and give it a go!

This has been a breakdown of Kanye West’s use of shock value. I hope you have learned something and are able to implement a similar strategy into your business.

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I’ll see you next Sunday!