Kanye West & Jay-Z’s “H.A.M.” A Marketing Spoil.
On Jan. 11, Facebook crashed, or at least according to Kanye West. Around midnight, West tweeted a screen shot of an error page suggesting the famed social network had exceeded it’s bandwidth following the release of “H.A.M.”
Rap veterans Kanye West and Jay-Z had released the first track off of their forthcoming album, Watch the Throne, on Facebook but to lukewarm reviews and even more lackluster buzz.
Kanye West x Jay-Z - HAM by uristocrat
Days before the release, West and Jay-Z announced on their Facebook fan pages that “H.A.M.” would be a midnight release via a page dedicated to their joint album.
And soon after, the blogosphere was pregnant with anticipation of the duet single from the rap titans.
Facebook users rushed the Root Music powered “BandPage” for the first taste of Watch the Throne and in the hours following the release, the album page had garnered over 32k fans and hundreds of comments. “H.A.M.” was all the digital hip-hop community could talk about in the small hours of Jan. 11 but the question still remains:
Why Facebook?
You may love him or you may hate him, but you have to appreciate his candor. If our tweets were half as forthright as Kanye West’s, we’d probably be out of a job. But for him, his work was masterfully. Have you seen today’s recent Twitter confessional? He is at his introspective best, all while revealing his emotional roller coaster of a year, finishing with a frank apology to Taylor Swift. While we continue to get used to this new means of communicating to the world, some experts preach the importance of filtering while other experts (like @garyvee) are advocates of authenticity. But does Mr. West take it to far? Personally, I believe that people will appreciate his introspective honesty and authenticity.
And no one on the social media gravy train is doing it better than he. Social media’s potency is giving each and every user a better chance to “earn media.” It exponentially increases your odds of being “heard”. Earned media is such an important concept to understand and utilize for your business and/or personal brand. Saying the right thing at the right time, in a skilled and careful manner, can generate useful buzz and media.
Twitter has generated some interesting examples of “earned media” on the world’s greatest stage. Mashable said it best,
“For years we’ve chronicled the amazing impact Twitter has had on our world here on Mashable. In 2008, a Berkeley grad student used Twitter to tell his friends he was arrested in Egypt, leading to a mobilization effort that got him out of jail. Last year, Twitter rose to prominence for its role in the Iran Election crisis. Earlier this year, Twitter showed us the devastation in Haiti in a way that has never been possible.”
Kanye West’s importance (on a global scale) does not approach that of the aforementioned world events. But for the sake of understanding, his efforts on Twitter today will change much about the way the platform is used for high-visibility professionals and businesses. The “Public Relations Polish” has been so valued over the past decades; this is just another example that communicates a simple truth. The days of the conventional Public Relations Guru and classically-trained Marketing Maven are over. From garage gym owners to pop stars to Fortune 500 C.E.O’s, people are listening and they just want authenticity.
