attention industry

G.O.O.D. Fridays: campaign of the year, 2010

The best marketing I’ve seen in 2010, bar none, is Kanye West’s series of G.O.O.D. Fridays releases.  Free, individual tracks, available for download every friday (or in the most recent case, saturday evening).

The premise is dead simple:

• There’s a track every friday at http://www.kanyewest.com/GOODfridays
• If you’re willing to enter an email address and opt in for communication, you can download the track, album art and all.
• The track will likely feature at least one big name artist you know, other than Kanye.
• The track will likely feature at least one artist you aren’t really familiar with.
• You will tell your friends, or tweet, about at least one of the lyrics on a track.  Because every track has at least one ‘wait-did-that-happen’ line, including MC Hammer references.

Why is this the best marketing I’ve seen: For more reasons than I can count, but here’s a top 5.

1. It respects hip hop tradition: All Kanye is doing is taking the mixtape culture that has launched new hip hop artists for decades, and translating it to the current tech and social landscape.
2. It’s content driven: this isn’t a finished album leaked slowly.  It isn’t recycling. It’s unique, valuable music, well made, that you wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. And the only price for entry is willingness to get an email or two.
3. It promotes Kanye’s label, and his newer artists: I had never heard a Big Sean track before.  Hearing his verse on ‘Looking for Trouble’ today, I can guarantee I will buy a Big Sean record at some point. Still on the fence about Cyhi the Prince.
4. He’s willing to be unexpected: There’s a track with Kanye and Raekwon rapping over a Justin Bieber sample.  And it’s GOOD.
5. Because it’s organic.  When a track is late, Kanye tweets an apology.  When he mentions he would do a track with Bieber, one appears a few weeks later.  This is being created as it is released, so it’s a story layered on top of the content itself.

At the top of everyone else’s list will be Old Spice’s combination commercial / YouTube / Twitter campaign.  Which, I will admit, was brilliant.  But it was also an example of catching lightning in a bottle, and extending into the social space to give it further life.  It was amazing, impressive, and relatively short lived.  Because the product being sold by Old Spice wasn’t the Old Spice Guy (even though Isaiah Mustafa is awesome) but body wash.  And so they moved on to another means of expressing the same brand concept.

Kanye is selling his music, and the music of the artists who have joined him at G.O.O.D. Music. Meaning the awareness and equity built through G.O.O.D. Fridays isn’t going to disippate or undergo a loss of interest between campaigns.  What he’s selling is also what he’s giving away - different revenue streams for different subcategories of the same product line.

The best thing, however, might be how many people don’t consider it marketing.