Let's look more closely at how he pulled it off. Firstly, Drake isn't the first major act to subvert the traditional release model. Ever since Queen Bey did it back in December 2013, artists like J.Cole are dropping their albums with very little fanfare but are experiencing some of the best album sales of their careers. Beyonceing an album onto iTunes is part of the in-vogue style of music marketing, buzz marketing. As the name indicates, its all about creating a buzz over the internet (mainly social media) about the new project, with people sharing the news with their friends via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. This form of promotion not only goes way beyond the normal reach of 'paid media' like YouTube ads, it's free (earned media). So basically, the artist sits back and watches as the world goes crazy trying the be the first to be in the know and share the information with everyone and anyone (dance puppets dance!). But the question is, what makes Drake's release different and why was his one so successful?
Drake's decision to rely on earned media to promote his new music is one of the ways he is able to keep fans perpetually guessing and wondering what he is going to do next. It is common place for Drake to put a new song on a random YouTube channel, drop a little tweet and let his dedicated fans do the rest. So when it came to this new project, as always, less was more. Prior to the release of the mixtape, Drake put up an artistic short film titled Jungle on his OVO blog. This video, however, could not be found on his Vevo but was strategically placed on YouTube's understudy, Vimeo. Once again Drake sought to engage his fans in his new campaign by not using the big channels like Vevo to promote the video, nor making a big song and dance about it. Instead people who follow the blog would let their friends know about it who would then in turn let their friends know and so on and so on. While on the surface this all appears to be like the organic spread of information, in reality, Drake was always pulling the strings. This video is what marketers would call content creation or content marketing. Unlike traditional adverts, content creation is all about giving the audience information in an interesting and entertaining way. This media might not be overtly selling something, but people who read or watch it are more likely to engage with it. These are typically blog posts or videos which then inspire the reader to seek out more information about the product or in this case, Drake.
So with his audience fully engaged, the stage was set for the big release (well I guess small release in this case). A few hours later, Drake tweeted a single pic of the hand-scribbled title of the new project and the link to iTunes. This not only got people tweeting like mad but also gave us a lovely picture for us to post later on Instagram (thanks Drake, you're too kind). With Drake staying out of the discussion, he let word-of-mouth spread the news and create the hysteria for him, genius. The basis of the success of this release is Drake's recognition that music audiences are no longer passive by-standers who wait for new music to be presented to them. Instead we actively seek out new music and have greater control over what, when and from whom we choose to hear it.
The use of permission marketing is a popular strategy when it comes to music marketing . I mean, its a blessing that when I am presented with adverts at the start of a YouTube video and I can 'click here to skip ad'. By Drizzy putting the link to the mixtape on his Twitter and Instagram account, he has already got your permission to promote his new music in the fact that you chose to follow him or his followers who re-tweeted or re-posted it. The theory behind this is simply, marketers are much more successful when they communicate with consumers who have already agreed to listen to them. Some people on Twitter might not want to hear about how good the album is from Drake or the record label, but don't mind hearing it from a friend. So, apart from the fact it is not an in your face advert which you have no desire to engage with, the 'Marvin's room' singer is giving us the choice of who we hear it from.
The source of the message directly determines its effectiveness, something Drake is all too well aware of. I for one would rather be told by a peer about new music then have loads of adverts on YouTube or read about it over and over again on the artist's own Twitter feed. Without getting to deep into the physiology behind it, there are three mains reasons for this; One, we tend to trust our friends when it comes to things like music (granted not always) because friendships are normally formed on the commonality between people, for example, music taste. Secondly, although we might not care to admit it, we are motivated to like or buys things in order to be consistent with what are peers doing (come on girls you can't all like those platform shoes?). Finally, the things other people tell us about products (good or bad) are often more influential than the advertising we see. So by using social media as the primary means of promoting his new album, Drake managed to keep the profits, as he would say, 'waayy up' (sorry I couldn't resist), make people more receptive to the message and increase his reach. The shared interests and hobbies people have in their friendship circle means the re-tweets and re-posts are reaching Drake's target audience in a way a traditional print campaign never could.
As you can see Drake is the master of the word-of-mouth campaign and a connoisseur of social media marketing. So people I leave you with this thought, if OctobersVeryOwn could do this with one video, one tweet and one mixtape, whats going happen when he drops his new album, Views from the 6', later this year?.
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