If You Don’t Know. Now You Do.

The Legendary Mobb Deep at the WOW Hall 4/19/14

Here is the scenario.
I work at the UO Cultural Forum as the regional music coordinator. I have a concert booked with the infamous hip-hop group Mobb Deep coming to the W.O.W. Hall Saturday April 19th. As I think about ways to promote this event I can’t ignore the fact that posters around the school and community is a must. However, my generation gobbles up social media like starving families on Thanksgiving. That makes social media a must too. Then I read these.

How Could Snapchat Make Money?
Creating a Social Media Strategy for Your Event
6 Ways Nonprofits Can Use Instagram for Fundraising

After reading these three articles, I’ve come to the conclusion one of the best ways to raise awareness about this event is to create a social media marketing campaign. Even though we might not be there just yet, these three articles make me believe that it is possible to promote an event solely on social media sites. By using the poster created above with a hashtag and with a large enough network, I could potentially share the above poster on Instagram and Snapchat. Creating “Insta-awareness” and “Snap-awareness.” After being exposed to the event and with a hashtag to utilize, people can then talk about the event on Twitter and Facebook with other interested publics. This in turn will create further buzz and awareness. The ultimate objective is for word of mouth to help spread the campaign, but also for people to post, comment, and re-tweet the poster.

Like any good PR campaign, you want to be able to measure the success and see how many people it made impressions on. This is somewhat difficult to do except for clicking on the hashtag and seeing who is actually talking about the event.

The only way to know how successful a campaign like this can be is how it affects the bottom line. That is, if people actually buy tickets. Is there enough “call to action” in this campaign? Only the day after the show I will know, because I’m pursuing it.

Hip-hop and EDM. The New Way to Combine Fans.

Hip-hop and electronic dance music are slowly coming together. Is it a fad or is it something that is going to stay? It is still a little too early to tell but one thing is for certain. It is here and it is roaring like an angry lion. XXL magazine recently wrote an article after interviews with artists of each genre on how combining hip-hop and EDM is equivalent to musical gold.

From a PR perspective, this makes PR gold too. Hip-hop has been been popular since the 80s. It has had a built-in audience for the better part of the past three decades. Today’s EDM, on the other hand, is still a fairly new sound, but it has caught on like a wild fire. Intertwining the two genres helps both artists cross audiences and reach even more people. This ultimately gives their name even more exposure.

The idea of bringing these two genres together isn’t as far fetched as some people might think it to be. They both are considered party music and rely on sampling past artists and recreating their music to make their own sound. The only real difference is that EDM doesn’t use vocals on their tracks like hip-hop does. That is where these two genres found a niche for each other.

Take a hip-hop artists like Danny Brown. Danny Brown is 32 and has been in the underground Detroit hip-hop scene for the past decade. Yet, nobody really knew who he was until 2013 when he signed with EDM producer A-Trak’s label Fool’s Gold and changed his sound from rapping over hip-hop beats to rapping over EDM beats. His “debut” album Old is one of the first albums that is half hip-hop beats, half EDM beats. Meaning, he is appealing to twice as many fans. Going from relative obscurity, to now, a more successful artist, Danny Brown is one of the artists that is at the forefront of intertwining hip-hop and EDM.

Why Award Shows Can Be The Ultimate Platform For PR

Ryan Lewis & Macklemore – Creative Commons

Sunday night was all about the Grammy’s. Right?

Wrong.

Before the show, the New York Times announced that that during Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ performance 34 weddings, gay and straight, would take place during the performance of the song “Same Love” that talks about the difficulties of being gay.

The buzz after the award show wasn’t about who took home what Grammy. It was related to the PR campaign that Macklemore & Ryan Lewis created and that the producers of the Grammy’s approved. They used the Grammy’s as a platform to raise awareness for equality. Raising awareness is constantly one of the main PR objectives of any PR campaign. Well the Grammy producers just nailed it.

They used one of the most recognized award shows on one of the most utilized media platforms to demonstrate one of the most debated political rights movements of our generation. What’s more, they had celebrity endorsements from Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, guys who won four Grammy’s Sunday night. If these two weren’t in the spotlight before, they will be in the national spotlight for years to come furthering their brand awareness and cementing them as pro gay right hip-hop artists. That too is something that very few hip-hop artists believe in and can make claim.

All that is known is this: No matter what you think about Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, the Grammy’s, or gay marriage. This performance had to affect the audience in some way- it was that profound. The Grammy’s, known as a feel good award show with it’s live music and celebrity appeal, brought the audience into a sober mood to make a statement. Something like this had never been done before on national television, and that is what will make it stick in the back of everyone’s mind if they decide to watch the Grammy’s again next year.