Out of all the songs that have been dedicated towards hip-hop culture, my absolute all-time favorite is the Grammy award-winning song, Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop), by Erykah Badu featuring Common. Besides Badu’s soothing vocals, the song’s dope instrumental, and Common’s cool flow, one of the things that really made the song resonate with me (along with millions of others), are the song’s clever lyrics.
If it wasn’t included in the song’s title, one could easily misconceive the lyrics to Love of My Life as being your typical boy-girl love song—and not a magnificent ode to hip-hop.
Like my favorite song dedicated to hip-hop, many brands today still have misconceptions about hip-hop culture and the effects that fully coalescing around the culture could have on their respective brands.
1. Targeting consumers within the culture would turn off your target audience
This is by far the most common misconception that often makes brands hesitant to openly embrace hip-hop culture. To keep it candid, it’s not difficult to see how a brand could misconceive this as being fact.
Due to so many songs containing raunchy lyrics; music videos with provocative imagery, as well as the countless controversial events that have taken place throughout the years within the culture, it’s not inconceivable why a brand would be hesitant to align with the culture.
Nevertheless, to judge any culture by its worst elements would be doing a great disservice to not only your personal understanding of that culture; but also your brand’s growth and its potential reach.
Thankfully, even some of the most wholesome and family-friendly brands on the planet have already realized this and fully embraced hip-hop with open arms.
Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, Disney, McDonald’s and Walmart are just a few of the brands that have included hip-hop culture in their branding and marketing endeavors. And all have seen their sales increase significantly by doing so.
2. The culture isn’t congruent with your brand’s target audience
As above-mentioned, if even some of the most wholesome brands in the world have felt compelled to incorporate hip-hop culture in their marketing efforts to help their brand appeal to a wider audience, you could rest assured that aligning your brand with the culture would not negatively impact the way your target audience perceives your brand.
In fact, history has shown hip-hop has had quite the opposite effect. As it has helped even some of the most conventional brands appeal more to their target and broader audiences.
3. It would come off as corny or insincere if your brand aligned with the culture
If someone were to tell you that a brand which was founded in Paris, France in 1854, and today is now one of the most prestigious brands in the world—also felt the need to incorporate the culture in helping their brand convey freshness to their audience; would that help convince you that your brand could also do the same?
Well, be prepared to be convinced. Because that’s exactly what happened when luxury brand Louis Vuitton named hip-hop artist and super producer Pharrell Williams their men’s creative director in February of 2023.
To say the least, if a luxury brand well over a century old could immerse itself in hip-hop culture without coming off as being corny, your startup could certainly do the same.
4. It would attract negative press
Although some of us may suggest otherwise, at the end of the day, we’d all prefer being liked by everyone. As opposed to being disliked by anyone. The only problem with that, and what any good brand consultant would tell you, is that pleasing everyone is virtually impossible.
Therefore, attempting to do so with your brand would be… let’s just say—extremely unwise to put it mildly.
With that being said, even if the unlikely were to occur and a few critics in the media were to say bad things about your brand publicly for including hip-hop culture in its marketing efforts, it would pale in comparison to the amount of adulation and appreciation that your startup would receive from consumers within the culture who would see themselves being represented by your brand.
5. Embracing hip-hop wouldn’t have a positive impact on your brand’s bottom
Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a list of brands whose sales increased after they began marketing towards hip-hop culture? As luck would have it, such a list does exist (which you could find here) and on that list, you’ll see brands from various industries that may have initially been hesitant to fuse their brand with hip-hop culture, but are happy as heck that they did today.
The reason why you’ve probably never heard a story about brands that have failed because they embraced hip-hop culture is because there are no brands that have failed as a result of doing so.
However, there have been plenty of brands that have succeeded as a result of doing so. And yours could as well. We specialize in helping startups like yours do just that and stand out in their respective categories by connecting with consumers via contemporary culture-focused brand strategies, social media management, as well as digital content marketing.
To become a Decryption client, simply contact us today to schedule a call and we’ll take it from there.
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