Straight Outta Content: Content Marketing and Hip-Hop

“Hip-hop has won!”

So proclaimed Terrence Howard-lookalike and globe-trotting Engine Group dynamo, Jonathan Akwue at Idio’s tenth content marketing breakfast.

Hip-hop has captured marketshare and mindshare and we now live in a world that is dominated by hip-hop.

And in the same way that urban ‘yoof’ took the Technics 1200 and innovated with it to change the world, Jon went on to explain the strong parallels with the people today who are using the platforms afforded by Facebook and Twitter to create their own media propositions, and challenge the status quo.

“We live in a remix culture”

The Web as we understand it today – it’s a remix culture. It’s all about appropriating and taking content – and doing new things to it”

DJ Cool Herc

Hip-hop was birthed on August 11th 1973 during a New York block party where DJ Cool Herc took two different records,  mixed them together and then isolated the syncopated break-beat* to create a new sound.

The ethos is similar to content curation, where a blend of content – such as original content, curated content from licensed partners and curated content from social media or brand communities – can be used to create a new content proposition.

The Huffington Post do this to great effect, and for more on this, check out Idio’s 7 minute Econsultancy presentation on content curation:

• Run DMC, ADIDAS and blaxploitation

Hip-hop’s commercial partnership with big brands started in earnest, on July 19th 1986 when Adidas marketing executives from were flown to a Run DMC concert at Madison Square Garden to witness the site of thousands of fans waving their trainers to Run DMC’s ‘My Adidas‘.

As well as an enduring relationship, all credit must also go to ‘Run DMC’ the brand who diversified into other content marketing including a questionably-acted blaxploitation film:

• Hip-hop comics and graphic novels

Hip-hop and comic books have always had a flirtatious relationship. The graphic novel is like that sixth element of hip-hop that was born and raised in the same house — but never had it’s last name officially changed.

Transmedia: Madvillain (The Comic) carried on the story from the rap duo’s ‘All Caps’ music video…

Sentences: The Life of MF GRIMM – the story of the rapper MF GRIMM

Whether it’s MURS parading about Comic Con in South California or MF DOOM deriving his moniker from a notorious super-villain, the influence that comics have had on hip-hop is palpable; it’s in the culture and it’s in the music. And when the two come together to form the inevitable hip-hop comic, it’s either ‘dope’ or it’s nearly unbearably bad. Madvillain, MF Grimm, 50 Cent and Wu-Tang Clan are amongst a host of hip-hop artists who have had their microphone-centric shenanigans serialised in comics.

• BING Maps and Jay-Z

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Idio’s platform applies content curation, real-time decisioning and predictive analytics to enable brands to do content marketing that is trackable, scalable and measurable, and understands each customer’s evolving social and behavioural context.

Idio strongly believes that creating a unique and relevant customer experience with personalised content based on known customer data is the best route to establishing a long-term customer relationship.

*N.B. hip-hop purists I *know* Herc’s technique was much more but for the purposes of this post let’s just keep it simple.