16275: Pouring Water On Explicit Song Lyrics…?

This Nirvana Water campaign from Nigeria puts a spin on the product’s purity position, as explained via the following:

 

Children and the Nirvana Water brand share something in common: purity. However, exposure to explicit and vulgar lyrics in popular songs can taint the nature of children and lead to aggression, risky sexual behavior, and other anti-social behaviors. To address this, Nirvana Water created an awareness campaign to serve as a clarion call to all adult members of society to help preserve the innocence of children by stopping their exposure to these vulgar lyrics before it is too late.

 

As a social experiment launched on Children’s Day, [a] film featured seven kids who were asked to interpret lyrics from popular songs. Their inability to capture the negative undertones and vulgar meanings of these lyrics underscored their innocence/purity and the need for society to stop the exposure before they know.

16071: Kraft Puts The Sing—Or Rap—In Singles.

Advertising Age spotlighted the Kraft Singles Rap Battle, crafted for the food company by Illmac (aka Illmaculate).

 

When asked about moving the concept forward, the Kraft Singles brand manager—a White woman—gushed, “We believe the music space, particularly hip-hop and rap, is resonating with consumers so we’re hoping to expand it.”

 

Yep, White advertising agencies and White brands love hip hop—even when the idea is cheesy.

16011: Culturally Clueless Circle Jerk From VaynerMedia.

 

The VaynerMedia creative team responsible for this Durex video is clearly a bunch of ignorant dicks. Word.

 

 

15899: An Early Rap Influence…?

 

Rappers originated in Nashville, Tennessee…?

15887: Straight Outta Cultural Cluelessness…

 

McCann in the UK takes credit for ‘Straight Outta Crumpton’—hyping a drink from Aston Manor Cider. Sorry, but the responsible creative team should be kicked straight outta Adland.

 

14285: Snickers Does Not Satisfy.

This Snickers commercial featuring Elton John in a rap battle was hatched by White advertising agency AMV BBDO, which has a history of producing patronizing propaganda while dodging diversity in its own hallways. Or maybe MultiCultClassics is being too cranky and just needs a Snickers bar.

14068: Hip Hop? Please Stop.

Adweek spotlighted Chase Zreet, a copywriter from Dallas who landed a job with Wieden + Kennedy by communicating his obsession to write for Sprite via a homemade rap video. Sprite has a long history tied to hip hop, ignited by campaigns birthed at Burrell. The work from the Black advertising agency was authentic and original. In contrast, Zreet’s brainchild is a contrived piece of shit. But it was good enough to earn him a position at the White advertising agency. Now that’s fucked up.

13973: Hip-Hopping To The Top.

Adweek spotlighted Cashmere Agency EVP Chief Creative Officer Ryan Ford, who leveraged his hip-hop connections to succeed in the advertising industry. Gee, that seems to be one of the most common ways for non-White people to elevate in the field.

One Man’s Journey From Hip-Hop Journalist to Creative Chief and Snoop Dogg Partner

Cashmere’s Ryan Ford has run the rap gamut

By Patrick Coffee

Whether it was his brief meeting with Tupac at age 16, his experience Iowa’s only hip-hop radio DJ in the early ’90s or his time working on the first televised Brown and Black Presidential Forum for Democratic candidates to address young minority voters’ concerns in 2000, Ryan Ford realized at a young age that he wanted to make his living at the intersection of hip-hop, politics and pop culture.

Now, 25 years later, he leads creative at Cashmere Agency, Los Angeles’ go-to shop for brands looking to reach those core consumers who closely follow every development in the byzantine world of rap music and its expanding subcultures.

Ford’s official entry to that universe came in a traditional way via an internship at The Source, also known as “the bible of hip-hop.” During his eight-year tenure, he met and profiled the biggest names in rap royalty, including Jay-Z, Kanye West and Queen Latifah. But his journalistic rise occurred just as print media went bust, with readers moving toward rapid-fire, digital-first sources like AllHipHop.com as ad revenues declined. He and a small team of fellow UCLA graduates saw the writing on the (pay)wall and responded by launching their own mini-marketing agency.

Bandit Strategies was a “side hustle” that eventually turned into a full-time job at Cashmere thanks to a relationship with Snoop, who introduced Ford to his business partner and Cashmere co-founder Ted Chung. “I took a leap of faith and said, I’m getting out of the magazine industry and getting into this new world,” Ford said.

One of his first projects with Cashmere involved promoting Father Hood, a 2007 E! reality show focusing on Snoop’s home life. After that series became a surprise hit, E! was eager to work with the agency on what it hoped might be its next smash. According to Ford, network executives said the show’s star was “resonating with not only white audiences, but Hispanics and African Americans as well … she’s racially ambiguous … her name is Kim Kardashian.”

Since then, Cashmere has gone on to help market such properties as FX’s Atlanta and the smash hit film Get Out.

Curriculum vitae

2008-present

Evp, chief creative officer, Cashmere Agency

2005-2010

Co-founder, CEO, Bandit Strategies

2003-2009

Co-founder, Rhyme Night talent showcase

2000-2008

Executive editor, The Source Magazine

Job profile

As head of creative at Cashmere, Ford collaborates with his internal team and a revolving roster of influencers to connect clients like Adidas, Airbnb, Netflix and PepsiCo with young, multicultural consumers fluent in the ever-changing language of hip-hop—its music, its culture and, yes, its brands.

How he got the gig

Ford was a freelance writer and editor at The Source eager to immerse himself in all things hip-hop just as Snoop Dogg began to “become the pitchman we all know today.” After his Bandit Strategies group helped promote a joint Snoop/MTV project called Hip-Hop Gaming League, Ford signed on to work with longtime Snoop associate and Cashmere co-founder Chung as a consultant.

Bottom line

Cashmere isn’t officially a Snoop Dogg joint, but stars like P. Diddy and Jay-Z have moved from launching clothing lines to starting their own marketing agencies. “We’re not TBWA\Chiat\Day or Deutsch, but we’re in here fighting every day,” Ford said. “ … One day, we intend to be that big.”

13825: Enter The Little Dragon.

Advertising Age reported China loves hip hop too.

Rapper’s Delight: China’s Hip-Hop Talent Showcase Boosts Brands

By Angela Doland

A rapper named Little Dragon struts across a stage, baseball cap slung low on his forehead. The camera cuts to glistening McDonald’s chicken wings, and Little Dragon plugs the product in a rap couplet—in Mandarin. “Hip-hop snack box/share it and it’s better.”

Welcome to “The Rap of China,” a new singing contest and a major vehicle for sponsorships and product placements. It’s also the first rap talent show in a country not known as a thriving hotbed of hip-hop culture. More: It’s a massive hit. The online video platform that shows it, iQiyi, says there have been over 2 billion combined views in 10 episodes of the show, in which Chinese rappers in huge gold chains and slouchy sweats try to outdo each other.

It’s a success with sponsors too, including local brands Nongfu Spring water and Xiaomi electronics, as well as Absolut vodka, Chevrolet Camaro and McDonald’s. As is standard in China, sponsor content and product placements are a huge part of the show, and nobody is surprised to see a supposed rebel rapping about the pleasure of sharing McDonald’s snack boxes.

Big investment, big payback

Doing a rap show “was kind of a gamble—before it actually started, nobody knew what would happen,” says Kevin Cao, iQiyi’s commercial marketing director. “We put a lot of time and resources into it, investing more than $30 million.” The program has more than made that back, taking in almost $46 million in ads and sponsorships.

One reason for its success is that mainstream stars appear too. Heartthrob Kris Wu, an actor-singer and former boy band member, is a celebrity mentor for the rappers, and though people online mocked his hip-hop credentials, he draws huge audiences. His catchphrase “Can you freestyle?” became a meme that publicized the show all over China’s internet.

Until now, rap had been more subculture in China than mainstream, but nonetheless attracted government attention. In 2015, the Ministry of Culture blacklisted 120 songs, including hip-hop tunes, because of their subject matter (from flatulence to suicide). But the Communist Party apparently doesn’t object to rap music itself, since the state broadcaster put it in a propaganda video in 2015. That song sampled speeches by President Xi Jinping and included lyrics like “Reform the supply side and upgrade the economy.”

Online TV boom

IQiyi, part of Chinese search giant Baidu, originally planned to hold a mainstream singing contest, a common form of TV entertainment in China, and had collected $46 million from sponsors to do so, Cao says. When iQiyi scrapped that project to go the rap route, it returned the $46 million and started over.

China has 751 million people online, according to official statistics, and online TV has been stealing ad dollars away from traditional TV in China as it has elsewhere. Each of the local internet giants owns a big video platform: Baidu has iQiyi, Tencent Holdings has Tencent Video and Alibaba Group Holding owns Youku Tudou. Most of the programming is free to watch, though people who buy subscriptions for a few dollars a month get extra content and see fewer ads. With so many people skipping interruptive ads now, more branded content is being built into the shows, from song lyrics to branded “stickers” dancing across the screens.

Chinese brands, more than multinationals, have embraced the zany sponsorship opportunities as they tend to be more experimental with their marketing. But foreign brands seemed to grasp the potential of rap on the mainland. Ruey Ku, Publicis media content general manager in greater China, says she believes “foreign brands saw the high relevance of hip-hop culture with the youth they’re targeting.”

McDonald’s and Absolut were among three sponsors that came on board before shooting started, iQiyi says. Some sponsors joined afterward. McDonald’s, the second-biggest sponsor, went all in; it tapped Wu to appear in commercials, and it has a snack box to match.

The show’s top sponsorship cost $18 million and went to Chinese water brand Nongfu Spring, the name of which is emblazoned on the show’s logo. That’s at the high end for sponsorships of online TV but still affordable compared with traditional or satellite TV, where prices for a top show can run four times that.

Merchandise is another potential revenue stream. IQiyi created a brand called R!ch for the show, including big golden chain necklaces that feature in the contest. They’re on sale on iQiyi’s online shopping mall for $14 each. The company is also working on licensing deals with other brands.

But one of the biggest beneficiaries of the show has undoubtedly been the New York clothing brand Supreme, which Wu, the show’s star, wears. On search engine Baidu, queries about Supreme are up about 170% this summer compared with the same period last year, according to Kantar Media CIC. That’s just a stroke of luck for the Supreme brand: IQiyi says it’s not a product placement.

12774: Oh, Baby, That’s Bullshit.

Advertising Age posted a culturally clueless, clichéd and contrived British Red Cross commercial featuring rapping babies, created by FullSIX Group. Based on the firm’s equally lame Who We Are video, the place is not full of diversity—but they do appear to be full of shit.

11982: You Da Mannings.

Oh, look—another White people rapping spot posing as an original advertising concept.

11970: Toyota Swagger Wagon Rolls On.

Oh boy, there’s a new pool-out commercial in the Toyota Swagger Wagon campaign. This one even features a real rapper—Busta Rhymes. Not sure why it took nearly four years to produce a sequel. Then again, not sure why anyone thought the original spot was a good idea. Fuck the alleged “viral” power. It was and is a contrived, clichéd, stereotype-riddled piece of shit. The new video runs about 3.2 minutes. Which is roughly 3.3 minutes too long.

11958: Kmart Kafeteria Kidz Krap.

The Kmart creative team continues to shit their pants with this back-to-school commercial.

11366: Reebok Hearts Adidas.

Reebok does its best to emulate adidas with this new campaign—despite cutting ties with Rick Ross—to show the shoemaker loves hip hop.

11318: Oreo Loves Hip Hop.

Guess it was inevitable that the Oreo Wonderfilled campaign would integrate a rap version—via Chiddy Bang—into the mix. Even Oreos love hip hop.

11313: Kmart, Time To Fire Draftfcb.

Kmart executives should shit their pants and fire the big assholes and their mamas responsible for this back-to-school commercial.

11068: Breaking Out The Champagne.

New sources reported on an arrest warrant for rapper Gucci Mane, who allegedly smashed a champagne bottle over a fan’s head at a nightclub in Atlanta. Hey, this might inspire fresh rhymes:

Meeting Gucci Mane can be a real trip

You could get christened like a new cruise ship

Rapper Gucci Mane wanted for allegedly hitting fan in head with champagne bottle

From ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTA — An arrest warrant has been issued for Gucci Mane after a fan accused the rapper of hitting him in the head with a champagne bottle at a downtown Atlanta nightclub.

Authorities say 32-year-old James Lettley, of Fort Hood, Texas, tried making conversation with the rapper — whose real name is Radric Davis — in the VIP section of Harlem Nights Ultra Lounge on March 16.

Police department spokesman Sgt. Greg Lyon says the rapper is accused of hitting Lettley in the head, causing a gash on the man’s head. Police say Lettley was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital.

Lyon says a warrant has been issued for aggravated assault. Calls to numbers listed for Lettley and Davis were not returned. It’s unclear if the rapper has an attorney.