π‘The marketing genius of Lil Nas X
— Marketing Examples (@GoodMarketingHQ) February 4, 2020
THREAD ...
1/ When Lil Nas X dropped out of college to pursue music he didn’t write many song.
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His sole focus was on growing an audience.
He lived on Twitter, made friends, and got popular posting memes. Quickly his account grew to 30,000 followers.
2/ The plan was to use his following to promote his music. But it wasn’t that simple.
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“I’d post a funny meme and get 2,000 retweets. Then I’d post a song and get 10.“ — @LilNasX
3/ So Nas got creative.
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He stopped tweeting SoundCloud links and started writing a song he could promote through memes.
“It had to be short. It had to be catchy. It had to be funny.“ — @LilNasX
4/ Old Town Road was the result.
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Nas paired it with a video of a dancing cowboy and shared it with his followers: https://t.co/TOEHUbYDmj
5/ The video went viral. So Nas stuck to this formula:
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• Short viral videos
• To the tune of Old Town Road
• Full song linked underneath
As an unknown artist, it was the only way he could get the word out. And the views started piling up.
6/ Inspired by Old Town Road's success on Twitter it spread to TikTok, and even onto Billboard’s country music charts.
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Yes, the country music charts. Nas listed it as a country song aware that the charts were less competitive.
7/ One week later Billboard removed it for “not being a country song”.
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Ironically, this was the best thing that could have possibly happened.
Billboard's decision turned Old Town Road into a national talking point and two weeks later it was No. 1.
8/ Nas wasn't stopping. He lined up remixes with some of music's biggest stars.
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Billboard has a loophole where remix plays count towards the original song's chart placement.
With every remix millions more streams poured in, and Old Town Road became impossible to budge.
9/ 17 weeks later he'd broke Mariah Carey’s record for the most consecutive weeks at No. 1.
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It’s easy to forget what an extraordinary story this is.
5 months earlier, Nas was a college dropout sleeping on his sister’s couch with a negative balance in his Wells Fargo account.
10/ “A lot of people like to say a kid accidentally got lucky. No. This was no accident.“ — @LilNasX
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The more I learned about Nas the more I believed him.
11/ A key moment in Old Town Road's rise was a video of a man standing on a galloping horse going viral on Twitter.
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The audio was set to Old Town Road. Different versions of the video were viewed millions of times.
12/ I wanted to know how the video spread, so I did some digging and found it first posted on the 24th December:
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I asked the Twitter user why he made the video. He told me Nas had DM'd him the idea. But it doesn't end there ... https://t.co/BkrVe1TIrl
13/ Aware that people watching the video would search the full song, Nas changed the song title on YouTube and SoundCloud to include the lyric from the viral video.
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He also posted the lyric on Reddit which ranked on Google: pic.twitter.com/41FoqOflks
14/ Things didn’t happen to Nas. Things happened because of Nas.
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Virality is not mystical.
Take a peek behind the curtain. Nas is sitting in his underpants, on his sister's couch, iPhone in hand, making the whole thing happen.
15/ No one knew him. No one cared about his music. No one promoted anything for him.
— Marketing Examples (@GoodMarketingHQ) February 4, 2020
He made friends, made them laugh, and built an audience.
Then he packaged his song in a way that fit into their life. https://t.co/DCp02WAWfd
“The marketing genius of Lil Nas X“ π https://t.co/8HK9zf6avX
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For more real world marketing examples π https://t.co/rqS3CzMIL3
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Over and out - Harry
Ok, so this thread went “viral“ on Twitter.
— Marketing Examples (@GoodMarketingHQ) February 5, 2020
But, let's peek behind the curtain once again.
Because it's not magic!
I have a big email list who got sent the article.
I added the pink box to the bottom of the email.
And, it seems to have worked ... pic.twitter.com/hANNgQZsqT
