Friday, April 3, 2009
As everyone knows, sex sells. What the corporate world has learned progressively throughout the past 20 years is that hip-hop does as well. Although initially reluctant to accept hip-hop as the marketing gem it was bound to become, it didn’t take long for big business to come around after observing the near-infinite buying potential of the hip-hop community. Today, elements of hip-hop culture are used as strategic tools in national advertising campaigns of a wide variety of popular brands. Television viewers alone can turn on their set and see Jay-Z selling Hewlett-Packard PCs and even Jeezy hocking Boost cell phones. But things were not always this way.
Despite the sharp increase of hip-hop album sales during the 1980s, mainstream corporations were hesitant at first to engage in endorsement deals with hip-hop artists. Unfortunately, the general consensus is that the cause for this reluctance was rooted in the lingering, racist assumptions of a handful of bigoted but powerful board members.
As the years went by and the national popularity of hip-hop skyrocketed, however, corporations could not help but notice the level of exposure hip-hop was receiving in the form of music, graffiti and general style in the streets (not to mention record sales). Then, in 1986, Adidas signed groundbreaking hip-hop group Run-DMC to a $1 million endorsement deal, and as a result enjoyed the explosive success of its “Superstar” shoe, the iconic style worn by all three members of the group. This deal completely changed the game. Hip-hop was becoming mainstream and, sure enough, one by one other corporations began to follow, lured by the buying power of a devoted target audience and reassured by the enormous success of the Adidas campaign. Since then, hip-hop has garnered the attention of corporations seeking to profit from hip-hop’s influence on popular culture and the psyche of the young consumer today.
This emergence of hip-hop as a social force inevitably inspired the formation of a new breed of company and new methods of reaching the street-wise rap fans. Several brands founded in the past decade have experienced tremendous success targeting the hip-hop consumer because they are founded and developed by popular hip-hop figures themselves. Designer clothing lines such as Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Sean John and Jay-Z’s Rocawear labels speak directly to their hip-hop audience. These brands continue to be successful because they stress what hip-hop heads look for in every product: credibility and authenticity.
Hip-hop is big business today. All companies want consumers to do is buy, buy and buy some more, which is what makes their relationships with hip-hop a match made in heaven, because it seems all the hip-hop consumer wants to do is spend, spend and spend some more, whether it be on sneakers, CDs or even Cristal in the club. Corporations love the money and hip-hop loves the exposure (as well as the money), and this adds up to a lucrative trend for both parties.
Although they may have gotten off to a rocky start, corporate advertising and the hip-hop world have joined forces during the past decade and will remain that way because they share one primary interest: making dough. We can only hope that the fortune and exposure advertising brings won’t blind hip-hop artists and cause them to lose their creative way. Peace.
— Coldham is a Chicago senior in journalism and English.
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Coldham: Hip-hop may sell, but fans hope genre won’t sell out
Which hip-hop culture are we talking about, again? Is it the politically aware and concerned group of creative young artists who collaborate on projects or the ones who take great pride in having been shot and selling drugs and being rich because they can sell those stories and influence later generations? Because, yeah, some people might not want to be associated with the latter group.
Coldham: Hip-hop may sell, but fans hope genre won’t sell out
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