Fan participation and leveraging cultural momentum
The fan and artist relationship is often a one sided affair, with fans acting as recipients of targeted creative marketing strategies devised by artists and their teams. However this top down approach can be limiting as it fails to draw the innate relationship between fans and their favourite artists. In this piece I aim to showcase the ways in which incorporating fan participation in artist marketing campaigns can be a beneficial tool in tailoring campaigns that speak directly to core fans and creates a sense of an interconnected community.
“You don’t build community, you facilitate it” Dr. Marcus Collins. When leading the digital strategy campaign for Beyoncé, and tasked with bringing her offline community to the digital space, Marcus initially wanted to name this fan group “Beyontourage” inspired by the rise in popularity of the show “Entourage” around that time. It is not surprising that this name didn't work and fans rejected the idea. It wasn’t until Marcus tasked his team with searching the web for ways fans were engaging with Beyonce content online that they found an already brewing and deeply passionate community forming, named the Beyhive. And the rest is history. I believe this is an amazing example of how artist branding and community building doesn't need to just stem from the artist themselves and that by allowing the natural and unique interactions of fans to direct strategy can be exponentially more rewarding.
Allow fans to direct the conversation - One of the biggest stories this year in music was undoubtedly the rap beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. The beef saw multiple diss tracks released and conversation online dissecting each bar dominated the social space. On YouTube reaction videos and breakdowns flooded the feed. To further gain more fan engagement on the platform, both Kendrick and Drake removed the copyright from their diss tracks allowing for anyone to post and monetise reaction videos online using their tracks. This move perfectly capitalised and rewarded the already hyper engaged fans and content creators and removed the barrier for fans to engage with the music. Understanding a cultural moment was taking place and that fan engagement was already immensely high, by removing the barrier in which fans could fully engage with the content, the two artists were able to leverage the discourse in their favour and expand their reach to a wider audience through digital word of mouth.
Provide a template - When utilising fan participation it is important to understand the reciprocal nature of this approach. It is not just a solely fan led strategy. Artists play a major role in cultivating the brand image and aesthetic. By providing a base of inspiration giving fans the ability to create around allows for an aligned and cohesive campaign. Some recent successful campaigns using this method are Grimes - music video editing campaign, where Grimes shared a free art kit video of herself in front of a greenscreen and tasked fans with creating a music video using the asset. Another popular way we see this is through artists sharing the stems of a track and allowing fans to create remixes. But there has been one campaign that has perfectly executed all these strategies and fully leveraged fan participation and cultural momentum. Charlie XCX’s latest album campaign has showcased the power of fan participation, whether it be creating whatsapp groups that give space for fans to engage, lead conversation and collaborate on ideas or utilising an easily modifiable aesthetic in the BRAT Green, allowing fans to use the colour in whatever manner be directly linked to the album or just asking her fans to host their own BRAT themes party. This rollout truly felt like a collaboration between artist and fan with each element of the campaign being influenced or directly created by the fans.
When you shift away from viewing fans as solely consumers of an artist brand and allow for a participatory dynamic, new and unique marketing strategies that feel authentic can be realised. Understanding that community is fostered by an interconnected dialogue allows for fans to direct strategy that feels personal.
