5 Things 50 Cent Taught Me About Marketing

Who doesn't love hip hop, well maybe some people, I love it. One thing hip hop stars are very good at is leveraging their celebrity to generate various income streams. Just look at the hip hop cash kings - P. Diddy, Jay-Z and 50 Cent, together are worth over a billion dollars and they have restaurants, clothing lines, video games, movies and many more things to boot. There are many people out there who can make a hit song, but leveraging that into an empire takes some business acumen. One person I greatly respect is 50 Cent; while 50 is not the richest hip hop artist (he's third on the list by Forbe's last count) he has attained the position in record time, going from a virtual unknown to hip hop mega star worth over $150 million in less than four years.

While some people may say it's just luck I don't think it's very constructive to focus on things that are outside of your control. A better question to ask is how did 50 do it and how can I apply these lessons to myself. Let's roll...

1 - Be Authentic

Before 50 Cent burst out on the scene, the hip hop world was fast becoming flavour less and fake. Everyone was trying to be a gangster rapper, talking about selling drugs and things like that, but most of the people saying this were not from the gang culture or background. Many had gone to private schools and had never sold drugs in their life. The hip hop audience, in some ways, knew this, but realized there were not much alternatives. The record labels also preferred to work with 'studio gangsters' rather than the real thing as drama and lawsuits could easily follow someone who came 'from the street'.

When 50 Cent came on to the scene, he wasn't rapping about what he saw in movies or on Scarface, he was rapping about his life, and his community knew that because he was a recognized Underworld figure. When 50 Cent released a song called the 'Ghetto Quran', he rapped about drug dealers in his neighbourhood, referring to them by their nick names and detailing some very specific events that had transpired. The song got relatively little air play, and most people outside the community or who were not associated with these dealings would have a hard time relating to the lyrics, however the song firmly established his reputation as an authentic gangster rapper, after all, how else could he have known these intimate details.

However when you talk too much about life in the criminal world, you are opening yourself up to getting hit, and this is what happened on May 24, 2000 when 50 Cent was shot 9 times at point blank range by a masked gunman. Leading us to Point 4.

2 - Pick a Fight

People root for the underdog, it's just natural. I don't know what it is inside human nature that does it, but deep inside we want the team with the low odds to win. If you're starting a business or entering a new market don't do it soft ball. Go in there and explain why you're better than the established players and why you're going to take their business and change the game. You could even go a step further and do what Duracell did by calling out your competitors directly. Sure it could rustle a few feathers and may knock you out of title for most liked person but if you're worried about hurting some random person's feelings you're probably not cut out to win in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFxCDIYDj6g

When 50 Cent was still a virtual unknown he realized that he would have to differentiate himself to stand out from the crowd. The record label he was with at the time, Columbia Records, had a lot of gangster rappers on it and he could see that unless he did something, he would be lost in the noise. 50 Cent released a record called 'How to Rob' where he basically paid out every single rapper in the industry. The theme of the song was "I don't have much money, so why don't I go out and rob all these rappers since they have shiny chains." Generally speaking in hip hop, the traditional rules had been to not pick a fight unless absolutely necessary, everyone was still fresh from the Tupac/Biggie hip hop war that ended up with two deaths and as they say, don't burn your bridges.

The artists who got dissed on 'How to Rob' retaliated with diss tracks of their own, giving 50 Cent exactly what he needed, culminating with Jay-Z rapping at a live performance "I'm about a dollar who the f##ck is 50 Cent", that was a good question, who was 50 Cent? People were starting to find out.

3 - Turn your setbacks into opportunities (turn sh#t to sugar)

50 Cent was nearly killed when he was shot, but he wasn't. However to add insult to injury, the record label that he was signed with at the time, Columbia Records dropped him. Even though the record was happy to make money off gangster rap, it sure didn't' want to be involved in any criminal activity; quite hypocritical but that's business... it turned out to be a bad business decision later but back to the story.

As 50 Cent lay in bed, broke, no record deal and seemingly no long term life prospects, he had a chance to listen to the radio and what was playing at the time. All day from morning to night, he would sit there and listen, after all there wasn't much else to do. Being a hustler, 50 Cent didn't get much time prior to that to really do his research about what was popular and hot at the time, what people were listening to and gaps in the market. 50 Cent realized something. While gangster rap was still popular, all the popular artists were watered down. These so called gangster rappers didn't talk like his underworld associates, they didn't act like his underworld associates and they sure didn't sound like his underworld associates. 50 Cent, being a legitimate drug dealer, could tell a phony when he saw one.

Soon his pain turned to excitement, he could totally take over this rap game. He had been shot 9 times and survived, what more authenticity do you need? And who needs Colombia? 50 Cent knew that whoever was trying to kill him could at any time come back and finish the job, he knew that he could either play it safe or come out swinging and go all in.

As soon as he was good enough to get out of bed he hit the studio with a vengeance, releasing mix tapes that he released by himself, into the streets. The mix tapes were the hardest thing to ever hit a speaker for years. In them, 50 Cent openly mocked his attackers, told them to bring it on, ridiculed his phony competition and talked about the gritty life in the Underworld that the radio wouldn't play. He gave the mixtapes away for free to popular DJs and other hip hop conniseurs. His community was hooked and soon he was established as the real deal, not one of these bubble gum rappers that everyone was so tired of.

Then opportunity came knocking...

4 - Have a Timeless Message

Go Shorty, it's your birthday, we goin' party like it's your birthday; the opening lines of In Da Club, one of the biggest if not the biggest hip hop songs of all time; it was at the height of his popularity, his first single off his long awaited debut album Get Rich or Die Trying. 50 Cent must have known just how powerful the song would be, because he started it with those words, making the song essentially timeless. Now, anytime someone is having a birthday, you can pop this song on, people smile but at the same time are reminded of Mr. Curtis Jackson.

5 - Sell out at the top

Endorsements are nothing new in the industry, Paris Hilton perfume, clothing lines with the face of some singer on them etc. 50 Cent was smart, he didn't just take any advertising opportunity that came his way, and I assume many probably did once he had become an international musical force. Instead 50 found a relatively unknown company called Vitamin Water, a seller of flavoured vitamin drink and felt that there was opportunity for the company to become an international force like him as there were people that wanted to drink flavoured water but drink it in a healthy way.

50 Cent didn't just lend his name to the product, he bought in with a 10% stake in the company.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0tgheca5HM

After the promotion campaign Vitamin Water sales spiked, Coca Cola took notice and bought the company for a couple of billion. 50 Cent pocketed his share of the dough (around $150 million), becoming the second highest earning entertainer for the year after Oprah and an eternal place in Marketing 101.