How Drake and Kanye Unintendedly Created a Massive User Generated Content Campaign For Their Albums.

Anyone invested in the hip-hop community would have probably been aware of the “beef” or conflict between the two biggest artists industry Drake and Kanye West. While the two artists haven’t always been on the best of terms their conflict reignited weeks before the release of both of their long-anticipated albums. Drake seemed to be the one to reignite the flames between them as he was featured in a song where he seemingly dissed Kanye, and Kanye, who hasn’t always been the best at taking things lightly, quickly fired back by leaking Drake’s address to the public. While this was seemingly out of nowhere, Kanye had been holding album listening parties in stadiums to fans, where he said he would be set to release his album after each of them, but never did as he kept editing the album. As he pushed his album further back, he was seemingly getting closer to the release of Drake’s long-anticipated album, Certified Lover Boy, which although did not have a set release date, was anticipated to be released in the summer. This would have been a conflict because when two of the biggest recording artists of the decade go head to head in the same genre, this would expectedly hurt first-week sales for both as they would have to compete against each other. The rumor floating around was that Kanye was pushing his release date on purpose to drop his album on the same day and go head to head against Drake, similar to what he did back in 2007 against 50 Cent, another successful recording artist at the time.

This expectedly created a lot of buzz around both albums as many people invested in the hip-hop community were eagerly awaiting the release of both albums and creating plenty of discourse amongst each other on whether the beef was real or just another marketing tactic to boost streaming sales. The hip-hop community was divided as some wanted to see Kanye be victorious in album sales over Drake and others wanted to see Drake garner more album sales than Kanye. Many people were predicting if they were going to release their albums on the same day and who would have more album streams all over the internet and this helped create momentum for both albums. Drake fans and Kanye fans were becoming more volatile with each other online and made it feel like people had to be on either one side or the other. Anyone neutral or indifferent on the topic was urged to take a side by the more loyal fans. When the albums were finally released fans were forcing people to compare the two albums, despite being completely different projects, they were forcing people to give their opinion on which album was better. Although Kanye ended up releasing his album, Donda, a week before Drake released his album, they were still being compared and criticized.

Kanye releasing his album a week before Drake’s likely helped him and gain more sales as there was no direct competition for the first-week sales, but this also favored Drake as many people had already heard Kanye’s album and wanted to listen to Drake’s album the next week. Kanye’s Donda sold 327,000 units in the first week and Drake’s Certified Lover Boy sold 613,000 units in the first week. Although Drake ended up selling more units in the first week compared to Kanye, they both had a massive increase in units sold compared to their last respective albums released. Kanye’s last album only sold 264,000 units and Drake’s last album sold 223,000 units. They both saw a significant increase in first-week sales, most likely due to all of the traction from the beef between the two artists. Although both albums were highly anticipated the conflict between the artists undoubtedly had a hand in boosting sales for both albums.

While Drake and Kanye both probably realize that this conflict was likely beneficial to both of them they probably don’t realize that they created a user-generated content campaign in the process. Both of them releasing their albums at relatively the same time created an enormous amount of buzz and publicity towards both of them as their brand loyalists went to battle for their favorite artists while generating a surge in memes and opinions online talking about the albums. Most companies would pay millions for this type of traction while the conflict between the artists likely cost them nothing. This whole situation can show the importance of user-generated content campaigns and brands should be taking notes as they should be striving to create a similar reaction to their target market. It might not have to necessarily be as intense or be revolving around conflict but they should strive to have their customers be as passionate about their product that they would be willing to discuss it online. This will likely remain a great example of how a user-generated content campaign can be executed well and should motivate companies to try and replicate this feeling with their customers.