How Kanye let the fans do the marketing for him
So Kanye’s ‘DONDA’ is finally out and it’s already broken chart records. However, it took little said from the man himself for Kanye to roll out the marketing for his project.
As someone who is a massive Kanye West fan, and someone who is studying marketing at university (in my last semester), I found it incredibly interesting to see Kanye’s album rollout of his highly anticipated album ‘DONDA’. He let the fans do the work.
In June of 2020, Kanye released ‘Wash Us In The Blood’, in which fans melted over whether this was a hint towards a new ‘ye album. On July 18, West announced that he would be releasing Donda - in honor of his late mother, Donda West, announcing a July 24 release date. This July 24 release date was eventually missed, and whilst he tweeted an album cover the next day, the album never came. Whilst months went by, there wasn’t a lot of news regarding Donda, however fans still speculated.
It was July of this year where things ramped up — yet it wasn’t anything posted by Kanye himself.
On July 19, American rapper and friend of Kanye, Pusha T nnounced on Instagram that West would be holding a listening event for the album on July 22 in Atlanta. This generated tons of hype for Kanye, yet a word hadn’t been spoken publicly from him since his November failed election campaign.
Beats Electronics then premiered a commercial during game six of the 2021 NBA Finals with athlete Sha’Carri Richardson, with a new Kanye West track used (“No Child Left Behind”). Again, the fans speculated, yet there was no confirmed release date. Immediately following the commercial’s debut, Def Jam Recordings (Kanye’s label) confirmed a July 23 release date and revealed that the listening event in Atlanta would be globally livestreamed on Apple Music. The album ultimately remained unreleased on that date, and all that had been posted from Kanye was the Beats ad posted on his Instagram. Further posts came from Kanye on Instagram, yet most were cryptic posts or posts from the listening parties. Fans thought after the release party it would drop, but it did not.
It was later announced that the album would be released on August 6, 2021, but again not by Kanye, but by ‘representatives’ of Kanye — who claimed to know that the album was coming on that date. This created further hype.
Without a word from West on a release date still, on August 5, a preorder for the album was launched on iTunes, revealing a release date of August 7, 2021 — A second listening event for the album at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, titled “Kanye West Presents: The Donda Album Release”, took place on August 5, 2021 too, without a word from Kanye, about it — but through other sources and representatives. The August 7 date was later revised to August 13, 2021. Apple Music showed the release date to be August 15, which was later changed to August 20.
Finally, Kanye went on Instagram to announce his third album release party — in Chicago — on August 26th. After this third listening party, the album still had not come yet fan hype was larger than ever.
Then the day came, Donda was released on the 29th of August — without a word from Kanye, yet everybody noticed it pop up on music streaming platforms. Kanye later went on to post on Instagram about how the album was posted without his permission, which is another story in itself, yet the album remained and is breaking records left, right and centre and is number #1 album in over 130 countries in the time of writing. All this done without much from the man himself, he literally let fans hype it up and let the hype get so out of control that it didn’t even need Kanye to say the album was out and it topped the charts immediately — truly remarkable.
I can sit and say I was one of those hyping the album and wondering where it was, and it was the true genius of Kanye to let us fans do the work — through social media and word of mouth to allow this album’s to become one of the most highly anticipated albums of all time.
