How Drake Has Harnessed The Power Of Social Media To Promote Albums

Drake If You're Reading This It's Too Late marketing

Who knew that Aubrey Drake Graham would go from TV soap star on Degrassi to one of the most talked about rappers in the music industry today? Drake receives a lot of shade from the media and the general public for his past career as an actor, and his uphill battle to try and reinvent himself continues to this day. However, Drake’s personal brand has been able to thrive in the best way possible. Drake attributes his sustained relevancy to two things: not taking himself seriously and using a social media to promote just that. Conveniently enough, these two things are completely free. In his most recent album release Views; however, Drake sets the bar for marketing an album, before it is even released.

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5.2_NWTS

It all started back when Nothing Was The Same dropped. Trolls all over the Internet took Drake’s cover art and created memes to share it through their own social media accounts as a way to mock Drake’s album. Little did they know, these same trolls were actually doing Drake a favor by promoting his new album for him and for free. As the saying goes, bad news is good news, for Drake, has harnessed the power of social media to promote both the release of his single, Hotline Bling, and his two albums, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and Views.

So Here’s How Drake Harnesses The Power Of Social Media To Remain Relevant

If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late: Chik-Fil-A Meets The Rap Game

It was rumored that Drake surprise released If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late in order to get out of a contract with his record label, but we can only work off of speculation. Regardless of this drama, Drake focused on what worked on his last album’s launch. He made the his album artwork mock that of Chik-Fil-A’s font, and made a meme creation tool so that any and every troll out there with an opinion could generate their own memes, all of which he was controlling.

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Considering one of the main reasons people use social media stems from narcissism, trolls played into Drake’s trap to share this very cool and trending topic for more likes, praise, and acceptance by their peers, all of which occurred before the album was released.

Hotling Bling: It Can Mean More Than One Thing

As we all know, Drake isn’t a dancer. So why would he spend his entire music video for Hotline Bling dancing to his own song? We can assume this is a rhetorical question at this point. Drake’s video was literally inside of an on-screen box, replicating that of a screen on one’s mobile device. Within minutes, digital creativity ensued and memes bloomed across all social media channels encouraging people to watch it just so they can laugh at how hilarious the video is. For Drake, this was a slam-dunk. He even posted his favorite fan art on Instagram.

And with over 20 million followers, this encourage his fan based to get even more involved so that, maybe one day, they will be able to have their “art” shown to 20 million people too.

Views: Drop Drake
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Last Thursday, Views dropped and, as anticipated, another meme creation site came out for the album’s artwork cover. Controlled by Drake of course, within hours, Drake was no longer sitting on the top of the CN Tower in Toronto, he was photo shopped on faces of pro-athletes like Michael Jordan, and any thing else you can think of that requires a “.jpg” at the end of the file. Really, it can be anything. You can try it out for yourself HERE.

What is more powerful than achieving the largest reach for getting your name and new album out there? When you are able to do it for free. While trolls and fans are having fun, Aubrey Drake Graham is sitting back and counting his dollars.

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