Twit-Credibility: Don Jazzy, The Pied Piper of “Enigma”

I grew up with the story of the Pied Piper told to us almost like a movie thriller. In a land “far far away” a man existed who could play his flute so well that all the children in every town dropped what they were doing to listen to him and followed him. The Piper was the epitome of influence; he initially used his power to clear cities of rodents but turned his power/charm on children to spite the parents who reneged on an agreement with him.

Cut to 2011 and a modern day Piper has emerged in the online (read twitter) and musical space. He is none other than Michael Collins a.k.a Don Jazzy Ace producer, CEO of Mo ‘Hits records and latest juggernaut to join the Kanye West/Jay Z family of music impressarios.

In this post i want to examine the unparalleled buzz creation powers of Don Jazzy, his uncanny ability to diffuse his ideas and how his actions become a topic for online and offline discussion especially amongst his constituency: young Nigerians and those in the music business. In the last week he launched a competition via twitter tagged Don Jazzy Beat Competition (in conjunction with the ubiquitous notjustok.com) where he released a musical beat he named “Enigma” with a challenge to any would be musician to sing, rap, or perform a “freestyle” on the “enigma beat”. Entries are to be sent to an email address and the best rendition using the “enigma” beat would walk away with $2,000.

Don Jazzy has more than 80,000 followers on twitter so you can imagine the reaction to the competition has been incredible. Entries have started flooding in, people began using the name “Enigma” to create jokes, stretching the meaning and usage of the beat in ways I’m sure even Don Jazzy would never have imagined. When I first commented on the incredible wildfire effect of the Enigma campaign via twitter, a friend of mine Deji Ashiru Balogun opined that the buzz was being generated because of the prize of $2,000

I immediately begged to differ as I saw some hidden truths come to light about the impressive buzz creating personality called Don Jazzy. Stay with me as we jointly dissect the interesting facts I observed.

Follower Engagement & Credibility

Don Jazzy is followed by a lot of young people on twitter because he does some things that a lot of other “celebrities” don’t do:

1. He retweets both good and bad comments from both his followers and random twitter users. In other words he exposes the thoughts, fears, talents, humor and angst of so many people to an audience they could not get on their own. He lends people his platform and people love him for it. So many times I was shocked to see people begging for a “retweet” from Don Jazzy and he gladly obliges. It’s clear to me as a psychologist and marketer that a retweet from him feeds the self worth of his followers, he makes people believe in the power of their own voice. This is a strength that makes him a great “Pied Piper”.

2. He easily “follows” people, many times without waiting for them to ask. For those who don’t know, when you “follow” a person on twitter you get to see their conversations, in effect you acknowledge they exist and what they say is important. Twitter is high school all over again! Many other celebrities want to be “followed” but don’t like to follow their “followers”…if you want to cultivate Don Jazzy-like attention; you’ve got to change that orientation.

3. He rewards his followers from time to time. He initially began by typing out recharge card PINs of different networks for lucky followers to load and enjoy. Then one day he tweeted randomly about not having airtime on his phone and asked them to send airtime to him as well, initially as a joke. Reports say he got so much airtime from his followers he was indeed dazed by the response. He recently gave out 2 iPads to the 2 lucky followers who met up with him in New York after he announced a “first come, first win” competition to his twitter fan base

In all, these 3 steps mixed with his undoubtedly friendly nature and obvious talent have given him what I call Twit-Credibility (yeah, yeah I just made that up!).

Now lets examine quickly the buzz around the Don Jazzy Beat “enigma” competition

The Prize: the dollar denominated prize is clearly an attraction also the claim to fame from doing justice to a Don Jazzy produced beat coupled with a likely inclusion in DBanj’s upcoming album is a deadly cocktail hardly any aspiring Nigerian musician/rapper would pass up

The Beat has a name! : I consider this a pure master stroke that he decided that the beat should have a name. it’s not something most musicians or producers do. In doing so he has created a sub brand in its own right many are attempting to associate with. The name “enigma” easily became a trending topic on twitter and amongst musicians/artists offline as well. The name has a mystery to it that inspires talks of the illuminati, resuscitation of troubled careers (Blackky, Azadus etc) and many other spin off jokes and jibes. It was averaging about 20 “mentions” every 5 seconds the last time I checked on twitter, that’s awesome!

The Beat is cool: Listening to the enigma beat, you get a feeling that it was written for a collabo between Youssou N’Dour and Kanye West (don’t mind me…my minds playing tricks on me). It has a unique blend of African and American influences with a clear hip hop bent. With the requirement to include his trademark “oriki”( Its Don Jazzy Again IDJA) on the track, we can expect to hear a lot of interesting versions from which a song worthy of the producer’s name will spring forth.

Feeding frenzy: since the competition began other producers have plugged in big time with some offering deals for artistes wishing to record on the “enigma” beat at their studios offering discounts on studio time. Some artists have been “leaking” their version of the beat all over the internet while some are going as far as shooting low budget music videos! That was totally not part of the brief but hey, who cares?

Without a doubt the competition has launched a big wave of creativity, innovation in engagement and hopefully we may discover a new blow-away talent. The greatest revelation for me though remains the growing dominance and relevance of a 21st century Pied Piper and marketing buzz creator…its Don Jazzy Again!

Embracing the Digital Space: The future of the IMC Professional

We are in hard times and in these hard times most IMC professionals tell their clients the same story. They say, “keep spending in a recession, don’t reduce your marketing budget”. But the question I always ask is, ‘are you spending more as a person, as an agency?; so why tell clients to do what you are not doing? Most of all, how many agencies keep investing in their staff during a recession?’ This is food for thought.

Let me quickly digress and use this analogy. What made the dinosaurs go into extinction and how did fishes survive till this day? From my brief study I found out that dinosaurs were land animals and something catastrophic happened on the earth and water engulfed the whole earth; and water was the environment in which the fishes were existing and it dominated the world hence their survival.

But dinosaurs were not meant for water and so they could not survive what happened to the world. Now I am using this just as a parable to you. If the world is changing in any way, it is definitely creating a new environment. Now it is either you adapt to that environment or you are in your natural habitat but if you are not part of that environment you are definitely going to go extinct, either on the client side or the agency’s; it is about the environment in which you are operating in.

Now let me use Chief Obafemi Awolow’s life to buttress my point. I chose him because he is someone I have a lot of respect for. When he was young he struggled for about 13 years of his life doing odd jobs and different businesses. He did not become a lawyer until he was about thirty-six. It was as if nothing was going on well for him but he was busy hustling, making things happen in the social world, organizing social and cultural activities and remaining relevant to people until things changed for him.

Now if you are in a recession and you sit down waiting for the world to change, you are going to die. You need to stay busy and relevant in what is going on around you and as you keep hustling do it with a mindset that it does not depend on the money in your pocket because if you look at the resources in your pocket you will not be motivated to do anything. Scarcity thinking will paralyze your sense of initiative. You need to fight and think about how you can keep moving despite money whether as an agency person or as a client person.

Now with the way the world is changing, do I still need a newspaper house? Do I still need to buy a paper? I can go on twitter now and find out what is going on. I found out that Osama was dead about 6am the day he died. I just got up, checked Twitter on my phone and found out he was dead. Do I still need to buy a newspaper anymore? Now if I can get a word out on a product I am about to launch on twitter, for instance, do I need to set a very big budget on traditional media?

Steve (Babaeko) spoke about something and it is very important: Nigeria leap frogged the industrial age when mobile telecommunication entered the stage in 2001. And what is happening now is that internet usage is flattening Nigeria. If you do not know, let me tell you, in the next five years your grandmother will be Twitting.
Already people aged 25-55 are fastest growing population on Facebook! Now the old folks are learning how to send SMS and after a short time they will learn how to use instant messages and then the Blackberry messenger. People are rising up to these developments and even as a telecoms company we are encouraging you to browse from your mobile because that will mean less traffic on our network and we will make more money.

The Internet and digital space are creating something that none of us know what it is, therefore an IMC professional who is not in the digital space is ENDANGERED already. Those who use it only for personal and social schmoozing are ENFEEBLED. Those who see the digital world for what it is and embrace it are truly ENDOWED like Dbanj loves to say.

In my opinion the digital world is so important because it is an open system. It is not a part of the marketing mix alone; it is something that nobody will really understand where one part of the mix ends and where another begins.

The goal of any 21st century digital strategy is to create EARNED media not PAID media. This is true whether you are on the client side or the agency side. Earned media is all about influencing the influencers. Not by simply paying them to talk pretty about your brand, but by giving them an experience they can share with their followers That is, it is not investment that you pay for, it is not advert or recognition that you pay for, it is that which is freely given that we must strive for.

Now how do you measure true customer loyalty? You do this by recommendation. If you have a customer who tells his friends that Etisalat has the best internet network this is better than ten million naira spent on any advert. Plug this on Facebook, if the person has 5000 friends that means that the same number of people have received the free advert. People are spending more time on their mobile because everybody is a citizen reporter now.

What is going on in the world is so fast that if you are missing out on what is happening in the digital space you will be endangered. For instance, Bella Naija started out as a blog but it has now become a website that commands thousands of followership, with the potential of one day stealing all the money that Guardian and Punch have been getting. The power of recommendation Bella Naija commanded took it from a hobby to a business in less than 5 years.

Look at Barak Obama’s campaign strategy. He built a 13 million strong email data base, recorded videos and sent it to this 13 million people. These people were always the first to know when he was going to make any major announcement. They would simply start propagating the message before it even hits the print or TV media. Imagine if you are a CEO with such a strong data base before you launch your product and you record a video and sent it to your top customers, the result will be staggering.

Sarah Palin hates granting interviews. She only talks to Fox News which is sympathetic to her and speaks on Facebook and twitter and people go there, pick up what she is saying and it enters news magazines. So she controls what she says and she speaks where nobody is going to question her and what she says becomes news.

Goodluck Jonathan declared his presidential ambition first on Facebook and thus entered the world records as the first sitting person in his type of position to do so. The main avenue Guinness is deploying to drive the Nigerian-Argentina match is through digital. You have to join Guinness VIP either via SMS or by clicking a link that takes you to a mobile site where you register. I hope we can see this all beyond advertising, beyond PR, beyond events; it is everything in the mix jamming into each other in the digital space.

At Etisalat Nigeria, we cannot place our Press adverts now without placing our Twitter handle and Facebook address on it because everybody is going there for information and before you know it we are going to reduce how much we are spending on traditional media. There are several examples of organisations increasingly deploying the digital space for their IMC needs.

In summary my considered opinion is that the future of the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) professional lies on how they make use of and embrace the digital space.

Thank you.

(Being text of a presentation I gave at the May 2011 edition of M2 Brandwagon)