What the Rap Video That 'Didn't Happen' Can Teach You About Marketing in 2017

So as I'll often tend to do, I stumbled onto YouTube's Trending page to see what's making the rounds with all the cool kids.

In and amongst an amazing piece of marketing by Lamb Australia that got Pauline Hanson's knickers in a twist and Australia's version of Charlie's Angels complaining about all wearing white on a channel 9, the #2 most trending video on a channel with a billion active users happens to be a rap video that technically doesn't even happen.

Apart from being a generally a pretty crappy song with not even catchy Gangam style or Pineapple Pen (please die) chops. Remarkably, this ‘Young Thug’ video is ranking number 2 on YouTube.

Now this I find extremely compelling. Not because I like listening to young chaps who can't string two words together and wear their pants around their knees, but I think this reveals a lot about the coming of age of a marketing type in 2017. A type of marketing we can no longer afford to ignore:

We’re living in the era of absolute authenticity and transparency.

Please explain you say? Ok, let’s break it down.

The Video = Authentic Story Telling

In Young Thug's music video, you don’t actually watch a music video. Instead, what you get is a story told by the viewpoint from, what initially appears, a frustrated music video director dealing with an aloof rapper who he actually never even meets.

You see Young Thug literally 'video-ins' a brief, goes missing for weeks and doesn't rock up at a $100K video shoot with dozens of people waiting. Eventually, he arrives 10 hours late, refuses to get out of the car because his Instagram account got hacked and then drives off into the night without telling anyone.

It’s compelling stuff!

Soo compelling, despite your musical preference, I challenge you to watch Thuggie’s video and hit the stop button. It’s impossible. It can’t be done. It’s like a horrible car accident. You know you shouldn’t stare but you want to know what happened.

Young Thug: Now a Video Marketing Casestudy

The veener of high production isn't really exciting to people anymore. I’ve seen videos shot on iPhones with bad light make hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It reminds me of the insights HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan made about video marketing at Inbound in November.

Particularly telling: 10 years ago the modern consumer used to like high production, highly polished videos. Today, they prefer live, authentic and personable videos.

Young Thug’s video is also very ‘backstage’ and any time you can give your prospects an insight of what goes behind the scenes, you are creating an opportunity to humanise your brand with authenticity and transparency.

You become likeable and form a connection without even realising it.

The Video is Anti ‘Something’

Let's be honest, there's a reason Donald trump won. On one side you had the norm, the status-quo, the Hillary. On the other side you had a brash, rule breaking, crude yet seemingly ‘anti-establishment’ saviour who mobilised a very distinct persona. The disengaged and fed up American.

He was the 'real' anti-something we don't like option.

Now the perception of ‘Anti-something’ and the reality of ‘Anti-something’ are two different things, but that’s a discussion for another day.

What’s important is people like brands and figures that go against the grain, that go against convention, people that they can live vicariously through based on their own beliefs and value system.

In Australia, Ruslan Kogan, founder of Kogan Technologies did the exact same thing.

Kogan positioned himself as a Robin Hood type figure who was the new guy in town wanting to give the big box retailers a “reality check” and the consumer a “fair go”. And seriously, kudos to Kogan for a masterful value proposition but ofcourse, a benevolent fund he is not, a clever marketer he is.

Young Thug’s video does the same thing. It goes against the grain. It refuses to play by the rules of the normal music video. To his credit, Young Thug is consistent too. He also represents the go against the grain type character.

The Video Talks to the Modern-Day Video Consumer Who Consumes Video With Text

Another thing I learned from Brian Halligan is today 85% of all videos are viewed without sound. It turns out we’ve actually returned to the silent era of video.

You could indeed watch Young Thug’s entire video without sound and still consume the story the director wanted you feel. The entire story is told with text on screen from the view of our director. Everything else is supplementary.

The takeaway here is simple. After all the effort you put towards creating and producing your video, take the extra step and get subtitles created. Cost is no longer an excuse as services like Rev and Fiver do this for a living for peanuts.

The Video Shares Vulnerability

There is something really human and again, authentic, about exposing your vulnerability.

I mean Young Thug must have been a tough dude to raise. During the video you really feel for the director as Young Thug’s antics really impact his ability to do this job.

We see a guy who is told broken promise after broken promise, has to deal with skimpy divas who are waiting for their ‘big break’ to shake their tail feathers with a rapper, I mean this sounds like a really long day!

But the director reveals his vulnerable position. He takes us on a journey, share his story, his challenges, his ‘creative’ solutions does well as we get our happily ever after story for him.

Whether or not this stroke of genius was staged is irrelevant. Most of us however probably shouldn’t try our chops on feigning authenticity, it will likely backfire. Just ask the Liberal Party.

For me this is one of the reasons it is so exciting to be a marketer in 2017. And the best thing about it is that’s batsh*t easy.

The next time you think about creating video or any other key piece of content, don’t overthink it, have a clear message targeted to a clear persona/s and just roll.

You never know, if our new friend Young Thug can trend off the charts with a video that never really happens imagine what you can do.

Moby Siddique is an Australian Digital Marketer, Podcaster & Educator who spends way too much time he doesn't have to talk about Marketing stuff his wife doesn't want to know about. Email here, Podcast here, Tweet here.