Many know him as Mr. Money With The Vibe, but the skillful tactics behind his stardom grant him a new name – Mr. Money With The Marketing.
Recently, Asake accomplished a remarkable feat when he sold out the O2 arena in London, seating 20,000. No one can get over how quickly he captured our hearts. He is this year’s Next Rated artist and had the Album of the Year, according to the 2023 Headies Award Show. If you watched the Headies, you heard the crowd roar each time his name came up.
The excitement around his success is a testimony to his talent, intrinsic musicality, and undoubted resilience. Though it may seem quick, this “overnight” sensation spent countless nights grinding to evolve from a background dancer to an arena headliner. While these qualities explain his development as an artist, another intriguing aspect contributes to making Asake a star.
Let’s talk about his team first. To grow organically, an artist needs a group of sharp thinkers stubbornly committed to representing that artist’s best interest. To do so at Asake’s pace, there needs to be several of these teams working their specific angles toward a shared mission.
Alongside his personal management, he is rocking with YBNL Nation - the forward-thinking, independent, Nigerian label and EMPIRE – a record, distribution, and publishing company that functions better than a lot of the major labels. When Asake joined YBNL – founded by Olamide – in 2022, the label had already partnered with EMPIRE for publishing and distribution.
From the looks of it, YBNL and EMPIRE are a match made in heaven. For example, they collectively prepared Asake for the spotlight with rigorous artist development. His visual appearance, artist persona, sonic themes, performance style, touring patterns, song collaborations, and album rollouts demonstrate a degree of development that many argue is dead in today’s music industry.
Artist development is not dead; it just fell into the hands of those who still care.
When partners, like YBNL and EMPIRE, have motivations beyond money, you will see heightened creativity, effective collaboration, and principled decision-making.
Olamide, an Afrobeats legend, experienced his ‘height’ way before the genre blew up worldwide. Now, he heads a label with some of Afrobeats’ biggest stars. And still, he puts his own ego second to ensuring the authentic representation of Afrobeats and Nigerian culture.
When you listen to Asake, he is unapologetically Nigerian. Before this genre saturated Western markets, the industry limited Yoruba songs to regionalized audiences. Now, the world is singing along to Asake in Yoruba. We must acknowledge that a team of advocates – led primarily by Olamide – risked rejection when convincing potential investors and partners that language would be no barrier.
EMPIRE founder, Ghazi Shami, found a way to maximize the power for independent artists in the music industry. Coming out of the Bay Area, where independent music prevails, he learned how technology could provide leverage for creatives. When the music industry fought digital advancements, Ghazi used his tech savvy to pick up all the bags that labels kept dropping.
He has been a key player in the success and re-emergence of many talented artists during the past ten years. Combined with Ghazi’s love for global connection, EMPIRE – now led by the prolific Tina Davis – contributes its financial resources, industry access, legal support, and executive infrastructure to YBNL and other partners.
Now that we’ve discussed the team, let’s look at the market. We are experiencing an unprecedented influx of music releases. Social media basically controls consumer interactions and listeners have shorter attention spans than ever reported. So unsurprisingly, it’s difficult for audiences to remain connected with an artist. Plus, Asake’s particular genre – Afrobeats – has risen dramatically since 2020. Thus, it’s easy for audiences to become overwhelmed and then disconnect.
To combat this information overload, Asake’s marketing team seems to center his career around two themes: originality and authenticity. Ideally, both. But if it can’t be original, then it’s absolutely authentic.
Consider his style: The amount of fabric for his pants will always rival the curtains for your house. When blogger, EniGivenSunday, posted a picture of them from his meet-and-greet, comments literally said “I can’t see the face but the fit tells me this is ASAKE!!”
And of course, this image aligns with his early single, Palazzo.
ASAKE'S MARKETING TEAM USES SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS TO LEAN INTO HIS ORIGINALITY.
Recently, he hopped on the “How to Dress Like….” TikTok trend. This trend has a voice-over describing how to style outfits that resemble a time period, fictional character, or niche aesthetic. Brilliantly, his team harnessed the public’s reaction to his original style and applied this trend to his September show at the Barclay’s Center. Mind you, the world has been heavily invested in dressing thematically for Beyonce’s Renaissance tour. Everyone is excited to dress up and post their attire using GRWM (Get Ready With Me) videos.
By transferring some of that excitement to Asake’s fans, his marketing team increases social media engagement with the Reel template while simultaneously encouraging in-person engagement for his live show. Plus, the Reels and TikToks all use his song as the official sound, so the music is still being promoted.
To some, this seems minor. But Instagram and her tyrannical algorithms honor consistency. Also, simply posting daily on his story keeps him in front of his audience. Whether it's an outfit flick or a single photo of his album cover, Asake continues to put his presence on our timelines. Thus, even when it’s not an exciting play on his originality, it touches on his genuinely laid-back persona.
Since his name tends to stay out of the blogs, his regular posting controls the quantity and quality of content his followers see regarding him. When you compare that to artists who only engage with fans around tour time, one can see how this small habit of daily posting builds a steady relationship with his audience.
Speaking of fan communication, Asake (or the team behind his social media) does not hesitate to repost videos of fans dancing, getting dressed, or being goofy to his music.
If a person does wish to be reposted, they know their chances are relatively higher if they make content about Asake instead of some other artists.
The sense of satisfaction one gets from a repost from their fave can strengthen the affinity they have for that artist. That could be the small nudge they need to purchase a ticket to a show. Literally, some J.Cole fans still invest in his music and shows simply because he used to talk to them in the early days.
Each time he reposts videos with a certain song playing, it keeps the music in listeners’ heads. If they watch just three of his story posts consecutively, they’re hearing a few seconds of that song repeatedly. At that point, you’re singing along and it’s secretly becoming your jam.
Outside of social media, Asake’s team inserts him into the streaming and sale trends of the market. They observe the most popular or promising audiences and slide his music their way.
For example: his song Amapiano, featuring Olamide. This Afrobeats song is loosely based on Amapiano, a South African genre accompanied by a beautifully unique dance culture.
Amapiano is not Afrobeats, and South Africans will quickly correct anyone who says otherwise. The genres do, however, share audiences. When listeners who recently became familiar with Afrobeats started hearing about Amapiano, they typed it into their preferred streaming platforms. If they searched for it prior to Asake releasing Amapiano, the song, they’d find Amapiano artists, live events, playlists, albums, etc. But if they did so after he dropped the single, they would absolutely see his song first.
This is definitely a marketing strategy! For some, his song might ease new listeners into the genre. And since it’s Asake & Olamide, it’ll capture Afrobeats audiences. For complete newbies, the song might be the easiest thing to select, which leads to heightened streams for him.
However, it could have misconstrued what Amapiano truly is for some new listeners. I can totally understand South Africans being annoyed by this move. So if applying a similar marketing technique, you gotta consult, collaborate, and pass the mic to the originators. In general, we can see how a team identifies a rise in people’s consumption of a particular product. Then, they can find a way to attach their artist's sound and personality to the product. Lastly, they can establish a lasting association for multiple pockets of the product’s audience.
This vaguely reminds me of Burna Boy’s unintentional entry into the lives of many American listeners. In 2018, Kanye teased dates for YE, his 8th studio album. On one of the reported release dates, fans searched high and low for the album but, Kanye ultimately delayed it. When they typed in “YE”, results showed Burna’s song titled Ye. Though completely unrelated to Kanye, Ye made a huge first impression on a new audience. Burna even thanked Kanye for the 200% rise in sales.
The discovery was a stroke of luck for Burna. However, we see a direct financial correlation when an artist’s music somehow aligns with a highly discussed topic, product, artist, etc. Artists and their teams can assess what people will actually consume.
That is what makes the difference between good strategy and lousy trend-seeking. When you apply that nuance, you can ascertain which trends are worthy of closer scrutiny. People were willing to purchase Kanye’s album, not just listen once and go. That’s why they scoured the web in droves for a whisper of his music. People are willing to consume Amapiano. Unlike other genres, people don’t seek Amapiano for just a song. They desire a full experience with it. Thus, many of those newbies sought it out to prepare them for Amapiano-themed events they bought tickets for.
Good marketing is something all of us can apply – even when the threat of “oversaturation” tries to threaten our efforts.
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