Beyond Urban Branding

I guess it's all just taken for granted that its all "American dance" but...I guess that was before it was "Black" and that was before anybody even acknowledged Hip-Hop was an art. People forget that in the beginning Hip-Hop was considered not art and just a random hiccup from the ghetto that the world wished would go away...TOO BAD!! I love to see Hip-Hop dance in ads.

So I go to youtube and HP has a new Dr. Dre ad. It's blowing my mind because, I have written several pieces on HP ads. You can scroll down and see my pieces on Serena and Jay-Z. HP tends to do solid ads with cutting edge artists and athletes. But Dr. Drizzzle? Man, this is off the meat rack. Long story short, Dre is in the studio with rapper Stat Quo (Southern rappers represent!). He basically talks about how HP makes his music sound like its supposed to. Hewlett-Packard really came tight. Its a clean, quick, focused ad and Dr. Dre did not have to go out of his element to make the ad work. There is no artist Apple can get to counter this. Check and mate my good man. Put the board and the pieces away. Dre is in the building. This was unsuspected and well played. Now, on the real, its amazing to see Dr. Dre pushing hard for PC's on the music side of the game? Who would have thought Dre uses HP to make those block rockin' beats? Can Dr. Dre convince young aspiring beat maker...

When DJ Hero was announced, I was juiced. But when this ad dropped, I lost bout 50% of my interest. A few posts back I talked about the importance of sometimes just letting an artist do their thing and letting your brand ride the wave. More often than not though, you can't afford to do that. I think ipod squandered an ad with Eminem like that once before. But this ad, it was just mediocre. I felt no connection to the DJ guy, the rappers or the artists (both of whom I really like). I think to tighten things up, they should have not gone the mashup route. They should have went with the "How could Guitar get better?" Then actually using a DJ for the first ad?? (hows that for original?). But alas, I'm sure the creative team asked the question "But WHICH DJ?". Fair question. Here is the answer: DJ QBERT, MixMaster Mike, DJ Kid Dragon, DJ Whoo Kid, DJ Kid Kapri, DJ King Tech- Mike Relm...I could go on...all day actually. But I won't. DJ Hero went out of their...