Emotional capital as engagement currency: The Davido example
By Felicia Nwosu
It is not news that brand owners, music artistes inclusive, in their quest to grow their market share ultimately learn to deploy winning marketing strategies. A successful business strategy bouquet is largely dependent on the business type, demographics of the target audience and the peculiarities of the market.
In the entertainment industry to which music belongs, and in a market like Nigeria where the youth make up about 60 percent of the market, the marketing strategy must be youth-centric. For Davido, the Omo Baba Olowo, OBO, crooner, the trajectory of his musical career has demonstrated the understanding and employment of winning marketing strategies to first crystalise, then play to and ultimately, influence and mould fans’ behaviour to ensure engagement, acceptability and patronage.
From the adoption of Davido, a funkified version of his name, to an alias, Omo Baba Olowo abbreviated into OBO, Davido has keyed into the language and way of life of the ‘get rich young or die trying’ youths. His flambouyant lifestyle, public display of wealth and affluence and exaggerated philanthropism are all calculated strategies to play to the emotions and world view of his target audience. These have actually hit the mark and have been rewarded with such cult followership that translates to huge returns in his books.
His personality branding strategy is one that has earned him nothing but brand value, top of the mind with unparalleled value proposition as a premium brand. Also, identifying with his fans in their sad and happy moments has endeared many more people to him as he has lived up to the billing to his nickname, OBO.
Having effectively developed a thriving personal brand, Davido graduated into nurturing a corporate brand by establishing a label, the Davido Music Worldwide, DMW. Like his personal brand, he has incorporated a philanthropic tilt to the Label’s operation. Since 2016 when the Label was incorporated, he has signed acts like Mayorkun, Dremo, Ichaba, Idowest ,Deekay Yonda, Ayanfe, Peruzzi Logos Olori and Morravey etc., and nurtured the career of others like Lola Rae.
Today, the Davido brand has developed a cult followership among the youths and young at heart, it has become one of Nigeria’s best exports in the entertainment industry. As a people’s musician, he has a smooth aura that easily wins people over.
Treasure Kālu, Head of Training and Business Development, Xtreme Xcellence Consulting, gave his view on what differentiate Davido’s music marketing strategy and how it has been able to launch him to stardom and sustain him. While analyzing the talented artiste music growth trajectory, he described Davido as very adept at marketing. Highlighting Davido’s newly launched album, “Timeless”, he revealed that through his unquantifiable strategy, it got the highest charting ever in the history of Africana on Apple Music, it was the biggest first-day streams on Spotify Nigeria with 4.91 million streams, surpassing the previous record of 1.36M by Burna Boy. According to Kalu, it also received the biggest first-day streams on Boomplay, the largest music digital streaming platform in Africa and many more. He commended Davido for his brilliant grit which he linked to his strong belief in collaborations.
“Collaboration is the new competition, rather than performing the entire album by himself, Davido collaborated with several Nigerian & foreign artistes like Asake, Fave, The Cavemen, Morravey and Logos Olori, as well as Grammy-award-winning Beninese singer, Angelique Kidjo amongst others. Instead of focusing on your competitors, seek your collaborators. He didn’t bank on appeal to pity and public sympathy on the death of his son. Most people expected that he would dedicate a track or two to sing about his ordeal. Whilst he might have enjoyed some level of public support as result, such sympathy is not enough to get the album to break records. OBO is putting in the work! The lesson here is that we should stop using pity party and emotional blackmail as a marketing strategy. Stop telling people you would die if they don’t buy from you.
Kalu who commended Davido for his strategic prowess in marketing, said his efforts at leveraging several platforms such as User-Generated Content (UGC which went viral to build a sense of community amongst his fans has actually paid off.
“Davido is teaching the rest of us not just the art of making viral music but the art of undiluted and incomparable marketing! The most successful artistes and businesses are not necessarily the ones with the best products but the ones with the best marketing strategies. More and more people are jumping on the challenge daily. The fastest way to turn your audience into an army of brand evangelists is to give them a sense of ownership. Another strategy is his massive PR & visibility, where Nigeria’s urban contemporary radio station Beat 99.9FM changed their name to Timeless 99.9FM for 48 hours to promote the album. That’s genius. It is said that Davido also paid popular DJs $1,000 to keep blasting the album in the airwaves. Visibility is not cheap; be ready to pay the price.”
An entertainment ecosystem expert, and Chief Executive Officer of Energize Music, Tochukwu Macfoy, noted that the African music industry is in the midst of an incredible transformation, which Davido is already exploring to the fullest by leveraging the emotional capital he has with his fans. He revealed that the secret behind the Nigeria’s Afropop star strategy is the quality of marketing and his massive brand love.
DAVIDO HAS MASSIVE BRAND LOVE! This he noted, is through authenticity and vulnerability which has helped form an emotional connection with his audience in a unique way, as well as affects a wider audience than most other artistes ever will.
“His brand is love, accessibility and vulnerability. He represents a simple Nigerian, people think they know their brand, truth is a brand is not what you say it is, it’s what they say it is. “A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for listener to choose artiste over the other, a brand is even formed more unconsciously than consciously. In my opinion, Davido has won the game in identity, engagement, currency, and I suspect he also has changed his philosophy to life, but I am not God, only God sees the heart of men, in all, timeless the album is a lesson in branding.”
Meanwhile, music maestro and CEO of Mavin Records, Don Jazzy, also commented on his twitter, commending Davido over his Zeal and resilience in marketing his fourth studio album, ‘Timeless, despite his class and personality. Don Jazzy called on young talents to emulate the style adopted by Davido in marketing himself and putting himself in strategic positions.
“Dear artists hope you can see how Davido is marketing his album. He didn’t form oh I’m OBO.Marketing your beautiful project that you worked hard on does not reduce your swag.”
Some of the music promoters and lovers also disclosed that, talented singer, Daniel Anidugbe, aka Kiss Daniel, also has his own unique marketing strategy, which he explores through comedy skits and Tik Tok to win loyalists and increase his fan base. They pointed out that Davido’s music marketing strategy is far more powerful and diverse than Kiss Daniel who strategically uploads his comedy skits about a month before the real song is released.
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