Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, has been one of the most polarizing celebrities in the last two decades. From interrupting Taylor Swift at her VMA 2009 acceptance speech to running for president and calling his mother-in-law Kris Jenner Kris Jong Un, the “Runaway” hitmaker attracts controversy like it’s his last name. However, things went a bit too far in 2022 when he showed up at the 2022 Paris Fashion Week with a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt. This controversial action was further worsened when Ye went on “X” and made several anti-Semitic statements.
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This led to him losing his billionaire status as Balenciaga, GAP, and Adidas severed ties with him. His net worth dropped from a Billion dollars to $400 million after the incident. Since then, “Ye” hasn’t been much in the limelight except for his and his wife Bianca Censori’s outfits. This is also when Ye announced his joint album with Ty Dolla $ign called “Vultures”. In typical Kanye style, the album never dropped and kept getting delayed for months till the Super Bowl weekend. The constant delay and impressive sounding snippets led to incredible hype on social media.
This is when Ye decided to drop the album and his merchandise on yeezy.com at a bizarre price. Seeing the album live up to its hype, the “808s and Heartbreaks” hitmaker decided to capitalize on the good reviews with a never-before-seen 30-second Super Bowl commercial. The commercial was a phone-recorded video by Kanye, bizarrely made while traveling in a car.
In the video, Ye can be seen saying how he spent all his budget on buying the commercial spot for $7 million. Thus, he has not been able to spend a penny on making the commercial, hence a video like this. The musician then went on to pitch his Yeezy fashion line and urged the viewers to go to his website and purchase his shoes.
The 30-second commercial took the internet by storm for its authenticity. The video instantly became the talk of the town and resonated with his fans. The video also struck a chord because the production value also mirrored the low-cost $20 pricing of all his products. His marketing ploy worked. Within a day, yeezy.com sold more than 294k items, amassing a total revenue of a whopping $19.3 million. While this sounds like the power of authenticity with a pinch of madness, you will be surprised to know that there was a well-planned method to this madness.
Kanye West — The Marketing Genius
Kanye West’s merchandise has historically been overpriced. Hence, Ye’s $20 pricing for every single item on his website shocked fans. After such incredible hype, many would have priced their products at a higher rate. But this is where Ye’s genius mind comes into play. The hip-hop artist priced every product uniformly to understand which product of his had the most demand.
264k people ordered the Yeezy pods, thus giving him a clear picture that he needs to now focus on the R&D of his shoes rather than other products. With the proof that there is a demand for his shoes, he can now innovate further and price accordingly for his next drop.
As per Ye’s Instagram post, his website had a conversion rate of 6.56%. This means that at least 4 million people visited his website in a day, giving him enough data and numbers to leverage Google Analytics and Meta to serve targeted ads in the future and convert them, Brand strategist Mahdi Woodard reports. Lastly, in terms of inventory, Ye barely had any.
This was evident by the rapper opting for the pre-order method, which allowed him to not invest a penny from his pocket in production. He will now use the pre-order sales to fund the production.
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Kanye West truly is a genius marketeer. This has undeniably been one of the best uses of the coveted Super Bowl commercial spot in recent memory. No brand has ever recorded such insane ROI as Ye with his low-cost commercial and conversions!
