Dear Nigerian artists, 'controversy' and empty Instagram pages are not PR strategies
Nigerian artists should employ great PR minds to help you promote your songs. If you will leverage on your star power via social media, let it be intentional and worthy.
Dear Nigerian artists, controversy and empty Instagram pages are not PR strategies. [Instagram/PeruzziVibes]
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The last time it happened, Pulse Celebrity News Reporter, Odion Okonofua also known as 'The Perez Hilton of Pulse' was chomping at the bit. On this fateful day, it was the turn of Toyin Abraham, the Nollywood actress to utilize the 'strategy.' When Okonofua noticed it, he was on the page religiously for hours.
When questioned on the PR strategy in emptying Instagram pages by Nigerian celebrities, Okonofua says, "Sometimes, it works for them when they're huge enough with a high dedicated number of followers because it sparks questions - especially when it's sudden. It doesn't work for everyone, but it works for some people. However, CeeCee did it and it worked for her.
"Yes, I get it. Some of these celebrities do it when they feel a need to rebrand, but they never push the 'rebrand' button until they have something worthy of an announcement. In other words, they never delete their pictures until they have a pressing need to. Cleaning your Instagram page is the new PR stunt for popular Nigerian figures."
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That's just one part of the derisory PR strategy that Nigerian celebrities now employ though. These days, 'PR stunts' now involve executing news-worthy controversy that would make it to Instablog9ja or for Journalists like Okonofua to write about it.
The idea also involves trending on Twitter NG. This way, they trend by the strength of their own evil genius and the power of Twitter to push conversation. What this helps them achieve is set the ground for their upcoming releases.
This strategy has always been rife amongst celebrities across the world. But over the past five months in Nigeria, it's grown to become cliche. The earliest trigger for this ripple effect of strategic cliche was the false allegation of Davido by two women. They claimed one of them was impregnated by Davido.
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A few hours later, they had been rounded up and arrested by supposed members of the Nigerian Police Force. Quite tellingly, the event happened close to the release date for Davido's sophomore album, A Good Time. What gave Davido away was not even the proximity of the event to his release date, it was how the 'arrest' was recorded on video.
As if that was not enough, Davido then posted a video of the ladies enjoying at his house a few hours later. From the optics, if this writer was a betting man, he'd place huge money on the event being a publicity stunt. Since the event happened and supposedly 'worked' for Davido, different Nigerian artists have tried the 'PR stunt' strategy.
Recently, it was Peruzzi's turn. One evening, a certain UK-based aspiring singer accused the singer of sexual assault and fraud. This was a few hours before Peruzzi released his single, 'Gunshot.'
In the last few hours, another story has been bubbling. It is that of rapper, Yung6ix's former hypeman, DJ Timmy's 11-tweet 'reveal' that the rapper 'pressured' him into buying an N11 million car and N2.5 million rent for himself (DJ Timmy). For Yung6ix, this is conveniently happened as he released 'Happy,' his first single in a while. He is also set to release a trap album.
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In between all these events, different Nigerian artists have attempted similar 'stunts' with the goal of gaining notoriety for their upcoming releases. For some, it's worked but for most, it has not. These days, it's becoming a trend that's set to become a cliche. It shows an industry with lazy intellectual artists who do not understand the concept of PR.
Why do Nigerian artists do this?
The bottom line is simple; the internet and social media have ruined PR. In fact, PR is now firmly rooted in the virality and the loyalty of stan culture. For that reason, instead of executing potentially expensive and mentally tasking PR strategies, big stars and celebrities would rather leverage on their huge social media following or their virality to execute news-worthy trends.
It's not their fault either, it works for some of them. In 2019, Blaqbonez came to Pulse Nigeria. In between the chat, this writer asked him why he has a fun social media persona that used to make headlines. He replied that he noticed that anytime he does those things, his streaming numbers increase. Thus, he continued to do those things.
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For that reason, as much as we want to complain about these 'stunts' by Nigerian artists, they work for streaming numbers. They also impact the perception of these artists. PR stunts are like ads - they don't necessarily make you go download the artist's music, but they create a mental awareness about the artists that could subconsciously make you check out their music.
In a lot of ways too, the future of business is cost-effectiveness, convenience and efficiency meets good product. If artists can abridge costs and ensure efficiency through social media stunts while they guarantee optimum reach, then their aim is achieved. Social media represents the death of news, so to them , it could also be used to abridged the demands of PR.
But on the other hand...
These PR stunts are seldom as useful for artists - except you're big as Davido, Wizkid or Tiwa Savage. For example, Iyanya deleted all his Instagram pages and he couldn't even get a retweet of the link to his recent EP, For Your Love.
For Peruzzi, despite the stunts, his latest single, 'Gunshot' has just 72,000 views on YouTube. In the same vein, 98% of Nigerians don't even realize that Yung6ix released a new single titled, 'Happy.' Thus, the power of these stunts are largely overrated. Even when you are a Wizkid or Davido, you cannot continually rely on stunts are your sole PR strategy to promote your upcoming releases.
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Even worse, the fake promises and allure of PR stunts and empty Instagram pages can sell a false dawn to artists. To that end, the potential reliance on these fake strategies can ruin careers without the artists in question even realizing what is wrong. It's bad enough that Nigerian artists have not been promoting their songs well enough.
The inability of the average Nigerian artist to promote a song and instead rely on his star power to promote songs is bad enough. They don't need false dawns. Our industry cannot afford these acts of intellectual laziness.
What should Nigerian artists then do?
Employ great PR minds to help you promote your songs. If you will leverage on your star power via social media, let it be intentional and worthy.
JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!
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