Crippled CEO Blog #050:
Holy crap. We hit 50. Can y’all believe it? And for #050, it’s going to get a bit weird. But hang in there with me.
Because I wanna talk WAP.
Yeah, that WAP, by Cardi B.
Everyone’s favorite song about making macaroni and cheese.
Now, chances are, you have OPINIONS about the song. You either love it or hate it. I get that. I happen to think it’s great, but that’s not the point here.
WAP did something genius. Something that I don’t think has been done before.
And it’s not use controversial lyrics to get attention. That’s been happening since the dawn of time.
The last verse of the song feels out of place. It doesn’t fit the formula of the rest of the song. It has the strongest lyrics, the most memorable lines, but it feels like a unit unto itself. It has a very clear start, middle, and end, and summarizes the song as a whole. It feels like a standalone song within a song.
And it’s exactly 15 seconds.
If you are a purveyor of the TikToks, the lightbulb in your head just went off.
For those who don’t know, a TikTok video can only be 15 seconds long.
Cardi B deliberately designed a song within a song made specifically for TikTok. In fact, I would argue that’s the real song, and the rest is just the filler you need to sell it on iTunes and get it played on the radio.
Either way, it’s absolutely brilliant. There’s no question that a large part of the success of that song is due to the ubiquity of it on TikTok.
What can we learn from this?
If you’re marketing, you need to adapt what you’re doing for the medium you’re using. You can technically put the same post on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, but those are totally different platforms, and they should be treated differently.
You can upload your IG stories to YouTube, but they’re probably not going to do very well. It’s a different thing.
Cardi B knows that TikTok is the epicenter of musical culture in the US right now, so she designed her content with that specific platform in mind.
It’s genius and I love it.
I don’t love it so much that you need to get a bucket and a mop, but it’s very cool.
(What is this interesting to you? Share it with somebody. You can make sure that you never miss the next one by sending a text message to the phone number 484848.)
Have to check it out. that makes so much sense. personally I have to get better at thinking like that. Practicing this and lateral thinking to adapt to new platforms and create content for that will be my new mountain to climb. I’m even more impressed you so quickly identified this maneuver ( Re: music and tiktok ). Will forever be taking notes under you.