Kanye’s Brand
Kanye West’s brand took a big hit when he misbehaved at the MTV VMAs a few weeks back and he’s been keeping his head down since, even going so far as to cancel a proposed tour with Lady Gaga. But perhaps in a surprisingly frank move today, he released a copy of a short film made by director Spike Jonze, which got a ton of online coverage. The film, called “We Were Once a Fairytale”, is about 7 minutes of Kanye acting like a drunken moron in a club (thereby reinforcing all the things we’re coming to associate with him), then a bizarre bathroom scene where he cuts open his stomach and removes a little troll/goblin/demon mouse character, which promptly kills itself and Kanye sobers up sharpish. It’s definitely a self indulgent piece, but its frank depiction of a drunk and unattractive Kanye must have been some kind of catharsis for the man and surely the exorcism of “his demon” has to be taken at face value. By way of an apology (even if the film was made prior to his MTV shenanigans), it’s a pretty interesting new layer to his brand.
Interestingly enough, as I went to find the video to post, I discovered that it has been removed from the web from all the sites that were hosting it. At Kanye’s blog, he says “sorry I had to take it down:(”.
Any good brand has layers for its consumers to discover - I wonder this most recent one of Kanye’s was a little too much to bear. It’s a shame he didn’t leave that one out there for longer…but perhaps that was the point.
UPDATE: Here it is…back online this morning:
October 27th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
I don’t know if his brand was so much hurt by this escapade. I mean look:
1) Name headlining every news report and every outlet (it had been quiet on Kanye for a while)
2) he’s a rap star, so drunkin’ tom foolery is not too far out of character, in fact he is a little too squeeky clean for the industry usually
3) continued press coverage as he does or does not perform the necessary steps of contrition
entertainers careers are oftem made over controversial and bad behavior and how they ‘deal’ with it. Where would Snoop-dogg be without marijuana? Where would Jane Fonda be without Hanoi? Where would Kobi be….bad example…sports starts are different.
November 21st, 2009 at 10:46 am
He really did make a dramatic gash in his brand. But his MTV antics really helped Taylor Swift’s brand… A lot, lot!