Queen Bey & Harvard Biz School

“Why not let a 16-year-old fan in Bulgaria have the same capability to judge as someone who runs the biggest radio station in the world," Rob Stringer (Columbia Records) rhetorically pondered to Elberse and Smith. "Beyonce has built that audience. And I can imagine the normal release process gets a bit monotonous for someone like her.” -- Flanagan on billboard.com

Professor Anita Elberse and her former student, Smith, teamed up to put together a 27-page case study on Beyonce which will be taught in Elberse's course at Harvard Business School. HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL. Harvard is so cool. Anyways, coming back to the point, the course is fittingly called "Strategic Marketing in Creative Industries," and yes, you are right. The case study is about Beyonce's self-titled 5th "visual" album released that happened just out of nowhere in 2013. Boom boom bang. The more intriguing section would be the story and real facts on Parkwood Entertainment's foundations and her role at the company as the CEO.

Why is that the more intriguing segment of the case versus you know, the part about Bey's whole roll out and how that was the best business management held secret between Bey's company, Apple and Facebook? Well, hear me out.

Beyonce news and coverage triumphs all others. This kind of superiority and power is what she had achieved after her album's drop in Dec 2013; of course, it is her entire career and life that outclassed her fellow musicians (I don't want to say "competitors" in an industry of creatives) but because of this extreme stardom and fandom she has gained, we only see the "juicier" news bits. For instance, her and Jay-Z's forever-looming divorce. I give my whole life's f*** about this divorce--no lies. If it happens, I don't know if I'm ever gonna get married. *fangirl hair flip* It's a big deal. Everytime some one speaks about it or a link pops up on my goddamn newsfeed, I flip out (internally) and try to play calm. And this angst I don't like. I don't give a damn about tabloids and NONFACTUAL components. And it's HARD and DIFFICULT to get solid insights into Bey's business roles with Parkwood plus her album roll out. Her creative process has been shared but her business approaches, not so much.

Moving on, my personal favourites on Bey's approach on her self-titled album are the following:

1. VISUAL ALBUM

News of the recording, a self-titled set of 14 songs with 17 companion videos dubbed a “visual album,” caught music industry veterans and even her diehard fans off guard. Without advance publicity, a single to promote, or any music leaked to the Internet, Beyoncé managed to keep the project under wraps until she was ready to unveil it across 119 countries.

We all know how many videos we consume per day and this number is increasing, especially on our mobiles. And for Bey to drop bombtastic SEVENTEEN videos that captured her emotions and visuals of each single to deliver a 360-degrees stage for the audience is... just pure brilliance.

2. COLLABORATIVE PROCESS
A strict believer in collaboration, I am so impressed with Beyonce for going all out and creating an atmosphere where all artists would excel more than each of their expectations. One place, one energy, good food, good company, and consistent studio channeling = the best outcome at that moment.

Parkwood's general manager Lee Anne Callahan-Longo said: “We rented a house in the Hamptons for a month. Everyone would have dinner together every night and break off into different rooms and work on music. She had five or six rooms going, each set up as a studio, and would go from room to room and say things like ‘I think that song needs that person’s input.’ Normally you would not see songs have two or more producers, but it was really collaborative.” -- Gorton on dazeddigital.com

And we all know that Pharrell my hot friend was there, too. And now, the rhetorical question in your head (more like mine)... When am I ever going to rent a place in the Hamptons for a project? In my 50s, latest. Please.

** Find out more on this hot news on Harvard Gazette! ** 

Indiegogo Insights

I recently joined a Korean-Canadian film crew, Visually Unboxed, over the summer and then decided to create huge goals for it... And now we are proud to say that we are working on a three year plan with the first step being a registered start up next summer. To prep for it, we found ourselves a client, a Korean start up called Hello!Geeks and started working with them to create an Indiegogo campaign video and content guidance.

First news is that Indiegogo--or any crowdfunding campaigns--just do not happen by putting up some content and clicking submit. Who knew that it takes so much work and digestion of channel-specific analysis? Indiegogo is different from Kickstarter. They work with a different algorithm called the GOGOFACTOR.

Today, I'm just going to outline our key findings from our "a look into Indiegogo" report we made for our friends in Korea. ** Originally written in Korean, translated for my blog.

And here is where I will leave you guys. I did dissect each step-by-step process of pre-during-post Indiegogo campaign, but this blog post is a teaser. 

Need more information? Contact me to improve your campaign. 

I will keep y'all posted on Hello!Geeks's Indiegogo campaign we are launching in about two months! 

Working hard to find peace within myself but to spread knowledge.

 Knowledge is money, wisdom is reward. Feeling humbled these days with the time I have and don't have as a small fish (more like algae? plankton?) in a big pond. 

<< Look inside Rachel's brain @ I am Purpose on Tumblr >>

The Journey to Pocketing the iPhone 6

So I finally got my own hands on an iPhone 6.

It is my first iPhone. I have officially lost my iPhone virginity. This is when you go, "Ooh~ ahh~ dayummm girlllll~~~~" in your head or out loud to your laptop screen--whatever works, really. Yet the extreme satisfaction of owning this gadget that is so, so, so, so, so, so, so, very fucking much coveted by like so many people around the world... isn't really present with me. What's the shorter way of putting it? Umm.

#Disappointment. 

a) I just blew almost a grand on a goddamn calling device.

b) And that grand is totally hard frickin' sweat, man. I worked my glands off mopping floors, making really bad coffee, and selling it for a ridiculous amount of price to brainwashed consumers at Starbucks.

c) I don't even know whether it really was the iPhone's existence that made me purchase it or whether it was the constant iPhone-related articles that were popping up on the internet left, right, and center.

d) I think I was brainwashed to buy it.

e) Then the iCloud hack happened and it was just like MY INTERNET = APPLE NEWS.

f) Unfortunately, this MY INTERNET = APPLE NEWS still continues. Can people just STOP POSTING ANYTHING RELATED TO "BENDING."

g) People should also stop "wittily" mentioning the "bend" thing to me, too. It's so old. There must be another #EpicMegaUltimateDesignFail worth writing a Mashable "velocity report" article on. (Maybe not, actually).

h) The quality of content on Mashable is laughable (I rhymed)! Is Mashable now a personal Apple-PR-runner? Apple-channel? Apple-website? Apple-speaker? Apple-funnel? Apple-core???? I really need to unsubscribe from them. They are driving me nuts.

i) I stalked Apple Canada's RESERVE AND PICK UP site day and night to no avail.

j) I just buried myself in self-created sadness because I was so ritually refreshing iPhone Reservation website with tiny hopes of seeing an "Unavailable" turn into "Available." Funny how the Albertan locations would always have like one model available. #TheOnlyTimeIWishIWereLivingInAlberta #VancouverSnobiety

k) Then the AVAILABLE happened! And being a jittery fool, I made the wrong finger movement of reserving the SPACE GREY instead of Gold... I tried to reserve again, but I'm only allowed one reservation per day and of course everything is AUTOMATED and nobody wants to help me/has access to actually switching my precious once-per-day reservation...

l) I LITERALLY CRIED on my bed. I was so burnt out of clicking refresh per every 20 minutes for more than a week for this super expensive phone that just had me wanting it without any logical reasoning... Except that it's an iPhone 6? All sorts of angst and frustration that were previously unknown to me surged inside out.

m) I gave up on everything and cleared my mind. Through mindfulness over attending university classes, I went over to Pacific Center to pick up my iPhone 6 in 16 gb (non-optimal storage size) in space grey (nobody wants this colour, right?) and paid everything in full in cash.

n) I just kept thinking that I really need to learn the Craigslist know-how's to purchasing electronics.

And this is how my journey to pocketing the iPhone 6 started and ended.

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I'm actually an Apple fan, but their technology's functionality rating plus the designs are failing my expectations here and there.

For sure, the iPhone 6 is the best phone I've owned, but it has too many aspects that could be improved. This room for improvement outshines and outweighs all of its "value-adding and innovative" features. Like, yeah, the camera's better. Well, iPhone had such shit camera specs anyways, it's the easiest thing you could improve to meet the industry standard -- set by Samsung. How about focusing on actually shaving down on the camera's jutting out part instead of just photoshopping it in all images used on websites and campaigns? I can only just laugh out loud with pangs of sadness.

It really is true; the world needs Steve Jobs but he is no longer here. Post-Jobs-Apple is no longer the Apple I fawned over and grew up with. It has almost become a laughing figure of a stalemate. No wonder they split their shares, Jony Ives is doing interviews, Tim Cook is made fun of in the most blatant ways, and iOS8 had bugs that limited your phone to an iPod. 

This post turned out to become an emotional rant on Apple, but actually I was aiming to outline Apple's power as a trusted brand with a scary fanatic cult following. For Apple, the product quality does not even matter, the apps that are exclusively offered on the iOS (e.g. VSCO Cam) drive their cult following. The above-you / above-Microsoft / above-all stigma that Jobs had created before he left is still prevalent amongst the consumer groups and drives sales numbers. Any kind of negative feedback or negative social marketing remarks against Apple actually works FOR them, transforming into more earned media for them. As you can see from my previous steps within buying my iPhone 6, the number of Apple-related news from the internet (whether the sentiments were positive or negative) affected my decision to purchase the phone. The more talked about this product or brand is, the more it stays within your mind. 

Tjaco Walvis says that purchasing decisions are made subconsciously even before the consumer goes through the analysis of their consideration set brands/products. I can definitely concur with this. Even before I weighed out my pros and cons of buying the iPhone and while I was shuffling through all sorts of iPhone 6 related articles, updates, news, comments, and status updates, I was already more than 100% sure that no matter the end utility gained, I will purchase this HOT HOT HOT GADGET. 

Funny how much easier it is for me to admit that I have fallen into a victim of clever, 360-degree consumer touchpoint marketing trap, now that I am in this industry. I love what I do because I know it works on me--rather beautifully.

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P.S. Because I don't want to sound like a miserable and spoiled capitalistic consumer, my actual desperation for owning this new phone ASAP stemmed from the fact that I was currently using a Samsung Galaxy S2 (circa 2011). I think this is the single valid reason I can state.