INDIO, CA - APRIL 14: Wu-Tang Clan performs onstage during day 3 of the 2013 Coachella Valley Music ... [+]
The Wu-Tang Clan is a formidable force. Those who know about the Staten Island-based hip-hop collective likely interpret this declaration with much more colorful language than I have provided here, and for good reason.
Despite all their many accolades, what I find most impressive about the Wu-Tang Clan is the case study they’ve provided with regard to branding. After a conversation with founding member Inspectah Deck, I realized that the Wu-Tang Clan’s contribution to industry doesn’t stop with its creative output; there is a wealth of marketing lessons.
Not only has the Wu-Tang Clan rewritten the rules of the rap game since they hit the scene in 1993 with their debut album, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), but they have also reimagined the rules of the music industry more broadly—proving that they are, indeed, nothing to mess with.
As a collective, the group was signed to one record label, Loud Records, but their deal was structured so that each member could negotiate their own individual deal with a different record label as an individual artist. This unprecedented approach helped maximize the financial viability of its members and cross-pollinate the “Wu” brand with every individual release. The result produced a collective of breakout stars who shined on record, on stage, across TV screens, and on silver screens.
From the onset, the Wu-Tang Clan was an unorthodox rap group. It consisted of nine different artists —RZA, GZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Inspectah Deck, Raekwon the Chef, U-God, Ghostface Killah, and Method Man — with nine unique styles. At a time when the rap genre was moving toward a West Coast, Funkadelic sound, Wu-Tang introduced elements borrowed from martial arts movies—which grew in popularity in the 1970s—and infused them into their lo-fi sonic aesthetic and battle-tested image conception. Spoken excerpts from kung-fu films and audible sound effects from their fight scenes were sampled throughout Wu-Tang’s debut release. The sounds were placed front and center in the mix to ensure that the nonet’s influence and inspiration were unambiguous to the listening public.
Since the release of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), the collective has sold over 40 million albums across the globe, introduced new colloquial vernacular to the zeitgeist (like “ C.R.E.A.M., Cash Rules Everything Around Me”), established novel gestures and cultural mannerisms, and created a blueprint for business creativity. To commemorate their 30th anniversary, New York City lit up the Empire State Building in Wu-Tang colors and declared November 9th “Wu-Tang Day” in the city.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 09: (L-R) RZA, Method Man and Masta Killa of the Wu-Tang Clan visits ... [+]
Here are few things business leaders can learn from the Wu to help optimize their brand.
Distinctiveness
Before Byron Sharpe, a marketing professor at the University of South Australia, introduced the now popular concept of distinctiveness as a way for brands to distinguish themselves in the market and establish memory structures that help brands break through the clutter, the Wu-Tang Clan had long adopted this understanding. Their iconography reflected their martial arts influence, one that was strikingly unique to everything in music.
Beyond the logo, the collective had other distinctive brand assets to carve our cognitive real estate for itself in the minds of the buying public. They used bees to represent their proliferation and attack stance, mythologized in their music with lyrics that warned all would-be opposition, “Wu-Tang killer bees [are] on the swarm.”
The group’s distinctiveness provided a new perspective on the pre-existing ideologies of hip-hop culture, a culture that has long valued the posture of toughness. As Inspectah Deck put it, “We all grew up watching kung-fu movies and simulating the fight scenes from those films. That’s the way we approached lyrical combat as well.”
Not only was this evidenced in their musical content, but it was also materialized on their debut album cover, which featured seven nondescript individuals donning white masks and black hoodies in what appears to be an attack stance. This perspective allowed the group to adhere to the conventions and expectations of hip-hop culture and carve out a unique space for itself to be itself—a way to “fit in” but still “stand out.”
BURBANK, CA - OCTOBER 02: Rapper Inspectah Deck of the Wu-Tang Clan attends a press conference to ... [+]
The lesson here speaks to the importance of not only being distinct but also ensuring that your distinctiveness is culturally contextualized. The goal in achieving distinctiveness is not to be different for the sake of being different. Instead, marketers use distinctiveness to establish cognitive ease for consumers with brand assets that stand out. However, these assets must still fit into a cultural scheme to make the brand relevant to said consumers.
Portfolio Management
The Wu-Tang Clan’s nine founding members aren’t just artists; they are, in many ways, their own personal brand—each member conjuring a unique set of cognitions and affects in the minds and hearts of people. They are nine different brands residing under one over-arching moniker, a unifying brand. Collectively, they make up the brotherhood of the Wu-Tang brand and all that it signifies, but individually, they represent something novel in and of themselves.
Marketing scholars David Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler refer to this relationship as a ‘branded house,’ where the master brand (Wu-Tang, in this case) ties different sub-brands (the nine members) together. This concept was published over 20 years ago and has since been widely adopted into marketing practices across many industries. There’s no new news here.
However, what I found most interesting about the Wu-Tang Clan’s branded house architecture is how different each of the sub-brand is. The variance between the individual members is so widely different, yet as an over-arching brand, they are so connected and contextualized.
It’s like Andre 3000 and Big Boi from Outkast but multiplied. The complexity would be a nightmare for a traditional brand manager stewarding a CPG portfolio. Nevertheless, the Wu-Tang Clan has pulled this off flawlessly for over three decades — and with great consistency, no less.
When asked about the decisions the collective made to accomplish this extraordinary feat, Inspectah Deck’s response was simple: “We were just ourselves. We just did our thing, but we were all committed to the brotherhood [the over-arching brand].”
As simple as that statement may seem on the surface, its underlying implications are profound. They were able to manage the diverse portfolio of the Wu-Tang branded house by letting the individual brands be themselves, so long as they aligned to a shared belief of what unites them. And that’s the learning for marketers. We must have the courage to let brands be who they are and unite them through a shared worldview.
But this requires knowing who the brand is beyond what it does and curating a portfolio of brands that are true to themselves individually and live up to the master brand that unites them. When done well, the results create the conditions that lead to the kind of brand affinity that the Wu-Tang Clan—and all its members—have experienced all these years—longevity, expansion, and crazy C.R.E.AM. to boot.
