It may not be Guangum Style, but Wavin' Flag is Close
The rediscovered "Wavin' Flag" song that's been hitting airways recently has a specific intent for those interested in learning about the artist and it's original marketing affect. Here’s a summary of an article that was published in November 2010 issue of Fast Co magazine and watch the music video below!
This artist named K’naan was the popular act as a song performer during the world cup in 2010. He seems to have defeated just about all odds of a drastically dangerous upbringing in Somalia where he witnessed killings of his friends at a very early age. His father who lived in NY, helped arrange the relocation of him, his brother and his mother to the US after a severe instance involving the deaths of his friends by armed militia. “One afternoon in 1990, K'naan and three friends (nicknamed Hussein, Nune, and Soviet) were playing in the yard behind a destroyed courthouse. As the boys chatted and teased one another, armored vehicles sped past at regular intervals. Nune told the other three he was tired of this, that he just couldn't stand to see these military guys anymore. The vehicles are like pickup trucks, with a machine gun on top. One slows down. The guy behind the machine gun just looks at us. Then he slowly turns. He turns his machine gun at us, and then he starts firing." Nune died first. Hussein was next. Soviet was shot and went to the hospital. K'naan escaped unscathed.
His time in the US developed his interest in rappers like 2Pac, Notorious BIG and NAS and his rap career began to take roots despite frequent relocations between Minnesota, Toronto, New York and Ohio. He was discovered during a demo composium for new artists and placed third among the competition. The record label A&M/Octone, whose CEO is James Diener signed him.
The international marketing manager at Coke initiated the partnership between the artist and the company sometime later as explained here…”There was another guy trying to "activate" international distributors in 2008 and 2009: Emmanuel Seugé, the buoyant global director of worldwide sports and entertainment marketing at Coca-Cola. Seugé, a 35-year-old Frenchman whose childhood dream was to play for Les Bleus, his country's national soccer team, was working on the dream assignment of his adult life -- turn the World Cup into the biggest branding event ever for Coca-Cola. The company has a contract with FIFA, the game's organizing committee, to be one of the event's six chief sponsors through 2022. But by February 2009, with the World Cup just 16 months away, he still hadn't heard the right tune. And then one morning, he opened up an email sent at 4 a.m. by the wild Turk he'd put in charge of music sponsorships, Umut Ozaydinli. "I think I've found our guy and our song," wrote Umut (no one calls him Ozaydinli). "His name is K'naan, and the song is 'Wavin' Flag.
“Every brand at Coca-Cola is associated with a central idea or theme. Coke Zero, for example, is all about "making the impossible possible," which is why Seugé had that brand sponsor Avatar, James Cameron's revolutionary 3-D film. Coke, on the other hand, is associated with happiness. "Happiness and optimism," says Seugé, "like all that singing on a hill in the middle of the crises of the 1970s. For the World Cup, we decided to tell a story of happiness through an African lens -- if that helped change the perception of the continent, that would be even better."
A popular incident had occurred during 1990 World Cup match involving a Cameroon player named Roger Milla and was reviled as a marketing strategy for 2010 along with the promotion of K’naan’s song. “The player responsible for scoring the goal during the match of Cameroon and England in the quarter finals in ’90 was Milla and his celebration dance became a popular video clip for the remainder of the World Cup. In the celebration, he ran to a corner post and shimmied joyously, a goal celebration so memorable that it was copied by players all over the world. And at least one of those shimmies was directly in front of, yes, a Coca-Cola ad.
So in 2009 Seugé quickly tracked down Milla's cell number and called, reaching him at his home in Yaoundé. Milla answered, and Seugé got right to the point: Coca-Cola wanted to pay Milla to be an ambassador for the World Cup and to build an online campaign around videos of his memorable dance. Coke drinkers around the world were invited to log on to coke.com to send in videos of their own joyous goal dances -- and millions eventually did.
All Seugé was missing was a song, an anthem that would get the world singing along with Coke again.
So having been introduced to K'naan's song a few weeks before by music coordinator Umut, Seuge was ready to march forward with the company's major marketing strategies for the world's largest sporting event.
“The issue with the song was the verses, which eluded to controversial lyrics of oppression growing up in Somalia. The idea behind the song was a retelling of the hard struggles and war-like lifestyle he had to emerge from, and the chorus, which Coke found eye catching was a message of self improvement and rising against the odds…”When I get older, I will be stronger/They’ll call me freedom./Just like a Wavin’ Flag.” To render the lyrics to suit the positive, influential description that Coke was after, the song would need to be changed. K’naan says, “And writing a whole new thing would have been a jingle. Emmanuel was too sensitive to ask me to rewrite 'Wavin' Flag.' So I offered to do it." He goes on to say…,” The Coke lyrics are the pop music side of me," K'naan says, "creating a song you can hum at work. I love writing stuff like that."
Across the world, there are now 20 versions of "Wavin' Flag" for sale on albums and on iTunes.recorded by local artists that have been prepared for the local market and listeners.
Wavin' Flag" became an international phenomenon; when the Spanish team returned to Madrid to celebrate its victory, the team led a 1.5 million -- person sing-along. A&M/Octone estimates that some 2.1 million paid copies of the song have been downloaded
It's September 4 2010, and he's just back from a desultory performance in the Irish drizzle at Electric Picnic, an outdoor festival that featured him as a third-tier act, far behind headliners like Modest Mouse, the Frames, Leftfield, and Massive Attack. He's exhausted and depressed. "It's the first time," he says, "that I ever performed most of a concert with my back to the audience.
“If he doesn't get slotted into the NPR niche of world music but manages to find a market for his hard-to-define blend of pop, rap, and sing-song rhyming; and if he has the patience of Job, K'naan just might make it. His manager is a friend, his band is close-knit, and he's a charismatic artist with a deep sense of mission and an ear for compelling hooks. He's such a charmer that Hollywood could come calling. And he's seen enough tragedy to have a great perspective on all the hype.”
“The deal between Coke, A&M/Octone, and K'naan worked for two reasons: First, because Coca-Cola is an unusually huge and unusually good marketer. Second, because everyone compromised to pull off something cool. The artist took less money than he would have a few years ago, and worked hard. The corporation respected his integrity and quirks, and developed a plan that was as good for him as it was for them. The label forsook a short-term payout for a broader partnership. This is the only way the Coke-K'naan deal could be a model for the industry: Accept less, work hard, don't go for the quick buck, compromise, work with people you like, and create music that's meaningful to your fans.”
The take away…
The World Cup is the largest marketing event and Coke has sponsorship rights until 2022, so reaching a large dimensional group through such events it’s surely in it’s best interest. The idea of creating a business partnership with a musical artist who can perform live as a personality for a large consumer product like Coke seems to be an unprecedented tactic…”Sales of Coke rose 5% in the second quarter of 2010, a gain CEO Kent attributed directly to the campaign. Nearly a million people attended the company's World Cup trophy events, and the various "Wavin' Flag" remix videos have garnered 80 million page views. When Interbrand released its recent report that named Coke the world's leading brand, the agency described the effort as "a campaign that marketing managers will be looking to as a case study for years to come."