As self-isolation and quarantine become the new normal, cultural names are stepping up with offerings — positive vibes. There’s a lot of bad out there and we can’t lose sight of the good. We are facing COVID-19 fears, isolation anxiety, financial woes, hopelessness and so much more. Yet music proves to be a supporting role in moments of crisis. The Great Depression is a prime example where people turned to the arts and music for solace & comfort. It was a time where artists of many genres thrived. Right now, there seems to be a surge of artistry and creativity happening, specifically within the DJ community. In a time of crisis and uncertainty, DJs have found a genuine role to help society cope with the inevitable impact we’re all likely to experience. We saw this first in Italy, where balconies became the stage for local DJs to bring levity, joy and unity. The humanity and hope captured in the viral videos traveled worldwide.

On Saturday, March 21st, during our first weekend into “shelter-in-place” order across NY, California, Illinois, and other cities — 100k people gathered virtually on IG Live x D-Nice for his Homeschooling 9-Hour Social Distancing Party. Some of those in attendance included Oprah, Will Smith, Michelle Obama, Alicia Keys, A$AP Rocky, Ellen DeGeneres, Justin Timberlake, Timbaland, Stevie Wonder, Joe Bidden, Bernie Sanders and many others. I joined in the party for about 8 hours and it was a virtual experience I’ve never encountered before and didn’t know I needed. As a strategist, I recognized this as a cultural moment — a moment in time that will redefine the role of music on the Instagram platform. I couldn’t help but wonder as we face a massive behavioral shift, a reset of sorts, what will the aftermath of COVID-19 mean for brands and marketers? Now I won’t pretend to have the answer but what I can offer are a few observations and opportunities from the biggest global virtual party ever on Instagram.

#1 SHOW EMPATHY & UNDERSTANDING

There’s no room for tone-deaf in navigating today’s cultural climate. Brands are now in the business of public service and that includes acting responsibly and not ignoring this sensitive time. D-Nice’s 9 hour IG live party was full of empathy, community and brought a brighter side to the dark times we’re currently experiencing. In the midst of COVID-19, boredom, angst, anxiety, isolation, and financial stress are riding high, D-Nice jumped at the opportunity to deliver on his mission and purpose by filling a real emotional & psychological need. His mission and purpose: bringing people together and sharing positive vibes. While Instagram might seem like a superficial platform, D-Nice’s IG live party showed we’re ready to move past the fake, the perfect and the highlight reel — we want more creativity, authenticity, and our needs met. D-Nice’s Club Quarantine served a real need: escape, belonging, entertainment, access to a-list celebrities, nostalgia and more.
Opportunity for Marketers: As marketers we need to rethink brands’ perspective on being relatable. It is not business as usual. Brands can explore ways to make content match the users’ content, lean into unpolished production quality and focus on showing understanding and empathy to the broader cultural climate and people’s mindset.

#2 STAY COMMITTED & CONSISTENT

D-Nice held a steady and consistent build up over the course of a week. His promotion of the 9 hour IG Live party began earlier in the week. By setting a schedule of daily virtual parties every day at 2 pm PST / 5 pm EST, D-Nice engaged more viewers and set the precedent for daily virtual parties throughout the week. On the first night of Club Quarantine, D-Nice had about two hundred viewers. As more viewers joined Club Quarantine, D-Nice “broke IG Live” and it forced him to start again from scratch each hour. D-Nice didn’t rely on paid media, press releases or acquisition strategies to garner views and party attendance, he relied on word-of-mouth from viewers and a few of his famous friends. When you offer something of value, your audience will do the talking for you. There’s no need to up-sell or use gimmicky advertising tactics for attention or engagement. A slow but steady start helped D-Nice gain traction, set expectations and give viewers a reason to keep coming back for more every day. A testament to the true power of social media and D-Nice’s DJ skills.

Opportunity for Marketers: As people bunker down, think about a content frequency to be consumed throughout all hours of the day by an audience. Redefine marketing strategies by considering all trends in a quickly changing society. Ad spending will likely decrease and digital ad spending will likely see an uptick. Why? That’s where people are spending the majority of their time now more so than ever.

#3 DON’T ASSUME YOU KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

D-Nice could’ve hosted his live party on YouTube, Facebook Live, or even his own website. But instead, he maximized his preferred platform, as well as recognized his target audience, celebrity A-list friends and multi-generations reside on Instagram. Additionally, Instagram users are more music-oriented than the general population (Source: Nielsen x Instagram Study), so why bother wasting time & effort with other platforms? Instagram was a low barrier to entry for multiple audiences. With everyone stuck at home — Zooming, hanging out on Google, Skyping, or FaceTiming — the opportunity was prime for D-Nice to lean into an existing and rapidly growing user behavior.
Opportunity for Marketers: As marketers we get the biggest bang for our buck when we meet a target audience where they are. But with changing times and changing behaviors, we can’t assume our audience definitions are 100% accurate. Find out where they are, understand their mindset, their needs as our society establishes new behaviors. During this time, create content for people that most likely can’t leave their homes, so be aware of their new lifestyles and ever evolving behavior. The principles around day parting, time scarcity, and overall rules about when people are online have shifted, so should marketing strategies.

#4 LOOK BEYOND WHAT’S EXPECTED OF PLATFORMS

By using IG Live, D-Nice’s Social Distancing party got bumped to first place in the Stories that are shown above users’ feed. He also looked beyond the expected capabilities of IG Live by hosting the longest virtual party on the platform. “Breaking IG Live” every few hours after reaching a viewer threshold, D-Nice took an experimental approach to exceed viewers’ expectations, uncovered what they didn’t know about IG Live and created a memorable experience. IG Live was merely a digital tool that brought a creative idea to life. The platform feature was used in a new way that challenged people’s understanding of the platform and made the experience more compelling. Marketing best practices tell marketers to optimize video content for no sound, to optimize content for “snack-able” digestion and yet Club Quarantine proved the opposite. People listened & engaged for 9 hours without a need for premium visuals, graphics, captions, etc. By looking beyond the expected capabilities of IG Live, D-Nice turned a digital space into a new in-real life experience where folks from all over the world and all walks of life tuned in.
Opportunity for Marketers: Forget all those best practices. Prioritize mobile first? Today, screentime isn’t just about our pocket computers. With people spending more time on their working from home on their laptops, TV screens, computer screens are all fair game for content consumption. As marketers, we tend to look at the platforms and technology tools as a means of getting views, downloads, comments, streams but we miss the opportunity to see these tools as a way to create a memorable or useful experience — to entertain, to educate and to create art with music. A memorable or useful experience has changed, we must adapt.

#5 ENGAGEMENT IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE

On the days leading up to the biggest IG live party ever, D-Nice only reached 5k viewers. On Saturday, with every passing hour the 5K view count became a target to beat. It was a collective challenge everyone participated in and no incentive was given other than making the virtual party bigger, interacting with more celebrities, and the bragging rights to say “I was there.” D-Nice made it fun for everyone to participate by making it feel more like a game than just another social live video. With every milestone in view count, D-Nice shouted out with excitement and urged the audience to keep the views coming. By users immersing themselves in this gamified reality, users intrinsically felt like they were a part of something bigger than themselves. Another gamified element was when D-Nice changed his hat prop every hour of his set. Appreciation “endorsements” were sent the form of liquor bottle service to Club Quarantine and donations were sent via CashApp to D-Nice as a tribute. The appearance of A-list celebrities kept users glued to their screens without any indication of who was next to join the party next.
Opportunity for Marketers: With folks spending more time alone at home and having more time on their hands, engagement takes on a whole new meaning. Long-format videos, IG Lives, virtual games, and other ways to help users pass the time and making them feel good are important. By implementing these shifts in marketing strategies, brands become useful in people’s lives, not a consumerist ploy.

While these takeaways may not apply to all brands (understand if and where your brand plays a role), it is important marketers keep in mind the future is here. While it might not be evenly distributed, taking the steps to assess and adapt marketing strategies are crucial. Today’s culture is moving at the speed of Covid-19 and marketers have to be prepared for the changes coming. At this moment and for the foreseeable future, we need less of a brand’s email discount codes, new product campaign, or brand awareness campaigns and more of how brand’s will service people & communities for the better. This is beyond shifting tactics, this is about implementing new marketing systems and that requires a mindset shift —pivotand innovate out of necessity.

Stay safe, stay healthy, stay connected and above all stay at home (until this all clears).

Side Note: If you’re in need of other DJ mixes to boost your spirits, here are a few of my modern day heroes.

Nickodemus — Spotify Mix

DJ Rashida x DJ Syrehn — Rotations Mixshow

DJ C. DeVone — Quarantine Fest

Y3LDA — Audiomack

I’m currently sitting in Freehold in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — a co-working space coffee shop by day and trendy lounge bar/restaurant by night — participating in what appears to the latest trend — rise of the freelance culture.

As I’m sitting here across the table from my boyfriend, I look around and can’t help but notice the number of people of “working”. By working, I mean the endless scroll of Facebook newsfeed, snapping pictures of the beautiful coffee shop space, editing said photos via multiple obsessive image manipulation apps, Instagramming said photos, text messaging, and intense head bopping to earphone tunes. I immediately asked my boyfriend, “psst…what percentage of the people in here are actually working or faking it?” He says, “40% are working.” But the pessimist in me thinks quite the contrary — I say “15% are working”.

This lead to me to a series of other questions and wonderment… what exactly is everyone working on? I’m sitting here jamming on this provoked curiosity about working in a coffee shop, while my boyfriend wraps up a few reports and edits to his new video project. But what about everyone else? It appears the four guys in the table next to ours are working on their property management business venture. But what about the woman by the bar? Or the group of 6 at the table towards the entrance? What motivates us to come to this coffee shop? Why a coffee shop and why this one in particular? Why coffee shops and not libraries or our own apartments? Is everyone actually working or perhaps in search of inspiration among a community of “real” and “fake” independent workers? Is it possible that even though we’re all sitting here isolated in community we’re on a mission to fulfill a better version of ourselves? Or do co-working spaces perpetuate a contagious behavior of productivity — in other words, you see others being productive and you mimic that same behavior, thus making you productive too. Perhaps, all to similar to contagious yawning. Could it be that sitting around a coffee shop among others who appear to be working breeds a sense of competition — thus making us work harder and be more productive.

Where did we learn that coffee shops were the ideal co-working space? Who started this trend and why? What is it about coffee shops that breeds productivity, creativity and community? Could it be the smell of caffeine that injects a boost of energy to help us get the work done? Hey barista — can I get a latte with a boost of productivity, please?

These are all questions that recently popped into mind while sitting in Freehold typing this piece. I look forward to next time I work in a coffee shop and actually get these questions answered by this coffeeshop community. ‘Till then, I’ll continue to ponder on these questions and figure out my approach to getting answers from this highly concentrated & caffeinated community.