As an author, I write for a specific reader. As a strategist, I plan for a specific audience. Both have taught me the same core lesson: the smartest brands and creators aren’t shouting at everyone. They’re whispering directly to the right crowd and giving them a reason to scream about them.
The goal is to stop marketing at people and create moments so relatable, real, and natural that your niche audience becomes your marketing team.
Luckily for all of us, the past few weeks have provided free masterclasses from creators that every brand can learn from:
- Cardi B goes home: To promote her new album, “Am I the Drama?” Cardi didn’t book national TV spots on random channels. Instead, she went to 125th Street in Harlem to sell albums off the street, hopped on the train carrying a box of CDs – rightfully telling people she’s hustling – and linked up with some of our favorite partners to deliver albums from the sky and from the “Cardi Bodega” popup. It doesn’t get more New York than any of that, and, by activating core Bronx and wider NYC audiences, radiated well-deserved authenticity on top of creating a cultural moment that showed in engagements, conversations, and viral content. We’ll ignore what happened after the album dropped, for now; but no, Cardi, you’re not the drama here.
- Kai Cenat stays home: Twitch’s most popular streamer broke his own all-time subscriber record during Mafiathon 3, his month-long 24/7 streaming marathon, by acquiring over 1 million paid subscribers. He achieved this by treating his channel like a must-see TV network. The stream became the only place to catch mansion backyard X-Games with Tony Hawk, a sleepover with Kevin Hart and Druski, a surprise appearance from Alicia Keys, or the unbelievable culmination: LeBron cutting his locs live. Instead of looking for other platforms to market for him, he created an event so culturally magnetic that tuning in live felt essential. Thus, he transformed his audience into his marketing team. It’s the same strategy Zeta Global used last week, bringing icons like Serena Williams, Tom Brady, and Tiffany Haddish together to create their own unmissable brand moment.
- Kirk Franklin opens his home: With Kirk’s recent YouTube series, “Den of Kings,” the gospel legend is cultivating safe spaces for men from all walks of life to have vulnerable conversations about fatherhood, faith, and mental health. This psychographic niche speaks specifically to how combining authenticity and serving a diverse audience leads to successful activations. Some guests featured so far include D.C. Young Fly, Tyler Perry, Jeezy, and Tyrese. Most recently, Kirk even made a special appearance on Kai’s stream. The comment sections and social reshares exploded, with viewers celebrating the raw vulnerability and evangelizing the series on his behalf. He shows that reaching a new audience isn’t about changing your message, but about meeting them where they are and speaking their language.
Finding your niche and then relentlessly serving it won’t limit your brand’s potential, it will multiply it.