Lil Nas X’s Lessons in Guerilla Marketing
While entering into another sweltering summer, I can’t help but reminisce about this time last year. I graduated college and moved home: two really big life events.
As I reflect on the highlights of my time at UC San Diego - getting published in an undergraduate research journal, helping found a neurodegenerative disease awareness organization, and eating an abnormal amount of tacos - a unique soundtrack from that time period always plays in the background.
The summer of last year was not only marked by my personal life-changing events, but also by the “Old Town Road” I danced down all the way to graduation.
If you couldn’t tell, I’m talking about the record-breaking song “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X. That song was ever-present. I mean every single radio station. I mean remix, after remix, after remix! It stayed at number one onBillboard Hot 100 charts for 19 straight weeks, beating summer anthem “Despacito” and the legendary Mariah Carey.
While it seems like the track came out of thin air to conquer the charts, Lil Nas X used fascinating digital guerilla marketing tactics to get it there.
ConnectionModel describes guerilla marketing as, “putting your business in front of people while they're doing things they were already doing, but in a big way.” It can be a stepping stone to virality and often relies on word of mouth. Guerilla marketing tactics excite my creative side because they require grand imagination and a strong understanding of the community you’re trying to reach.
I personally believe guerilla marketing makes consumers actually think about your product or service because it’s presented in a more authentic or thought provoking way. When companies leave room for consumers to think about them in their own terms (even if they’re influenced bynmarketing materials), it’s a concrete way of creating a memory and hopefully, a conversation.
So what did Lil Nas X do to get his song so popular he could secure famous features like Billy Ray Cyrus, Diplo, BTS, and even our favorite yodeling boy, Mason Ramsey?
Master Meme Making
Twitter is it’s own beast, don’t let the sweet bird-like associations fool you. Spend enough time on there and you will encounter the K-Pop stans (fans) for better or for worse. They’re a great example of Twitter’s strength, uniting communities through reach.
To use timely examples, BTS’s fan base, ARMY, raised $1 million in 24 hours to match the group’s $1 million donation to Black Lives Matter solely through social media. K-pop stans have also been known to take over hashtags on Twitter like #MAGA and #BlueLivesMatter with videos and photos of their favorite groups, drowning out right-wing commentary. This kind of mass mobilization is powerful and not limited to K-Pop and politics.
Anyone can harness this virality or collective conversational power if they play their cards consistently and correctly. That’s just what Lil Nas X did.
Lil Nas X flooded his followers with memes involving his song. There’s a fine line between spamming and marketing and Lil Nas X definitely walked it, crossed it, and came back. Yet his audience stayed with him and ultimately his content gained enough traction to be promoted by popular creators on other platforms and picked up by their communities.
Check out some of his tweets:
For Lil Nas X, the flood gates really opened when “Old Town Road” hit TikTok.
TikTok is an amazing app for repurposing content, as shown in the millions of challenges that occur at lightning speed.
Challenges are a trend as old as time when it comes to social media (remember the cinnamon challenge?) and TikTok has become their new home. Users create challenges hoping to get others to recreate and spread their content, like the #savagechallenge (1.1 billion views) using Meg the Stallion’s song or the #renegade( 1.9 billion views) dance challenge.
Popular creator NiceMichael, took Lil Nas X’s song and paired it with video content of him transforming into a cowboy. This was the birth of the yeehaw or yee yee or yee-yee haw challenge, where many a TikTok-er transformed into a country version of themselves some through drinking an imaginary juice called “Yeeyee juice.” The song flew up the Billboard charts after taking TikTok, Twitter, and other social media by storm.
Weaponizing your song search for virality
For a song to blow up on social media, users need to be able to find it. Lil Nas X tried to make this process as easy as possible by going to the internet’s question master, Google and its search results.
Turning this pain point into a marketing moment, Lil Nas X went to reddit and posted in the thread r/NameThatSong asking, “What’s the name of that song that goes ‘take my horse to the old town road’?” Whenever someone searched those lyrics or asked a similar question, the thread created by Lil Nas X himself, would pop up in the results and take the searcher to the song. It’s hard to know if this tactic is used often, but it is clever.
This is the very definition of taking your business and putting it in front of people while doing things they were already doing. How many times have you tried to find a song based on a snippet of lyrics you just heard, maybe even your best attempt at verbalizing a melody, and had Google turn up with nothing? It once took me six months, two brains, and a video recording to find the song “Faithful” by Fatman Scoop.
Changing the song name because we just can’t get it right
In that same infamous Reddit thread, Lil Nas X noticed that many people misnamed the song “I got the horses in the back.” In response, the artist uploaded a video to youtube titled “Old Town Road (I got the horses in the back)” featuring clips of Red Dead Redemption 2, a popular video game.
Anybody who searched for the song using “I got the horses in the back” would now be directed to another source where they could find the true song. In addition, it brought in Red Dead Redemption 2’s audience.
The video has since been deleted, but you can see it reuploaded on other user’s accounts.
Becoming a Billboard controversy
Have you ever heard of a country trap song before? According to Lil Nas X, that’s the song’s genre. I know “Old Town Road” was my first country trap song, and I’m sure that rings true for many others. In fact, Billboard removed the song from it’s country charts for “not containing enough country elements in its current state” pointing toward the presence of trap beats.
People began to think about race in country music, discussing specifically whether this represented a prejudiced country narrative.
While trap beats tend to be associated with hip-hop and Rap, in recent years country has become more beat heavy with the likes of Sam Hunt and Thomas Rett. Lil Nas X even pointed out that “Meant to Be” by Florida Georgia Line featuring Bebe Rexha have similar trap drums. Florida Georgia Line is identified as a country so their status affected the song’s chart genre. So if it’s not race related, it could be an example of gatekeeping or creating barriers within the country community.
Ultimately it’s important to recognize that much of modern, American music genres owe their creation to Black musicians, including country, and that historically white industry leaders have made business decisions that exclude these same musicians. For example, documentarian Ken Burns highlights in his documentary Country Music, that the banjo, a country music staple, is an instrument developed from lutes made out of gourds that slaves brought over. It was then adopted by white musicians after becoming a part of minstrel shows in the south.
The removal of “Old Town Road” may not have been an inherently racial choice, but it did warrant a conversation about treatment of black folx in country music and its history. Without his choice, Lil Nas X and his song became a part of a bigger discussion and got in front of even more people.
In hopes of solving the situation while maintaining the original genre, Lil Nas X took to twitter calling for Billy Ray Cyrus to be put on the song. Cyrus was happy to oblige and immediately skyrocketed the already astronomical single even higher.
Additionally, the use of Billy Ray Cyrus to establish the song’s “country-ness” is also quite tactful. Billy Ray Cyrus was a staple in many of generation z’s childhood as Miley Cyrus’s TV (but also real life) dad on Disney’s Hannah Montana. His stardom ranges beyond the country music niche and brings in the people who watched the show from 2006 to 2008; those who, statistically, use social media the most.
Putting the horses to bed - final thoughts
I find this “Old Town Road” phenomenon so fascinating because it teaches us something about guerilla marketing and the importance of humor in branding.
When you anticipate how users will interact with your content (searching song lyrics, making jokes) and tailor it or create additional content to respond and encourage that behavior, you’re engaging in a form of guerilla marketing that has viral potential. Of course, it isn’t full proof, but when you don’t have a marketing budget or access to resources, the potential for success paired with the limited need for effort is invaluable. Plus, it’s just fun to create funny, engaging content.
Lil Nas X established his brand as culturally relevant through this song and its promotion. Maintaining that image will make it even easier for him to create massive hits in the future.
Nothing beats getting your business’s content in front of consumers or customers organically (in the news they read, in their social media feeds) and having them talk about it in their communities. There’s truly power in guerilla marketing; especially in the digital sphere.
