Lessons in Hip Hop Marketing

What does it take to market a product to impressionable hip hop listeners of a certain age? Apparently not much of a consistent game plan. For your consideration:

• Jay-Z goes from peddling run of the mill beer with Anheuser-Busch one week to pushing $60 champagne with the intention of hawking it for $300 down the road. And what does it say when Business Week is getting their story ideas off of HipHopGame.com? What better way to promote yourself than drinking non-existent champagne and racing all over the south of France with one person who couldn't even find it on a map, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and one 'racer' who is the Anna Kournikova equivalent of auto racing?

• Diddy's saturation infatuation promoting his new album that displays the talents of everyone he works with and yet somehow not his own gave him his first #1 album in nine years, despite it being his worst first week total to date. Despite making about 14 million appearances in the last month, he only managed to move 170,000 copies of Press Play. Somebody should really do an album sales to PR ratio study on this one.

Being the multitasker he his, Diddy also got a mention in the the Times' Sunday Magazine, promoting an opportunity to smell like him. "An official statement for Unforgivable explains that “the Sean John Unforgivable scent exudes the energy, sexiness and elegance of Sean Combs."" That's right for those of you who've always wanted to smell like Proactiv Solution without paying for it, step right up, your date has arrived!