Cognac and hip hop

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2020

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How brands forge strong relationships with music, from Cognac brands like Hennessy and Courvoisier to Coca Cola's Sprite. Elizabeth Hotson speaks to cultural critic and music journalist Candace McDuffie about the history of Cognac in African-American culture, and to journalist Oris Aigbokhaevbolo about the efforts of Hennessy to associate with hip hop in Nigeria. Aaliyah Shafiq, group director for the Sprite brand at Coca Cola explains the success of its partnership with hip hop in the US dating back to the 70s, and Marleen Heemskerk from branding agency First Day of Spring, describes the potential pitfalls for brands wanting to tap into the music scene.

(Photo: Hip hop artist Missy Elliot with a bottle of Courvoisier at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2019, Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service with me, Elizabeth Hotson,
0:04.9	and I'm going to ease you into today's show with a little light music.
0:16.0	High-end French brandy and American rap and hip-hop music might not seem like a natural match.
0:22.2	But over the last few decades,
0:23.9	Cognac has been celebrated by artists
0:26.1	from Drake to Buster Rhymes
0:28.0	who've waxed lyrical about Hennessy,
0:30.5	Covewazier and Martell.
0:32.0	I need a bandit
0:33.5	a remi, but that's the Cavazier.
0:35.7	Give me the one dance,
0:37.4	got a Henness energy in my hand.
0:39.7	One more time if I go, I have power was taking a hold on.
0:43.9	Last year, around 98% of cognate was exported, and by far the biggest market is the USA.
0:50.7	And that stands to reason, because when artists with millions of fans give your product free advertising in the lyrics, it's likely to have a positive impact on sales.
0:59.7	So how did that connection evolve?
1:02.0	Candace McDuffey, a Boston-based pop culture and music journalist, says that the real momentum came in segregation era, America.
1:09.8	It started in the early 1900s.
1:11.3	Hennessy was instrumental in the growth of black institutes that were trying to improve
1:15.5	black life, like the Tuskegee Institute and the National Urban League, which worked to
1:21.0	fight horrible factory, working conditions for black people.
1:24.1	When segregation was still legalized in the United States, they hired a black marketing
	...

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