Jeri Yoshizu on Scion's Hip Hop Marketing

A couple of weeks ago BallerStatus.net ran an excellent interview with Scion's Sales and Promotions Manager Jeri Yoshizu focused on Scion's hip hop related marketing efforts that run the gamut from artist competitions to sponsorships to mixtapes.

Unfortunately, I'm kind of fading or I'd dig deeper, but it's a great interview and Yoshizu gives a rich account of what Scion's up to with hip hop marketing. He gets into a lot of stuff that's been absent from the articles I've seen responding to Scion's initiatives, from why they got into hip hop to the fact that the artists with which they've worked have expressed a great deal of satisfaction with the events Scion puts together.

Why hip hop?
We decided that if we were going to be addressing music, hip-hop was the thread that had the most diverse breakout. We learned that not because we got a report telling us that, but we were attending events that were hip-hop related. Like the DUB car show, we would go there and it was 70% Hispanic, they had a hip-hop lineup, etc.

On pleasing artists:
I know Grandmaster Flash can be jaded, because he gets corporate gigs, and he's played for half-empty rooms to a bunch of people who don't even know who he is. . . By him telling me that he would lower his price to play our shows, that's kind of a compliment. He can charge whatever he wants, because of his kind of level of demand. He said that he can't believe how great the kids were, and I think that can be a compliment that we're delivering the right show to the right people.

Check it out. There's a lot more great stuff with much more context in the interview itself.