Austin Brown - Global 14 Exclusive - "F'd With My Mind"
Check out my Global 14 Exclusive release: “F’d With My Mind”
Thank you to Jermaine Dupri (CEO of Global 14) and the entire G14 team.
What's Your Style? A Conversation with Jermaine Dupri about the Secret to Successful Content Creation
Be authentic. Be interesting. Have style.
Jermaine Dupri has been creating content for a while: from producing records with Mariah Carey to creating his Living the Life series on YouTube, and now with Global 14.com, a full community of friends sharing content and engaging around shared interests. So how does someone who lives and breathes content creation think about that process? I had the chance to sit with JD after his panel on “Using Social Media to Build a Real Community” at the Portada Latin American Advertising and Media Summit in South Beach and talk about just that.
Have Style
The secret to creating content is simple, yet can be hard to achieve: have style. At the core of every piece of content JD shares is Style. Whether it’s a new pair of sneakers, a new track, or a photo of his peacock Frank on Instagram: what he publishes reflects a lifestyle.
How to be a killer creative
Where does creativity come from? Music mogul Jermaine Dupri finds creative inspiration by immersing himself in personal passions such as fashion, art, and cars. The Grammy award winning producer, song writer, and CEO of So So Def Recordings and Global 14 discusses the secrets of creativity in new iCrossing thought leadership, the Conversation with Jermaine Dupri series, which iCrossing launched in conjunction with the 2012 South by Southwest Interactive festival.
As he discusses with Nick Burd of iCrossing, Dupri does not take long walks on the beach or pursue quiet moments of reflection to be creative – he finds creative moments from living his life of perpetual action, whether acting as DJ at a party, exploring the digital world for hot fashion ideas, or interacting with members of Global 14, the social media site he launched in 2011. And he shares those moments every day on Global 14 and his YouTube channel, appropriately named “Living the Life.” On Global 14, you’ll find him posting a wide variety of content that inspires him, whether images from a Star Wars exhibition, D*Face murals Dupri spotted in New York, or some new Christian Louboutin Pik Boat “Lepoard” Men’s Flats. Global 14 community members give him real-time feedback on his posts. These moments of discovery and interaction help him stay in touch with the cultural zeitgeist and sometimes lead to the creation of new songs.
“Global 14 is the biggest artist I ever created,” he says in his interview.
And as told me recently, “If I talk about music on Global 14 all the time, I die creatively. When you see me talk about fashion, movies, and the interests that fuel my life outside of music on Global 14, you experience how I’m finding ideas in my life that keep my music fresh.”
The key to unlocking creativity is finding ideas from your everyday life but also living a diverse life that presents a rich palette of possibilities. As author Jonah Lehrer wrote in a March 11 Wall Street Journal article,
[Steve] Jobs argued that the best inventors seek out “diverse experiences,” collecting lots of dots that they link together. Instead of developing a narrow specialization, they study, say, calligraphy (as Mr. Jobs famously did) or hang out with friends in different fields. Because they don’t know where the answer will come from, they look for the answer everywhere.
Guy Kawasaki expressed a similar idea in an interview with me last year. “I am like a blue whale that gulps huge mouthfuls of water to find some krill,” he said. “I read constantly. And I take ideas from anyone.”
Even Dupri’s love of video games figures into the creative process. In his book Young, Rich, and Dangerous, he discusses how playing video games helps him create by “clearing some space and giving my ideas room to breath. Shooting at people in Grand Theft Auto or Counter-Strike, or scoring touchdowns in Madden is all part of the process.”
How to Be a Killer Creative contains many other highlights, including how he has written hits like “Jump” for Kris Kross and the power of emotion in unlocking creativity.
He also provides insight into how he keeps his creative edge.
“You can’t get comfortable in life,” he asserts. “You have to take yourself out of the box you’re in.”
Dupri takes the music industry to task, too.
“You hear the music business complaining that the Internet messed up the music business,” he says. “But the music business stayed where it was, and the Internet just kept moving.”
He challenges music executives to learn from how Google has been combining technology and social to work with musicians to create content – and to learn from his own Global 14 network, which develops emerging musicians such as Brandon Hines and FrescoKane.
To successfully create, asserts Jermaine, you need to create your own lane. With Global 14, Jermaine Dupri is challenging our notions of what it means to create a successful social business that fuels creativity.
How to Be a Killer Creative is the second in the Conversation with Jermaine Dupri series. Through videos geared toward CMOs, Dupri discusses with iCrossing how to build a connected brand – or a close relationship you form with your audience by being visible, useful, usable, desirable, and engaging. On March 9, we unveiled the first video, Building a Connected Brand with Social Media – based on Dupri’s experiences building Global 14.
iCrossing is sharing this content with our clients because we think marketing executives can learn a lot from Jermaine – about brand intimacy and the convergence of creativity, technology, and social media. The video series is one of the outcomes of our relationship with Jermaine, which we announced on February 8. Stay tuned for more.
Meantime, for more insight into Global 14, check out these blog posts from iCrossing Great Finds and my personal blog, Superhype. Better yet: join Global 14.
— David Deal, vice president of marketing, iCrossing
Building a connected brand with social media
iCrossing is proud to kick off the 2012 South by Southwest Interactive festival by publishing new thought leadership: the Conversation with Jermaine Dupri series. Through videos geared toward CMOs, music mogul Jermaine Dupri discusses with iCrossing how to build a connected brand – or a close relationship you form with your audience by being visible, useful, usable, desirable, and engaging. Today’s Content Lab post introduces Building a Connected Brand with Social Media, in which Jermaine and iCrossing Chief Strategy Officer Adam Lavelle show CMOs how to achieve brand intimacy through social media, based on Jermaine’s own experiences creating his Global 14 social media site.
Essentially, Jermaine and Adam address a fundamental question: would you rather have 20 million passive followers for your brand or 34,000 passionate, engaged fans? Jermaine launched Global 14 in 2011 with a bold vision for redefining social as a smaller, more engaged network of friends with common interests – a vision that has caught the attention of publications like Mashable because Global 14, like Pinterest, offers a niche alternative to the sprawling world of Facebook. The site, which was also recently profiled by PSFK, provides a destination for people who share Jermaine’s interests in fashion, culture, art, and music.
Highlights of the conversation include:
- How Global 14 focuses on engagement, not sheer volume of passive followers.
- How Jermaine provides surprising content on Global 14, such as a behind-the-scenes look at him working in the studio with Mariah Carey.
- Jermaine’s successful 1414 Tour, in which he visited 14 cities in 14 days to introduce Global 14 members to each other via parties he hosted.
“From Day One, I want people to remain engaged so that they keep coming back,” Jermaine says. “Global 14 is not about casual followers. I encourage people on Global 14 to find a friend – to talk to someone first and then friend them.”
With Global 14, Jermaine Dupri is challenging our notions of what it means to create a successful social business. For more insight into Global 14, check out these blog posts from iCrossing Great Finds and my personal blog, Superhype. Better yet: join Global 14.
iCrossing is sharing this content with our clients because we think marketing executives can learn a lot from Jermaine – about brand intimacy and the convergence of creativity, technology, and social media. The video series is one of the outcomes of our relationship with Jermaine, which we announced on February 8. Stay tuned for more.
— David Deal, vice president of marketing, iCrossing
Pump It Or Dump It
.:: HOT SHOES ALERT ::.
TELL ME THESE SHOES NOT DOPE ?! I WOULD ROCK THE HELL OUTTA THESE SHOES ….
Found these »> http://www.global14.com . Sign up for all the exclusives ! = )
New Music :: Dondria Duets 2
Dondria Duets 2 is finally here . It dropped February 18, 2011 on global14.com . ( I’m just very late at posting it ) . The mixtape includes remixes/duet of songs like “In The Morning” , “Grenade”, “No Bull$h!*”, and more. In my opinion , Dondria did better with this one than her last mixtape . I like the 1st one , but she seems to express more lyrically . In order to get the mixtape, make an account on global14.com & download . #Enjoy = )
Twitter === > @Dondria
Youtube === > http://www.youtube.com/phatfffat
Tumblr === > http://phattiegirl.tumblr.com/
Facebook === > http://facebook.com/pages/dondria/51000703056
Global 14 === > global14.com (sign up & input Dondria or @phattiegirl )
Jermaine Dupri New Networking Community 'Global 14"
Todd Williamson, WireImage
Last night Jermaine Dupri conducted an interview with Atlanta’s local news reporter discussing his new newtworking site www.global14.com and the website was not working…. But he says he gets 100,000 hits a month!…hummm
Jermaine Dupri is depending on his entrepreneurial spirit to carry him into the future. The Grammy Award-winning producer just officially launched a new website and social networking community called Global 14. The site, which is supposedly the “coolest, hippest city on the Internet,” originally came to Dupri when he was the president of urban music at Virgin Records and working with longtime collaborator Janet Jackson on marketing her ‘20 Y.O.’ album.
“I created a contest for Janet’s album where I went to the Internet and asked fans to create an album cover for her,” Dupri told AllHipHop.com. “That was the beginning of me engaging people on the Internet. It was overwhelming and it was the most records she ever sold in her first week. That let me know the people wanted to be involved.”
For Dupri, his site is different from more popular platforms like Facebook and Twitter because of his presence and accessibility at the top. He feels that users, which are mostly from the hip-hop and R&B communities thus far, will have something in common with him and look to the site as a comfortable, fun place to hang out.
“None of those have an owner that you actually know and feel like you have something in common,” he continued. “People only know the Facebook owner [Mark Zuckerberg] now because of his money. You wouldn’t have hung out with him before you knew what he did. I have an influence on producers, songwriters, artists and creative people in general.”
The site is already doing well. In a pre-launch build up, Dupri has amassed nearly 11,000 subscribers and claims to be already receiving 100,000 unique visitors per month.
