A marketing review on Topboy, season 2.

The anticipation of Top Boy’s return in 2019 killed me. After a long hiatus, I was interested to see how everything would come together, especially with the backing from Netflix and Drake; would it feel too far removed from UK culture, would the soundtrack be a real representation of our music, what would the marketing campaign look like. 

In returning to our screens for season one, the marketing team missed a huge opportunity to connect with a specific community, the marketing campaign around season one was limited to a few Billboards dotted around London; especially Shoreditch, a premier and online content.  This wasn’t the case for season two -with the community being at the core of the marketing campaign- the themes and topics explored throughout the season were portrayed in every activation they rolled out; from the merchandise collaboration with Hood Rich to the premier afterparty with Julie Adgenua. So, after a few weeks of reflection and the announcement of the final series I thought it would only be right to share my thoughts on four different parts of the rollout of the marketing campaign for the penultimate season.

Throughout season two, the show touched on several topics, in particular, poverty & loss, opportunity, and brotherhood. The themes mentioned were portrayed throughout the marketing campaign and it was a true reflection of Black youth in inner-city London. In preparation for writing this piece, I read and viewed all the content attached to the rollout of the marketing campaign and content creation was a key element of the campaign; the uncut series, influencer reaction videos, and the unseen bits. The content created felt relevant and organic at all points but it should have lived on additional platforms outside of Netflix, more community-led platforms like Guap Magazine or even Cord Socials. I understand that Netflix’s page has higher awareness and reach but the audience who engages with the content interacts better on community-led pages. It’s clear that Organic engagement wasn’t a priority throughout this campaign because they missed out on the easiest form. Twitter.  Releasing the series all in one go removed the opportunity for weekly conversations on Twitter. Especially Black Twitter. Looking back at K-Trap’s tweets that went viral, moments like that are key online conversations in the community they missed out on. They missed out on our community coming together to watch and discuss together. The synchrony that Twitter provides is an easy strategy that we’ve seen work well with Love Island yearly and I think the life span of this season and conversations around Top Boy would have lasted longer.  

The second part of the campaign I wanted to touch on was merch collaborations. Top Boy had a few merch collaborations as part of the campaign. The one I was least impressed with was the Top Boy x Nocta. Apart from the reach and brand awareness because of Drake, the collaboration was lazy, expensive, and lacked any correlation to Top Boy. Next, is the Hood Rich x Top Boy collaboration. Hood Rich is a UK clothing brand with over 100K followers on Instagram and has been supported by key names in the music industry. As part of the launch they released a merch collection of t-shirts and tracksuits, the design was minimalist and had the faces of some main characters, the Top Boy logo, and the Hood Rich logo. Merch is always impactful because it acts as a walking billboard. Hoodrich was able to capitalise on the exposure of working with Netflix and TopBoy and vice versa, and Netflix was able to engage with a new community. For me, Netflix and Hoodrich mutually gained from this collaboration However, for the Top Boy campaign and, as a series, there was very little value-added. Apart from a satisfying announcement video, support from 50 cent, and a few tweets there was barely any hype around the collaboration. There were many ways in which they could have elevated this collaboration. Simply giving young people from the community to co-design the merch, would have caused an influx of upcoming designers submitting their ideas. Top Boy and Hoodrich should have then released five designs and split the commissions with the upcoming designers. This idea would have provided opportunities for young people (fitting into the themes touched in the series) but It would have also caused an organic reach through something I call the domino effect. The concept is very simple - It’s the cumulative effect produced when one event sets off a chain of similar events. In this case, the young people selected will share their achievements leading to their community sharing their achievement and so on.

Top Boy managed to create a successful merch collaboration with the Top Boy x Labrum and Hackney Wick FC. Weeks after the series launched Top Boy announced they were the new sponsor for Hackney Wick FC. When Shian, Tag’s Operation Assistant - sent this across I thought yes. This was the perfect collaboration for Top Boy. Football is a huge community driver in London, especially among Black men. It provides the opportunity, gives them a sense of belonging, and is often life-changing for some. At the epitome of Hackney Wick FC is the community and this was a reminder of the place Top Boy plays in the community portrayed in the series. 

The next point to touch on was the events produced by Futurimpose. Futurimpose produced a series of events and workshops for Top Boy x Netflix titled ‘This Is For Us’, it celebrated the early 00s that birthed Top boy, gave young people the opportunity to take away skills from industry experts, meet the cast and just have a good time. They also hosted an exhibition juxtaposing 2000s archives from the culture with Top Boy Imagery to show the influence the 2000s had and will always have, especially on the making of this series. To produce a community activation (an event hosted by a brand that is open to the public.) is hard. Often agencies and brands struggle to understand that young people don’t want panel discussions because it’s boring and repetitive; they want to take away practical skills and be inspired, which Futurimpose managed to achieve. To top it off, they created a digital zine filled with takeaways and invaluable learnings for young people to take away and keep forever, whether you attend or not, you would have access to this. Futurimpose did the damn thing. Every element was covered, they thought about the reach they could get from creating something digital, they mixed a series of panels, workshops, and events to cater to many audiences and connected it well with Top Boy and inner-city London culture heritage.  

Hats off Futurimpose.

The last part I want to touch on was the premier but mostly the premiere after-party. This was probably the best party I’ve attended in a long time. Netflix threw an after-party hosted by Influencer and Presenter Julie. A prominent figure in Black British culture. With performances from D Double E and the Compozers, they took us back to the 00s. I didn’t attend the first premier after-party so I can’t compare it to anything but my personal highlight and experience from this party were the last ten minutes where the DJ spun 00s hits from UK rap legends Swiss, Giggs, and Skrapz. Although it was just a party it was spot on in representing the heritage of Top Boy and the heritage futurimpose highlighted in the exhibition. 

Parties are parties, but this was a cultural moment. 

There was more to the campaign, but I didn’t want to bore you with a ton of information; so in short. Most of this campaign sat in the heart of the community represented in the series. The attention to detail was immaculate; the uncut series being shot in Prince of Peckham, the collaboration with Hackney Wick. I guess having Ashley Waters as Exec Producer he was able to tell the stories of our community in the series but also throughout the whole campaign. With very little marketing done in season one, to a complete 180 in season two it will be interesting to see how they top this in season three.