I knew it was too much of a coincidence that the Wash-Wash “crooner” (Naija journo speak, handy for writer’s block), eLDee invested in an on-demand laundry service. Co-incidence or not, it seems that I was in fact on the money when I speculated that the popular track would get a marketing remix for the new startup. Here’s the 30 second jingle eLDee put together for Washist, split into two consecutive Instagram posts because of the 15 second video limit.
Catchy.
He’s also been plugging the startup on Twitter.
Follow officialwashist Nigeria's first on-demand laundry subscription service. Call 0817-872-6914 to… http://t.co/R4kaAiDrPv
— eLDee (@eLDeeTheDon) August 22, 2014
Free advertising worth hundreds of thousands of Naira at least, that’s what you get when you get celebrities involved in your business. The hype machine feeds on these people’s every move, and they can feed the machine whenever they want to.
Quite a few Silicon Valley startups have jump-started their traction this way. Sometimes by wooing celebrities to be early adopters (Twitter) and gaining significant network effects from their rabid fan bases. At other times by getting them to invest, obliging them to root publicly for it. Or both. This is by no means a guaranteed way to make a startup succeed (the new MySpace), just a great hack that moves the needle significantly, even if it’s just for the short term.
At this rate, only a matter of time before Don Jazzy starts dropping tracks about tech startups. If that ever happens, they’ll most definitely be from 440NG.
