Romance - Marketing Nightmare
The only country where Romance went #1 on the charts was Canada.
I love Canada since I’m from Canada, but that’s literally the only positive about this unfortunate statistic.
I just need to make one thing clear, there is nothing wrong with Romance. It’s a great album with a lot of amazing songs. So please, Camilizers and Harmonizers, keep listening to Romance!!!
For me, there was one massive reason why Romance didn’t outperform CC1: It was a marketing nightmare!!!
As a marketing major, I have been cringing for months because CC2′s marketing strategy and execution have been abysmal. Any non-marketing person could’ve seen it coming, but especially as a marketing major, I just had BAD BUTTERFLIES the whole time. I knew even before the album was announced that it wasn’t going to outperform CC1 because her team wasn’t focused on the right things. Having great songs is literally only a small piece of making an album successful. It mostly has to do with how the artist and album is marketed and how much hype, anticipation and listens can be created.
This is a general rule for anything in business: You can have a great product, but if no one knows about it and why it is great, no one is going to buy it.
It worked to get that #1 song for Shawn and Camila, but it killed her album because it reeks of PR. And people hate fake relationships to promote music these days. Shawn caught the good side of this all because his album was already released and needed a boost which a lot of people didn’t even realize. Camila on the other hand caught the bad side where it looked like she was just seeking attention for her upcoming album which everyone knew she was releasing sometime soon. She has lost a lot of respect and fans because of Shawmila which is really unfortunate…
Way too many! Senorita, Shameless, Liar, Cry for Me, Easy, Living Proof all before she released the album and then My Oh My basically when she released the album. That’s half the album before we’ve even heard the whole album. Where is the build up and anticipation for a single? How can a single grow on audiences when another one comes out less than 2 weeks later? And then another and another.
And on top of that she had way too many promotions for every song on talk shows and award shows. It just got confusing. There was no defining single to lead up to Romance. With CC1, we had Havana obviously and some would argue followed up by a second great single to directly promote the album in Never Be The Same. Senorita could be argued as the defining single for Romance but also it could be for SM3 so that’s not really a defining single.
Things happened too fast with too much happening. No one knew for sure that Senorita was going to be on Camila’s album until the track list dropped, especially since it was already put on Shawn’s album. So basically the official start of CC2 promotions came with Shameless and Liar in early September and then it was a freaking circus. She was running around doing so many talk shows/award shows/performances, releasing music videos and songs, doing PR with Shawn, and didn’t have time to connect with fans and build honest anticipation and hype. And then her album dropped at such a strange time like right when Christmas season was beginning.
Basically, her management just kind of let everything blend together rather than building up to the moment of release.
#4 - Everything was built around Senorita
There’s no doubt. If Senorita had flopped, they would’ve paid a lot more attention to Romance, but because Senorita did everything and more in terms of charting, popularity and being a money maker, they let Romance slide. It gave them more reason to force Camila to put more energy into her PR with Shawn because it was getting attention (didn’t matter if it was good or bad).
All in all, the biggest marketing error her team made was pulling down Camila’s image with her PR with Shawn. It was/is just too forced and it will hurt her for a long time. It’s evident with her tour not selling out the way they had hoped and not as much traction with her album or any of her songs except Senorita.
I don’t care if Epic is trying to pull her down to get her to stay with them because they are ruining a great artist that has a lot of long term potential. They just slammed her into the ground. Just like Fifth Harmony.
Note: Romance really is reminiscent of 5H3 in terms of promotion and PR focusing on other things than the music.
The Romance Tour is Camila’s way out of this mess. If she gives these shows all she’s got in terms of connecting with fans and being her true self without incorporating any sort of PR tactics, she will win her fan base back and gain back respect from the industry.
If she can get back to her roots and sing her heart out and show people how amazing her mind is still, she has nothing to worry about.