As the 50th anniversary of hip-hop approaches on Aug. 11, a slew of brands are seeking to become part of the conversation. Brands and companies such as Anheuser-Busch InBev, Google, Hennessy, Mass Appeal, Mitchell and Ness, MLB, Pepsi Max, Rémy Martin, Sprite, Spotify, Timberland and many others are planning activations and campaigns around this historical moment.

But that level of interest from advertisers wasn’t always the case for hip-hop, which over five decades grew from a small movement to become a part of culture that can actually make or break brands.

“I just had a conversation with General Motors, and I was telling them that I can remember when the Escalade first came out, people didn't want to position SUVs to the Black community,” Louis Carr, president of media sales at BET, recounted about the Cadillac model’s 1999 debut during a recent interview with Ad Age.

Hip-hop artists began discovering the vehicle organically, and just three years later, next-generation Escalades began showing up in music videos and lyrics from rappers such as Lil’ Kim, Nelly, Kanye West, Outkast, Ludacris, Jay Z, The Game, 50 Cent and Ja Rule.

“There is no doubt that those videos had an influence on the success of that SUV,” Carr said. 

Also read: How brands are celebrating hip-hop's 50th anniversary

The exposure from the hip-hop genre helped U.S. Escalade sales to jump 84% in the first seven months of 2002, according to an Automotive News article from that year.

Since then, Cadillac’s Escalade campaigns have featured rap and R&B artists such as Jhené Aiko and Killer Mike.

More news: The latest on automotive marketing

And beyond generating sales, hip-hop can put a brand on the culture map.

Authentic values

Run D.M.C., for example, helped Adidas resonate with the community by creating authentic songs like “My Adidas” about the sneakers. Eventually, the rap group signed hip-hop’s first endorsement deal, worth $1.06 million, which led to the creation of Run D.M.C. apparel that propelled Adidas from a sportswear brand to a streetwear brand. 

Pusha T, as part of the rap duo Clipse, helped create the song that eventually became the iconic McDonald’s jingle “I’m Lovin’ It.”

“Hip-hop in advertising has never gotten the credit that it deserves because very few people could figure out how to make commercially viable advertising as well as include the authentic values of hip-hop and make them work together and not conflict,” said Steve Stoute, founder and CEO of Translation and UnitedMasters. 

In the ’80s and ’90s, two campaigns stood out as some of the earliest examples of brands actively using hip-hop culture in their marketing, according to Stoute.

One was a campaign for malt liquor brand St. Ides that featured the likes of rapper Ice Cube and rap group the Wu-Tang Clan. Along with commercials, the effort included a custom mixtape that featured songs about the brand from rappers such as Snoop Dogg, MC Eiht and Nate Dogg.

The other was a series of campaigns from Coca-Cola’s Sprite that started with a 1986 ad featuring rapper Kurtis Blow, one of the first national TV ads to feature a rapper. What followed was a series of ads featuring artists including Heavy D, Kid ’n Play and A Tribe Called Quest.

This led to a spot featuring a lesser-known artist named Grand Puba in 1994. In the spot, Grand Puba is shown freestyling in a studio where he raps the lyrics: “This is how we flow when we in the studio. Freestyle with Sprite you know how the rest go. First things first obey your thirst.”

The “Obey your Thirst” line said on a whim became the tagline for Sprite for 25 years.

“Everything that I've ever done that involved hip-hop and advertising was first and foremost being held up to that bar,” Stoute said.

Look back: Sprite’s global approach to music marketing

Breaking out

Amani Duncan, the former CEO of BBH USA who spent 10 years at Def Jam along with stints at Virgin Records, Capitol Music Group and Bad Boy Entertainment, recalled the moment that signified to her that hip-hop had made its way into pop culture. It was a moment during Jay-Z’s Hard Knock Life tour in 1999 when Duncan was working with Def Jam and BET on the tour.

“We were getting fan reactions and I turned, and I saw this white suburban mom with her kid,” Duncan said.  “And I was like, we have to talk to her. I said, ‘What are you doing here? This is a hip-hop show.’ And she said, ‘My son’—who she pointed to, who was probably 13 years old—‘We made an agreement that if he got A’s on his report card, he could go to any concert that he wanted. And he picked this.’ And I remember saying to myself, ‘hip-hop will never be the same. Hip-hop is now popular culture.’”

The Sprite, St. Ides and Adidas ads paved the way for iconic hip-hop collaborations, such as a 1999 Gap commercial featuring LL Cool J that simultaneously amplified Daymond John's streetwear brand FUBU.

Another was a classic 2001 Reebok ad starring NBA legend Allen Iverson and rapper Jadakiss.

More: Steve Stoute looks back on making the Reebok commercial

Other watersheds include a 2004 Boost Mobile ad featuring Kanye West, Ludacris and The Game; and Chrysler’s famous 2011 Super Bowl spot “Born of Fire,” featuring Eminem. 

Today, newer artists such as Doja Cat and Jack Harlow are staples in commercials and social campaigns for brands including Taco Bell and Doritos.

Making marketers ‘uneasy’

While hip-hop was gaining traction with audiences, it took a while for brands to become comfortable with the genre according to Carr, who said advertisers started to be more welcoming of it in the mid to late 2000s.

“I think [advertisers] were confused by the storytelling. They didn't understand the stories,” Carr said. “They only wanted to be associated with pie [in] the sky type stories, no problems, no issues, no nothing. When hip-hop launched, [artists] told the stories of their communities, they told the stories of their surroundings, and that kind of made marketers a little uneasy.”

Music videos initially became a convenient way for brands to insert themselves into the hip-hop conversation, especially as record labels’ marketing budgets for album rollouts started to shrink, Duncan said. Artists also started to become more open to working with brands, whereas in the past they didn’t want to be perceived as “selling out,” Duncan added.

“Album sales weren't like they used to be, therefore, marketing budgets were dwindling,” said Duncan, speaking about her time at Capitol Music Group in 2006. “I remember pulling my senior leadership team together, and I said, ‘We have to change the way we market these artists. They're beginning to see themselves as brands. So we need to bring in partners on each album campaign to supplement our dwindling marketing budget so that we can still do the music videos and all the awesome promotion that these artists, especially the legacy artists, were used to.’”

Multiple executives who spoke to Ad Age for this story said it's hard to quantify how much revenue hip-hop has generated for advertising. Currently, hip-hop and R&B have 25.92% of the music industry’s market share, making it the leading genre. 

Part of the marketing suite

Today, hip-hop artists aren't just representing marketers, they are a part of them. Rapper 2 Chainz was named the head of creative marketing for fast food chain Krystal in 2022 and in 2021, Cardi B was named a creative director for Playboy. R&B and hip-hop artists Brent Faiyaz, Swizz Beatz and Pharrell Williams have started their own agencies over the past couple of years. Earlier this year, Williams was named men’s creative director for Louis Vuitton.

Brand endorsements have also become more lucrative for artists over the years, thanks to deals like when 50 Cent reportedly made $100 million from his investment in Vitaminwater, which, aided by his endorsement, grew into a multi-billion dollar company that sold to Coca-Cola. Following that model, rapper Flo Rida was recently awarded $82.6 million after he filed a lawsuit regarding compensation for his endorsement deal with energy drink company Celsius.

More news: Jake Paul endorses Celsius

What's changed, said Carr, is that there is now a push to have hip-hop artists endemically involved in brands, such as McDonald’s collaboration with Travis Scott to promote custom meals. That deal netted the “Astroworld” rapper an estimated $20 million or more, according to Forbes.

Back to the future

Sprite has continued its involvement with hip-hop since the ’80s. A few months ago, the brand launched a campaign planned over a year ago, said Sprite’s North America creative director A.P Chaney, that remixed The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper's Delight” with an ad starring legacy rappers Nas and Rakim with newer acts Latto and GloRilla.

The campaign, done in partnership with Atlanta-based agency Majority, also includes “drop shops” where people are able to scan a can of Sprite to access potential prizes like merch from the artists in the campaign.

While some brands have evolved the way hip-hop is incorporated in advertising, there is still room for improvement beyond simply plugging songs or artists into an ad, said Chaney.

“You can't just sample a song in a spot hoping that it resonates in the way that Sprite has done it, which is a true connection to the artist,” Chaney said.

“You have to be motivated to get to the core truth of [hip-hop] and not try to eat off the part that's just the famous part,” Stoute said. “You need to get to what makes the art form go and who are the people who have driven it, what are the attributes in the art form that makes it so special? What are the things about it that you can capture in its purest form? Because if you don't do that, then what you're going to end up doing is borrowing pieces of the culture.”