Beyonce’s new album launch is all about a 60-minute film. 

I’m not teaching you anything when telling you video is all the rage at the moment. Brands, media, sports stars, music celebrities are all considering how to integrate a video component into their approach.

One of the recent big hits in video and storytelling is Beyonce’s new album “Lemonade”.

Of course, she was all over social media to tease her fans about the album (back in February, she posted a trailer for the album on Instagram), but the big reveal, at the end of April, was a 60-minute film that combines music, dance and storytelling. A visual album.

It has a story, it has a narrative arc, it is all about the experience of black womanhood. It is not a sequence of music videos. True storytelling.

Is the album a film? Is the film an album? Is the film video marketing for the music? Is the music supporting the film? This is where things get intertwined into intellectual property bigger than any of its platforms.

One article about “Lemonade” I enjoyed was published over at Vox. It details the publishing platforms on which the film was made available (and then not, you’ll see why).

When reading this article with the angle of a video marketer, it gets really interesting as you can see how Beyonce’s marketing team is trying to steer fans from one platform to others through exclusivity deals and such.

This is a one-hour-long film, available pretty much only through streaming, aimed at a younger crowd who is without doubt keen in watching long-form video content on mobile devices. Think about it.

In my book, Beyonce gets “it” with “Lemonade”.

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