A recent campaign to get rapper J. Cole to come visit the University has been put on YouTube and has accumulated 624 views as of Wednesday.
The video has different students on campus speaking to the video telling stories of listening to J. Cole’s music or in general telling him to come visit Hartford. The video also has J. Cole’s hit song, “Work Out” playing in the background.
The idea of the video came from UHa student Dani Schwartz, who is also a college marketing representative for Sony Music.
According to Sony, a college marketing representative “plays an integral part in the development of Sony Music’s breakthrough artists and assist in the roll out of established artists as well. Among the myriad of functions and responsibilities, College Reps organize listening events, interact closely with record stores and lifestyle accounts (skate shops, coffee shops, clothing stores) and are also very active in the online space. College Reps are often tastemakers in their markets and are heavily involved in campus and community activities.”
With that in mind, Sony was brainstorming ideas to get J. Cole more connected with college crowds out there because he too was once a student at S. Johns University.
According to Schwartz, she made the video to gain attention from Sony’s management team because Hartford may be overlooked due to its size.
“I made the video because a lot of the other college reps that I work with attend big schools, Ohio State, Michigan State, Michigan, Penn State, Florida etc.. and I felt that Hartford could be overlooked due to its size. The point of the video was to make the artist management team aware that we are here and we are still big fans,” said Schwartz.
The video was made using a normal video camera that Schwartz edited on her Mac after filming. While some of them were Schwartz’s friends, others were random students who wanted J. Cole to come here.
Schwartz said, “The students in the video are some people that I already know, students who I know are big J. Cole fans and knew would help me out. Otherwise the rest are just random students that I asked to be on camera and tell J. Cole to come through to Hartford or simply explain what it would mean to them if he were to come.”
While some may think that this is a viral campaign to get J. Cole to come to Hartford and perform at Spring Fling, that is not the case. The goal of the video is to get J. Cole to come here and connect with the students, not perform.
“J. Cole is not trying to perform at these schools, he simply wants to come through to college campuses and spend some time with college students just as he once was. This would include a question and answer type deal as well. It gives fans a chance to just talk to him and ask any questions that they might have,” Schwartz said.