Promotion: Keri Hilson Vs. Ciara.
Keri Hilson appeared on Chelsea Lately last night in what was yet another high-profile promotional slot for the singer, who is, admittedly, not much more than a two-hit-wonder plugging a half-successful single “Pretty Girl Rock” off the back of a recent mega-flop “Breaking Point”. We’ve also seen Miss Keri on Perez Hilton promoting her X-rated “The Way You Love Me” music video and performing at his One Night In Jersey concert, not to mention televised performances on BET’s Black Girls Rock special, Jay Leno and Lopez Tonight. She also performed at two separate Thanksgiving events (including the Macy’s Day Parade alongside megastars Kanye West and Kylie Minogue), and she’s on the cover of the current issue of VIBE magazine. And who can forget the grand daddy of all promo — VH1 Divas with pop superstar Katy Perry, and many other artists more successful than herself, such as Paramore, Sugarland and Nicki Minaj.
Keep in mind that Keri’s sophomore album No Boys Allowed isn’t even hitting shelves until December 21.
Now let’s take a look at Ciara’s situation, an artist who is clearly much more successful than Keri Hilson. Forgetting Ciara’s past achievements (#1 single & album, 4.3 million albums sold in the US), her most recent success came from her single “Ride”, which managed to reach No. 3 on the R&B/Hip-Hop singles chart and No. 42 on the Hot 100 without any performances and a music video ban on BET.
So what did Ciara do with the success of “Ride”? Absolutely nothing. Two follow-up singles (“Speechless” & “Gimmie Dat”) were thrown out into the universe and then left to rot when they didn’t immediately chart. Her new album Basic Instinct drops the week before Keri’s (December 14), but instead of continuing promotion throughout the States, Ciara’s been over in China and Australia — the latter being a place she hasn’t been successful in since Goodies dropped back in 2004. Admittedly, Ciara does have some big promo slots in the pipeline — including Ellen and Lopez Tonight –, but she’s scheduled them all around the release week of Basic Instinct, which may possibly ensure the album a half-decent debut on the Billboard charts, but ultimately fails to create any hits to give the project any longevity. Def Jam took this approach with Janet Jackson’s Discipline, and we all know how that disaster turned out.
It’s often easy to unjustly blame an artist’s team when they’re not doing well on the charts, but one look at Keri’s promotional strategy in comparison to Ciara’s and it’s pretty clear that some very poor decisions have been made on Ciara’s part. These issues run back as early as her sophomore album The Evolution, which wasn’t promoted or released properly internationally despite CiCi having just come off huge international success with the Goodies album, ultimately killing her momentum as worldwide star and leaving her, for the most part, solely US based, like Keyshia Cole or Carrie Underwood.
When somebody like Keri Hilson is up onstage performing with Katy Perry while you’re walking the red carpet in China a week before your album drops, then you know something is seriously wrong. At least when Basic Instinct bombs Ciara can take comfort in the fact that it made NME’s “Most Underrated Albums of 2010″ list.
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