• by Sarah Mahoney , March 29, 2024

Source: Beyonce.com

Talk about winning the free-publicity lottery. Beyoncé’s just-released “Cowboy Carter’” album includes a track called “Levii's Jeans,” a duet with rapper Post Malone. The sweet (if R-rated) song is a brand marketers’ dream.

The sexy vibe fits perfectly with the album’s cowboy-culture vibe, and the two native Texans tear the vocals up: “Boy, I’ll let you be my Levi’s jeans/So you can hold that ass all day long/Call me your sexy little thing/Snap a picture, bring it on.”

In a recent interview, Levi’s chief marketing officer, Kenny Mitchell, told Marketing Daily that the brand was more determined than ever to maintain cultural relevance through music. And boy, did the universe deliver.

The San Francisco-based company responded to the song right away by changing its Instagram account -- and the writing on that famous red tab -- to Levii’s. It updated the bio, too: “Levii's, FKA (formerly known as) Levi’s.” Not clear enough? It signed off with a bee emoji, a nod to the Bey Hive, as the star’s 320 million followers refer to themselves.

Why the extra "i" for the name of the song in the first place? Beyonce has long referred to this project as act ii of “Renaissance,” which came out in 2022. In addition to “Levii’s Jeans,” the album includes such tracks as “Ameriican Requiem,” “Spaghettii,” with Linda Martell, the 82-year-old singer who was the first Black woman in the Grand Ole Opry; and “Blackbiird,” a cover of the classic Beatles song.

Levi’s new campaign positions the denim pioneer as “the unofficial uniform of progress.” Mitchell pointed out that Steve Jobs wore Levi’s to unveil the iPod, Pharrell has worn them to Fashion Week, and Beyoncé made Levi’s cut-offs her core costume for “Homecoming,” the 2019 documentary about her performance at Coachella.

“All of these people are moving things forward in their world,” he said, “and we landed on that as the foundation for our brand point of view. It’s this idea of movement.”

The release of “Cowboy Carter” is almost guaranteed to vault Beyoncé to the top of multiple charts. “Texas Hold 'Em,” one of two singles released just after the Super Bowl, debuted at No. 2 and landed her at No. 1 on Billboard’s Country charts, where it has remained for six straight weeks.

She is the first Black woman ever to have a No. 1 country record.