Canva's cringey rap was actually a massive marketing win (2024)

Canva has been snapping at Adobe's heels in recent years. It's been marketing heavily and its focus on creating design tools for non-designers has provoked Adobe to follow a similar root with software for marketing teams and businesses (see our guide to the best graphic design software).

Adobe GenStudio vs Canva Magic Studio is shaping up to be an intense battle, with the companies competing to announce new features, sometimes sending out press releases on the same day to try to knock each other out of the news. So I can understand why Canva might have wanted to do something different to get attention at its event... but a corporate rap? The tech industry hasn't cringed so much since we saw Bill Gates dance at the Microsoft Windows launch event back in1995.

Presented live on stage at Canva Create, Canva's rap was intended to extol the virtues of the company's new Canva Enterprise offering, which includes tools for design, marketing, sales and human resources.

The lyrical flow was led by Canva social media creator Roger Coles. Flanked by dancers, he recaps the preceding presentation only to be interrupted by a woman wordsmith playing the role of a CIO, who leaps out of the crowd to express her concerns about security. "Logs, SCIM, SSO? Can you really tell me that there’s very much control?” she asks. “You can even manage automated licensing, compliance, there’s privacy,” Cole retorts in a rap battle worthy of Eminem's 8 Mile.

People were quick to ridicule the stunt on social media. There were a lot of comparisons to the TV show Silicon Valley and the musical Hamilton. Others wondered if Canva had used its own AI copy writing tools to draft the lyrics. "Somebody actually thought 'Discount Hamilton but for tech' was a great idea." one person wrote on X.

Others have pointed out that Canva is by no means the first tech company to resort to song or rap to try to get its message across. Just last month, Google kicked off its Google I/O event with a performance by DJ Marc Rebillet (see below), and remember that Facebook employee benefits song? And let's not forget Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer dancing to the Rolling Stones’Start Me Up.

Embarrassing as it is, Canva's rap could actually be seen as a massive marketing win? After all, the launch of Canva Enterprise could have passed under the radar without it. At least people now know it exists. And the people it's aimed at our corporate folk... perhaps the type who might think a rap at a company event is a great idea.

Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht said the rap was his favourite part of the event. He wrote on LinkedIn: “Tech company productlaunches have essentially tried to be Steve Jobs launching theiPhonesince that happened. We decided to be ourselves, do something different, and not take ourselves too seriously. Haters gonna hate.”

"It was supposed to be funny and it worked think it’s got like 50m + views, he added. "Now everyone knows about Canva Enterprise. Marketing team couldn’t have done a better job."

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