Why Hamburger Helper's Rap-Mixtape Marketing Stunt Worked

Move over Drake, there’s a new mixtape king in town: Hamburger Helper. The General Mills Inc.-owned packaged food company released Watch the Stove on April Fools' Day as a marketing stunt intended to attract younger customers on social media.

Hamburger Helper dropped the five-song album—recorded by students at McNally Smith College of Music and featuring Minneapolis rap artists and a Vine star—early on Friday morning April 1, East Coast time. By 5 p.m., it had been listened to over 270,000 times on SoundCloud. That's a lot for mostly unknown artists; listeners to songs in SoundCloud's top 10 list for the week, by famous musicians such as Drake and Fetty Wap, numbered around 2 million. Hamburger Helper had become a trending topic on Twitter.