BARCELONA — Grammy-award winning musician Nile Rodgers has sold more than 200 million albums and 50 million singles over the course of his four-decade career.

He counts more than than 200 production credits to his name—many with the biggest names in pop music, including David Bowie, Madonna, and Daft Punk.

That track record means he’s sold upwards of $2 billion worth of music.

“And almost all of it was a result of clever marketing,” Rodgers told a standing-room only crowd at PromaxBDA Europe in Barcelona on Tuesday.

Rodgers delivered the creative keynote on the second day of the annual gathering of Europe’s entertainment marketing and design community.

From the very beginning of his career, Rodgers told the crowd, he understood you had to have a winning concept to stand out in entertainment and media.

Case in point: when his band Chic was just getting started, he and the bandmates pretended to be French in order to land a record deal, even though no one spoke a word of the language. There was no way they could actually convince the label when they showed up for a meeting that they hailed from France.

“But we explained the concept to the head of the record company and he got it,” Rodgers said. “Everything about our concept and our marketing was new—it was the kind of thing going around in society: the supermodel, France, couture clothing. This was all stuff we were making up so we actually had a concept we could follow through on.”

And Rodgers proved to a room full of brand builders that he has an uncanny knack for promotion and generating buzz.

“In the old days they would say breaking a record was like throwing a rock into a pond and watching it break into concentric circles,” he said.

Case in point: Chic took its first single to radio stations in Pittsburgh, because it was just close enough to Philadelphia, which was just close enough to New York City.

They got stations in Pittsburgh to start playing their song.

“Within three weeks, New York City—the top market in America—was playing Chic,” Rodgers said. “They felt embarrassed that Pittsburgh was playing this band from France.”

But they didn’t stop there.

When the single arrived in New York, they didn’t go to the number-one station—they went to the number-two station. Upon learning it was the radio programmer’s birthday, and she was launching a brand new disco format station, Chic arrived at her office with a giant birthday cake and a professional dancer dressed as a flapper.

“We gave her the birthday cake and told her ‘we hope your radio station is a success,‘” Rodgers said. “And she added the record. The number-two station added the record.”

Which, of course, prompted the number-one station in New York City to pick it up. The single went straight to the top of the charts.

“Ever since then, I have had lots of lots of number-one records—and almost all was the result of some clever scheme,” Rodgers said. “It’s not that we were telling complete lies—we were telling teeny tiny lies. “

Throughout the session Tuesday, Rodgers jammed periodically on his guitar, and even busted out his rendition of “Rapper’s Delight,” to the delight of the crowd, which rewarded Rodgers with a standing ovation at the session’s finish.

He encouraged the marketers and designers present to embrace the capacity to remix, rethink, and play that which comes with modern technology.

“We’re living in a cut-and-paste world,” Rodgers said. “Embrace it. Don’t resist it.”

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