brand promise
MusicEquity
“The power of music in branding”
Strategic Branding
music consultancy
Songseekers Group, which works with Brands, their Agencies and the Music Industry.
Music is a powerful medium
help companies recognise the value of music in the context of branding.
how to evaluate music opportunities and
successfully integrate them into a wider, long-term business strategy.
Brand identity carried through music
experienced-based
marketing that focuses on communicating the emotional values of Brands is the
current trend and way forward.
multimedia platforms such as interactive mobile phones
The television commercial has historically been the initial platform where
Brands have used music to support a visual idea.
music DNA:
a formula that clicks in the consumer’s mind
The public started to talk about The GAP commercials outside of the environment of
the commercial - its reach was extended and other media started to contribute to its PR
strategy without it costing the Brand a penny.
Rather than The GAP commercials looking like a rip off from something from MTV, artists
from Brandy to Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys copied The GAP style and looked like
a GAP ad. The company had developed it’s own aesthetic, which spilled out into music and
other advertisements.
The GAP have created a music
metaphor for consumers to feel great about their products.
A Brand is essentially a
promise.
Every time
a Brand uses music in any area of it’s marketing it will create an asset or a liability for the
Brand depending on the success of music selection and usage: the artist, the arena and the
platform.
customer touchpoint
“What does my Brand sound like?”
This is not to be confused with “Sonic Branding”
Consider the message from Microsoft when
they used The Rolling Stones copyright “Start Me Up” for the Windows 2000
launch. Almost every newspaper headlined the story with the alleged $8,000,000
paid for this track. Microsoft were forgiven for not using the original Rolling Stone
master sound recording, (a fact this was never openly communicated.) All that the
public remembered was that Microsoft paid more than ANY other company for a
song for a commercial from one of the biggest bands in the world.
MusicEquity as ‘the net commercial
value of the Brand’s relationship to music taking into account its
assets and liabilities that can be commercially leveraged and measured in other
areas of its marketing activities
The Music Industry should look to recent success stories of where music in a
commercial has directly helped their bottom line. A great example is Nike’s recent
use of an old, relatively unknown Elvis track as the soundtrack to a commercial.
The commercial gave the track huge airtime on broadcast media, something that the
radio stations would not give to an artist who had been dead for 25 years.
The hype was not about the quality of the
commercial or the cost of the shoot but the fact that the Elvis estate had been
persuaded to allow a modern remix of the track by a popular DJ, JXL and that this
was the 25th anniversary of the death of a superstar. The amount of column inches
that the partnership produced was beyond the wildest PR expectations.
It is relatively simple to see who were the principle financial beneficiaries of
the Elvis partnership. The key question is what more could have been leveraged for
Nike, had this been part of an overall Music Strategy with objectives, aspirations
and financial opportunities clearly mapped out.
collaboration between content and marketing,
(GAP, Levis, Target, Pepsi etc.)
Dirty
Vegas “Days Go By’ might have been a flop if it had never been featured in a
spot for the Mitsubishi Eclipse, but the commercial launched the previously obscure
song into the music charts and helped it receive a Grammy nomination for Best
Dance Recording.
“The most powerful proof is when a DJ comes onto the radio and
says, ‘And now, the Mitsubishi song.’ It’s hard to explain the phenomenon,” says
Pierre Gagnon, Mitsubishi Motors N.A. president and CEO. “What we’re so pleased
with is we know we’re breaking through when these songs become more popular.”
how to convert PR
attention into commercial buys.
How do you make the success of music translate
into more car sales?
“If your marketing
is intrusive, you’re going to lose them, so you have to provide entertainment that’s
an asset to their life” (Jarrod Moses CEO Grey World Alliance on behalf of P&G
Pringles latest entertainment partnership July 2002)
One of the reasons that music is currently undervalued by many organisations
is because it is difficult to directly measure its impact and influence on sales.
David Aaker uses five dimensions when measuring Brand Equity: Lifestyle,
awareness, perceived quality, associations and loyalty.
Entertainment value,
Research has shown that people relate to Brands in a very
similar way that they relate to people. They form relationships based on personality,
appearances (style and image) and trust.
“What a customer hears may make the difference
between their choosing and not choosing your Brand” (Gerald J. Gorn The Effects of
Music In Advertising on Choice Behaviour 1982).
“If a new model isn’t developed, the old one will simply collapse” (Steven J. Heyer, Coca-Cola)
In a marketplace where compelling messages, consistent delivery and emotional
experiences are at the heart of a Brand’s success, organisations need to actively
develop fully integrated and powerful multimedia music strategies.
there for the taking for the marketers.
the ways that music is used to sell products and
services
the ways in which Brands, Agencies and the
Music Industry continue to transact in music and yet miss the true currency of
their exchange.
…
songseekers
