If you are still unsure how a more effective use of sound can help build brand equity, then listen to this new offering from those people at Axe. Get past the adolescent maleness of the clip, and focus on how sound has been brilliantly utilised to shape the consumer experience. Use headphones when listening to the clip.
After all, as citizensound keeps on saying, brand experience doesn’t have to be just visual.
Be it Dubai or Mumbai, London or Lisbon, citizensound is excited to find that more and more brands are investing in the power of the senses as part of the consumer experience. The old one dimensional approach to sensory marketing is moving out of the mainstream into the background, being replaced by strategies that consider a multitude of senses.
For most musicians it is their SOUND that is the core of their communication, though for a few ‘musicians’ it might be more about how they look rather than how they sound!
The VISUAL has always gone hand in hand with sound. From the astonishing performances of Mozart to the Sgt Peppers album cover, from MTV to recent mashups.
An example of this came to me at our NOTWORK night last week. I met Rob, otherwise known as O Yuki Conjugate. He shared this with me…
This was beautiful to look at. But it didn’t stop there.
When you TOUCH the CD, you realise that this is art, not a CD. The tiled front cover is a wonderful tactile experience.
The album is called The Euphoria of Disobedience.
I showed it to people at NOTWORK and in Lisbon last week, and after the initial positive comments, the inevitable question got asked…
Great, but how does it sound?
This is where TASTE comes in. I leave it to you to listen to and decide for yourselves. However, I think it lives up to the rest of the experience. Wonderful.
Why do I share this with you?
Three things for Brands and musicians to consider:
Unless you live in the US Scion might be a new name to you, but this car brand developed by Toyota, like their other sub-brand Lexus, is aimed at a very distinct target audience, but in this case the young car buyer. Scion’s mission is to “provide distinctive products, the opportunity to personalize, and an innovative, consumer-driven process at the retail level.”
And music is playing a very major part in the brands marketing strategy. Now cars and music have always gone together, so it’s hardly takes a great leap of imagination to see why they’ve gone down this route, especially with a brand aimed at a relatively young audience.
But what is interesting is not just the brand’s depth of involvement in music, but also the types of music and artists they’ve been supporting - predominantely hip-hop and metal. Probably the last two music genres that your father is guaranteed not to like! (more…)
Now I am not a big fan of banner ads from music companies. The belief that a banner will lead to immediate sales ( behold the one-click sales strategy) is thankfully being seen for what it is. Merely the pitch of a Direct Marketing company selling their wares. As click-through rates disappear out of sight, it is somewhat disheartening that so many music marketing campaigns still hang on to the hope that banner ads will drive immediate sales. Building awareness of the artist yes, selling units quickly…some hope.
However, a huge cheer for VVBrown and Island Records for running this campaign. The band perform within a banner. Nothing more to say really. You can fill in the gaps of why this is such a great idea. It will be copied, but never surpassed. Only annoyed I didn’t pick this up earlier. This happened back in February (an age ago!).
Next question though…did it work for them? Off to go and ask…
Tennents have been a big supporter of live music for some time. Their T In The Park festival has been around since 1994, and has been a massive success for bands, fans and the brand alike. But with so many big branded festivals around (V, O2 Wireless, Carling…) how do you stand out in a crowded marketplace?
How about you giving the power over to the fans and the music community and enable them to create their own gigs.
Tennents is putting it’s money where its mouth is by investing £150,000 into the Tennents Mutual, with Scottish music fans having the say in how that money is spent. Members get to select the artists and venues and get to set the ticket prices by interacting as a community and voting for their preferences online. To become a full member and gain full voting rights all you have to do is to buy a ticket to one of the gigs.
The programme, which kicks off in Edinburgh on the 21st of September, aims to transform Scotland’s live music landscape “by switching influence from the hands of the industry, into the heart of the music community”. Anyone who lives outside of the likes of Edinburgh or Glasgow will know that how hard it is to see your favourite band in you home town, so it’s nice to see that the first round of gigs will see the likes of Teenage Fanclub, Glasvegas, King Creosote and Hot Chip take the stage in Fort William, Ayr, Inverness and Dumfries. Not your average tour stops for many artists!
All the ticket income generated from 2008 shows will be reinvested to increase the 2009 live music fund. This ensuing sum will be further fortified by a donation from Tennent’s Lager’s music budget.
The brand has also added an unsigned area to the comprehensive website, allowing local bands the chance to support some of the bigger name acts that are part of the programme, giving then valuable exposure and a bit of experience playing to a big crowd.
citizensound says:
It’s great to see a brand come up with a project that really enables and empowers a community of music fans, especially in a part of the UK that is so often underserved by live music. As the project develops it will be interesting to see how many non-local artists and bigger acts can be persuaded to hit the lesser known highways and byway’s (LCD Soundsytem are the only international act taking part in the first round of gigs), but this is a really interesting start for a brand that seems to be prepared to put its money where its mouth is.
So have Starbucks given up on music or are they just refocusing their attention?
When it was announced this week that they were to pull out of their record label Hear Music and hand over this business to their partners the Concord Music Group, an obvious reaction was ‘So what went wrong?’
This news was further compounded when it was announced that the entertainment division was to be put under control of the Chief Technology Officer Chris Bruzzo…geeks in charge of creative development? Surely this means that the whole Hear Music exercise has been a failure?
Well, it hasn’t been a failure in my view. For many of the classic artists, it has worked. First Ray Charles sells over 5million units. Paul McCartney sold more than he could have imagined. Meanwhile, Hear Music tempted Joni Mitchell to record again - which in my book is worth the whole exercise in itself. It also started to offer an alternative distribution and marketing solution for many other artists like the immensely talented and underrated Sia.
Has it been a success for Starbucks customers? Well, from a sonic retail perspective, Starbucks can teach many other retailers how to think about the effect of sound on a consumer’s experience in-store (See posts passim).
Starbucks have a head start on other brands in terms of understanding the power of music in the consumer’s connection with their business. Yet, the news clearly suggests that all is not well at Starbucks. So what can we make of the changes?
Shifting away from CD to digital is good business sense, though making the assumption that the CD is completely dead for the Starbucks consumer is a huge one. There are over 6000 options of coffee in Starbucks, so having a choice of formats for the music - “CD or download madam?” - is not a bad idea.
The bigger challenge for the new head of the entertainment division is how to ensure that the experience in-store is not undermined by this move. The danger is that a shift to digital entertainment will leave the coffee-house experience somewhat muted.
One hopes that Starbucks does not retreat, turn it’s music commitment into yet another music download site and forget that sonic branding is felt most of all by their customers in-store. They may be right to consider promoting books in-store (in fact this makes immense sense), yet the power of music could be better harnessed by brands, Starbucks included.
A thought for Starbucks:
Ever thought about getting local artists to play in-store, so supporting local art, giving something fresh to the customers and positioning yourself as the ‘local coffee house’ at the same time? It means acting small, not acting big.
The rise of DIY culture is not restricted to the music industry. Brands know that they have to earn their place in the consumer’s life. Improved insight on how to gain and build trust is ever more important. A full page advert that states how wonderful the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility policy is, will not suffice. The truth is in the detail. We adapt to the new realities or we carry on as before, pumping out the same messages through digital or vintage channels.
We Do…or We Die.
The fact that the Venice Festival of Media exists is confirmation that the advertising agencies are no longer automatic first choice for brands who seek assistance in engaging with consumers on their terms.
What exactly do clients need as support to help solve their business and marketing challenges?
Is it a big network with lots of dots on the map, or is it more about the people they get round the table?
Are there moves back to a fuller service agency model or towards a loose collective of people whose office is their laptop?
You can find out more about this very subject at our DIY: Do… Or Die session at the Venice Festival of Media 2008 from 1:45 to 2:45 on Tuesday 15th of April at 1.45pm
In the citizensound sonicRetail survey, we found a few stores decided on a policy of a music-free zone in–store.
Shops such as Church’s shoes had the sound of people talking and shoes being squeezed on to feet, nothing more. And this worked for the environment and the clientele. A sense of calm away from the storm of the street.
The Apple Store on Regent Street London is also music free, which given the connection between Apple and music, this seems shocking. However, Apple might rationalise this decision by seeing each person as controllers of their own music destiny (via their iPod of course). So a store that tries to dictate and decide what the customer should hear is not a store that respects that customer. However, my issue with the Apple Store is that in this music-free zone, music is generally heard…not through the store PA system, but through far-off speakers linked to Apple products. People test out iPod speakers or listen to songs on laptops. So the sound throughout the store is of far off tinny music.
Meanwhile the O2 in-store had the music so low that you could hardly hear it. Given the immense commitment to music by O2, this again seems like a contradiction. I would expect the in-store sonic experience to be stunning in any O2 store. Sadly, this is far from the truth. Which leads to another issue…
citizensound says:
If you think music has a role in store then for goodness sake have it loud enough to do its' work and invest in a decent soundsystem.
Mango stores are the sonic version of vanilla ice cream. After a while you are yearning for mint choc chip, raspberry, peach or mango even…anything but vanilla…I have to ask the question – what is the point of having music in store if the music is so bland? It got me thinking…
If Mango was a band, who would it be? And then it dawned on me…Mango is the fashion version of Westlife.
Westlife have sold loads of albums, have a huge following, but are not known for innovation and creativity. They get on their stools, then get off them and sing covers, get back on their stools, then sell lots of CDs. A brilliant and successful model that works. So, Mango as Westlife is not a bad thing, IF Mango wanted that image. But this is NOT Mango. When I lived in Barcelona in the 90s, Mango was not a covers band. It was not white suits and the boy your mother would like. Mango had credibility. It had edge. Yet it also had accessibility. Right now in their stores, it just feels much like a lot of other stores…
Una nota para MANGO:Por favor Senores y Senoras de Mango, es possible a cambiar vuestra estrategia de musica en las tiendas – estoy seguro que hay musica que puede connectar mejor con los consumadores. No estais Westlife, eres mas cool que ellos.
The magazine Media & Marketing ran a few features on Brands and Music in their February issue that are worth a read, including some thoughts from citizensound. Also published within the magazine was an article I wrote on the sound of retail environments.
citizensound carried out an extensive survey at the end of 2007 early 2008 in London and Paris on the sound of (physical) retail. We checked out nearly 100 stores in the two cities to see (or rather hear) whether brands have fully leveraged the power of sound at retail.
Unfortunately, the results were not positive. A few companies had developed an outstanding approach to creating soundscapes that added to the shopping experience. Paul Smith had brilliantly fused music selection with each collection throughout the store, thus combining the senses as people explored the shop. However, this is the exception rather than the rule.
Music is often dictated by store staff for their own enjoyment, rather than what will connect with consumers. I walked into four different mobile phone stores and the music was interchangeable RnB. The staff were happy but the consumers were not all RnB fans.
If you are going to be in the store all day helping customers, then great music can help the day go by. Let’s be honest, time can drag if you are faced with either few customers or ones that don’t want to talk to you. So the sound of the store needs to also be motivational for the staff as much as for the customers. Which leads me to Top Shop / Top Man.
Here is a store that smartly fuses fashion with music through the layout of the store and the collections themselves. Bands could/do walk in, pick the look as laid out in the store,
So you would think that the store would be bang on the money when it comes to the music played in store. Wrong!
The music sounded fresh, very ‘indie/new wave’. However, when we asked two staff members about the music, we were met with strong responses. Both staff said the music is organised by main office (one thought that Q magazine was also involved) and that the same music had been playing in store for four months straight, same tape, same loop for four months! Also the same music is chosen for Top Shop and Top Man, so little by way of any gender segmentation analysis going on here. For the sanity of the staff, you have to hope this has been changed and that a more rapid changeover of music is happening in store. Just as the Top Shop collections are inspired by designer labels, so can they also gain from bespoke approach to sonic retail by Paul Smith.
citizensound says:
The balance between music for staff and music for consumers is a tricky one. However, getting it right can lead to an environment where the staff and consumer both enjoy their surroundings. This has to be the goal. It is a shame that so many stores fail to recognise this.So many reasons why, but one is money.
More on this subject in Rant 2 on Sonic Retail.
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