.A well-placed TV sync can provide a great deal of exposure for an artist’s music, and they get paid for the privilege! So why do so many of these opportunities go unrealised?

Could it be that brands don’t fully appreciate the impact that music can have on their brands?

Or is it that the labels can’t work out how to sync their short-term priorities with the brand’s longer-term needs?

After all, wouldn’t a hit record benefit both brand and label?

It’s certainly true to say that too few brands realise the importance of music in their brand strategy. In such a cluttered visual environment a sonic strategy would help them differentiate their brands from their competition. However, most advertising is steadfastly visual. Music is too often often seen as adjunct to an ad campaign, rather than a key part of the communication. But brands are learning fast, and are showing an increased willingness to experiment, IF the right opportunities come along.

For the record business, sync deals offer up not only a significant promotional opportunity if worked correctly, it also provides an increasingly important revenue stream for labels, music publishers and artists alike. And a good sync deal can not only help break a new act, it can also revitalise an artist or a labels back catalogue. I’m sure Phil Collins was as surprised as the rest of us to see “In The Air Tonight” go back into the Top 20, some 26 years after its first release. All off the back of a Cadbury’s advert.

Many of the best sync companies have become ‘crate-diggers’, seeking out new artists, independent music and esoteric oldies, rather than pushing household names like Phil. And it’s not just because his music isn’t very cool these days! This trend look sets to continue as brands marketing budgets continue to come under fire. As much as brands would love to have access to household names to promote their products, few have the budgets to compete, especially with procurement folk trying to drive down the cost of everything, including the cost of syncs. And as the music industry continues to favour short term wins over long-term gains, things are unlikely to change. The use of the Rolling Stones “She’s A Rainbow” by Sony Bravia could become an increasingly rare example of a brand spending big bucks on a sync deal, unless it is part of a far broader deal with the brand.

The advent of hundreds of new cable and satellite TV channels had offered up new opportunities for sync, with many small brands (and programme makers) entering the TV advertising marketplace for the first time. And many of them will need music. But these new entrants into the marketplace simply can’t afford top dollar, playing into the hands of anyone that can be more creative than the major labels and their publishers.

citizensound says:

For the music industry to really take advantage of the sync opportunities on offer they need a real shift in their mindset, and find new ways to do business with brands. They need to think more long-term and be more strategic, they need to understand that brands planning cycles are very different from their own, and learn to compensate for that. And they also need to able to turnkey their offerings to deliver real partnerships that work for both themselves and their new brand partners. And as we’ve seen brands will find another way to source music if the big boys wont play ball.

citizensound have put together a number of sync deals over the last few months for a range of brands, including a tropical soft drink and a nails enhancement product.

And we’ve had the most success by sourcing music from a range of indie labels, and artists who are are keen to exploit their unreleased catalogue. Which is why having an experienced A&R man with a great set of ears and a good contact book has been crucial to our recent success. The success we’ve had was not only down to the music perfectly fitting the creative brief, but we also being able to deliver within what were sometimes tight budget constraints. Which it is not always an easy job these day.

We recently approached one publisher for a the clearance on a track from a still relatively unknown, but up-and-coming, UK artist. Both the label and the artists publisher were keen for the deal to happen as they valued the potential exposure to extend sales of the current album, but the publisher responsible for the co-write on the track wanted over three times the total budget for the finished advert, killing the deal stone dead. The final track picked by the agency and client for this campaign came from a small US indie label Standard Recordings, and their artist Marla Hansen (whose name you might recognise if you’re a Sufjan Stevens fan). They were not only a whole lot more realistic when it came to doing a deal for themselves and their artist, but it was also a real kick to get a totally unknown US artist onto a UK ad campaign.

citizensound says:

The next step is to extend these synch deals into real partnerships, bringing together the brands and their agencies with the artists, managers and labels, to deliver something that truly benefits everyone, even the music fan!

Volkswagen seem to have taken the concept of the ‘sound of their brand’ to heart when it came to their latest ad campaign for the VW Golf. Now cars and music have always gone together, so using great music in a car ad seems an obvious thing to do.

VW’s agency DDB built on the connection between cars and music, and literally connected the sound the car makes with the sync music for the advert, by hooking up with Paul Hartnoll, formerly of ground breaking UK techno duo Orbital, to produce the music for their latest campaign.

The track, entitled Gob Smack, is made up from the sounds recorded in and around the Golf during the shoot. The track has even been released as a digital download, although bizarrely there’s no mention of the connection with VW, and when you go to the VW Golf website there’s equally no mention of the advert or the music. A real missed opportunity.

iTunes certainly understands the importance of syncs on music fans, as they are currently offering a 24 track ‘Music in TV ads’ collection for sale, featuring everything from the the music to the wonderful Drench advert (Brain’s from the Thunderbirds strutting his stuff to Snap!), through to the latest ad for Berocca featuring 80’s synth-pop duo Blancmange (and if you were wondering where they got the idea for this ad from, check out this fantastic homemade video for US band OK Go).

citizensound says:

Both brands and record companies rarely seem to realise the potential of a what is often perceived as just a sync deal. The right music with the right creative work - Jose Gonzalez and Sony Bravia springs to mind - can provide the brand with a sonic logo that reminds consumers of the brand every time they hear the music, even when the ad campaign has long disappeared from our TV and Cinema screens. While the humble sync deal can offer record company and the artist’s the opportunity to build a longer-term relationship with a brand, opening up a whole range of new channels to finance, market or distribute their products. So lets start joining the dots.

Neil Barnes, co-founder of the rather excellent but sadly missed Leftfield, has produced the music for the new Audi TV ad, which debuted on UK TV last week. For the track, Barnes has teamed up with former Leftfield producer Nick Rapaccioli. The advert sonically interpreted the movements of gymnasts, using undulating
beats and rhythms, mixed with sounds recorded from the new Audi R6. Now that’s what we call the real sound of the brand!

This is not the first time that Barnes has produced music for a major TV ad, Leftfield’s music has been used by both O2 and Vauxhall, while the track ‘Phat Planet’ was famously used in the Guinness White Horses commercial that was voted number 1 in Channel 4’s Top 100 Adverts poll.

The ad is now on the Audi homepage, so go check it out. And here’s that amazing Guinness ad one more time….

citizensound says:

Neil Barnes has used Audi’s own product to define the sound of the Audi A6. Why is it that so few brands think about their brands aurally, especially as we live in such a visually cluttered society, where stand out it increasingly hard to find? Why do so few creative and branding agencies pay any real attention to the brand’s sonic image?

Last week myself I went to see Findlay Brown, at the Gladstone, a new pub/live music venue in South London.  

If you are wondering who Findlay is, you've probably heard his before music without knowing it. His song "Come Home" was the soundtrack for the Mastercard  ‘Priceless’ Christmas TV advert, which captured real people reuniting with their loved ones at the arrivals gate of Heathrow and Gatwick airports. The music for this TV ad campaign was pitched to Mastercard’s creative agency McCann Erickson by an independent sync company, via songwriter Findlay Brown’s manager. “I think the chorus from Come Home held some poignancy with the subject matter for the advert” claims Findlay.

Nobody ever says goodbye, but I don’t mind. Just come home. Come home"

A number of tracks were considered for the advert, “it was between me and Snow Patrol apparently, but I needed the exposure more than they did” he joked!

The advert, which has been used across the globe, was first used in 2006, and then again last Christmas.  “The use of the song definitely brought my music to a wider audience,” he said, “and although I got a small amount of ribbing from my friends for letting my music be used in an ad, most people thought it was a positive thing”. The awareness gained from the song being used in the advert had a significant impact, with a noticeable increase in the number of hits to his Myspace page and his official website over the last festive period. Findlay also found that when he played at last year’s music festivals, such as Glastonbury and the O2 Wireless Festival, that lots of people knew the words to the song, and were singing along to it! As a consequence of the advert’s success Come Home was released as a single by his label Peacefrog (also home to José González, whose track Heartbeats was used to great effect on the first Sony Bravia advert), which Findlay believes wouldn't have happened without the music appearing on the advert first. When he asked him if he would let his music be used again  for an advert he firmly stated that "It depends on what it was for. I wouldn't do anything for any cheese-based products, not even Dairy Lee".

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