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!
I came across Scion via their latest compilation album Beat Machine – a mix of ‘Wonky’ hip-hop put together by New York DJ Blu Jemz which I recently picked up on music download service, emusic. For those uninitiated, Wonky is a relatively new development in instrumental hip-hop, which has also crossed over to the Techno and Dubstep scenes in Europe, while the big names to drop include Flying Lotus, Onra, Bullion, Dorian Concept and Mike Slott (all featured here). And if you haven’t heard of any of these names, don’t worry these guys are about as cool and underground as you can get at the moment.
And it’s not just the brand’s commitment to supporting an underground music community that is mighty impressive, but also how they support the artists and DJ’s the get involved…
In its continuous effort to support artists in the music industry, Scion covers all production, licensing and distribution costs for Scion A/V projects, and all proceeds go directly back to the artists.
It’s refreshing to see such a big brand being so philanthropic, providing the sort of support most artists would be happy to be connected with, which is so often where big brands can get it wrong. See Ford’s dreadful campaign for the Focus from last year to see how not to do it – they used an ‘unsigned’ artist to try and give the car some kudos with a younger buyer that turned out to be not only distinctly embarrassing, but showed a real lack of understanding or commitment on Ford’s part.
And Scion’s commitment goes well beyond producing the odd compilation album. On the brand’s website they not only have there own broadband music video channel but a 24/7 17 channel online radio station, access to numerous specially commissioned remixes of classic hip-hop tunes by up-and-coming DJs, regular gigs and club nights across the US, plus a range of cutting edge music samplers produced with the likes of the Discobelle music blog in Sweden, the Kitsune label in France, and the Wax Poetics magazine in the US.
While for metal fans Scion can be found promoting all age gigs with the likes of Brutal Truth and Lair Of The Minotaur (both very cool bands in metal circles), as well as their own FREE rock festival in Atlanta, with some of top underground metal acts from around the globe.
And as far as attention to detail goes they have even gone as far integrated sound samples into the navigation of the brands website. A real sonic brand!
Now if only a car manufacturer would allow citizensound to do something as equally interesting in Europe. I wonder if Ferrari fancy a sonic makeover?
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