While Coca-Cola’s marketing team is slowly and steadily reaping the subliminal advertising benefits from injecting their sonic logo into K’naan’s World Cup hit, other brands have been going for quicker, less subtle band and brand linkups. Take the latest partnership – Fiat and Faithless, who have teamed up to create an advert/music video they’ve dubbed a “prommercial”. It seems Fiat has intentionally distanced themselves from the sponsorship route (think Seat and Shakira). And notably, the three-minute video they’ve produced has no Fiat references aside from the image of the Punto Evo car itself:
With over 100,000 views on Youtube and extensive blog coverage, yes, Fiat have created a large amount of free exposure for themselves. And if impressions are the metric for success, we at soundlounge acknowledge a winning formula.
However, reading more closely into the coverage and comments, it seems the prommercial concept itself is garnering more attention than the Faithless song. “Feelin’ Good” has already dropped off the top 200 iTunes download chart after reaching a less-than-inspiring rank. It’s actually been described by critics as one of the more radio-unfriendly tracks on the new Faithless album. So, while Fiat promises further collaborations with Faithless, will the novelty have worn off?
As often happens, when a brand uses music for ‘cool’ appeal, the partnership looks to be more beneficial for the band. They get the production of their music video and TV coverage paid for by the brand – more immediate exposure than they would ever get from their record company’s stretched marketing budgets.
It’s no secret that the music industry is desperate for these kinds of collaborations to bolster flagging resources. This shift in the music industry means that the days of a three-album deal and a five-year development of an artist, where a band builds their own unique fan base are long gone. Bands today have to look after a fan base that may be less forgiving than one that has grown organically with them over several years.
Similarly, brand marketing directors, although well aware of the time it takes for consumers to really buy into a concept, are also under time pressure to create campaigns with instant response. The truth remains though – real brand associations take time. ‘Instant’ definitely has an impact, but for how long?
If it comes to pass, another Fiat/Faithless collaboration should highlight whether this is a partnership with any longevity. From a purely financial standpoint, Faithless would be crazy to turn down another offer. But the benefits for Fiat from their new prommercial? The jury is still out.
To any rookie filmmaker, adding music to a great piece of footage might seem easy and fun, but any serious commercial production team knows the headaches, heartaches, and often cheque book-aches in getting exactly the right track for a film. When it comes to permission from big bands in the league of Radiohead – it can seem an impossible task.
For over 30 years soundlounge have been persuading artists like The Beatles; Madonna; David Bowie; Duran Duran; The Who; Iggy Pop; Cream and many, many others to say yes – some for the very first time – for their music to be used in a TV commercial.
The UNICEF campaign is now gathering its own momentum. In just a few days of being live on youtube, it has achieved 50,000 views, 94,000 records on Google and been tweeted out by Bill Gates. Many people are now asking just how did we secure Radiohead’s “Yes”……..
The Brief
Way back in Feb this year, soundlounge were invited to meet with the passionate yet exhausted creative team from Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, Katie Stanley and Huw Williams, who had literally just returned from their three-week shoot capturing the lives of children in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Uganda and the Philippines. Their account of what they had lived and filmed was moving and passionate. They spent a great deal of time going into minute details to try and explain to our music supervisors, Brian Kelly and Sam Nicholson, their ambitions for the music and exactly what they needed the viewer to feel through the music and picture working together.
Not every agency is so thorough with their music brief or in their willingness for music supervisors to probe into the heart of the desired response
The Film
Rarely in 30 years of music supervision work has the soundlounge team been so moved by a film. The award-winning director Adrian Moat has shot a spectacular film and editor James Rosen of Final Cut had created a fantastic edit together, all 5 min 20 secs of footage! Our first challenge: the agency wanted music throughout the entire film – tricky when most tracks are under 4:30 minutes!
The Search
Brian and Sam began the search for potential tracks. They knew the music had to tick off the following boxes:
Evoke the desired emotions
Work with the images and pace
No negative associations with the artists or song lyrics
No other brand conflict
Liked by the agency
Loved by the client
Approved by the artist and writers
Literally hundreds of tracks and creative ideas were explored, the best of the ideas edited to picture, tracks remixed to extend to five minutes, and each presented to the agency and charity for consideration.
Free?!
As music supervisors we receive many calls from producers at agencies asking about music that often starts with “we have a very small budget for music”. Calls asking to ’help’ them find a song for their charity clients campaigns always means one thing – pro bono, which means a whole different conversation with Rights Owners
What this means is that in addition to every other creative requirement, the final track for UNICEF would have to be donated with all fees waived by Artist, Publisher and Record Company. For each one of our ideas we presented to the client, tentative enquiries were made as to availability. This in itself is an exercise in diplomacy – asking questions that do not compromise any artist into feeling obligated or imply that their track is the one selected (or rejected). Not easy conversations.
Radiohead
But there were only two tracks that ever really resonated for us. Both of them were Radiohead copyrights – we knew that the tracks we had chosen were exactly the right sound for the film and reflected the message from the charity.
Knowing what to ask for and when to ask is key in negotiations at this level. Tom Foster, Head of Sync at Warner Music Group, was brilliant in the way that he worked with our lead licensing negotiator Dan Payne. We had included Tom in the loop early when the possibility of Radiohead came up. Having seen the film in its various stages, he advised that it was now worth a conversation with the band. But we also knew that Radiohead get at least five enquiries a week for synchronisation, most of which are turned down.
Successful bands are notoriously busy, whether writing or recording or relaxing from all of the above, so the windows of opportunity are short. The film was sent over to Radiohead. All we could do now was wait. We got the call. They had seen the film. We held our breath. Radiohead granted us approval for its use.
Approved
The band had said yes to the UNICEF message, a yes to the film edit and a yes to our five-minute mix of ‘Videotape’. Huw Williams at AMV BBDO understood the significance of this permission:
“The sheer power of the film and the Radiohead association will unquestionably strike genuine appeal with more people than we could have ever hoped. But we have been ever mindful that investing in the planning of the campaign would help us make the absolute most of this rare and wonderful opportunity.”
Sellouts or Saints?
Charities, the music industry and famous (and sometimes not so famous) artists often conjure up one thought – Live Aid, Live 8, charity records…. High profile events where the cynical amongst us question motivation. The truth is that many, many artists in the world of music make things happen under the radar that have a much more far reaching, powerful and targeted effects.
Radiohead obviously know the true meaning of charity, where something is quietly given with no press statements, that enable and empower others to improve their lives.
We truly hope this spirit of charity will rub off on viewers when they take the 5mins to view this amazing film.
To learn more about UNICEF’s ‘Put It Right’ campaign and how you can get involved, visit unicef.org.uk
Last week we brought you Coke: The J.S. Bach of Brands. Time now to highlight Audi, who have certainly been taking a few notes from the master of Romantic opera: Richard Wagner.
Wagner, arguably one of the most brilliant and insane composers of his time, built his reputation on epic operas that lasted well beyond the attention span of most listeners today. His infamous Der Ring des Nibelungen, which took him 26 years to complete, clocks in at around 15 hours of performance time! You might imagine audiences would drift off after the first few hours, but how could they with ballistic themes like the legendary ‘Ride of the Valkyries’?
So what do Wagner’s epic dramas have to do with the 30-second commercials Audi has been putting out lately?
Turns out they both use musical devices known as ‘leitmotifs’. A leitmotif is a recurring theme that represents a certain idea, emotion, or character. Leitmotifs can be heard everywhere from Star Wars to The Who’s Quadrophenia to the Final Fantasy video game series. Though Wagner didn’t coin the phrase ‘leitmotif’, he used them extensively as building blocks for his operas. He referred to these themes as ‘guides-to-feeling’ and believed he could convey complex emotional ideas by combining and developing these basic motifs throughout a piece of music.
Audi, as we’ve mentioned before, have been doing something quite Wagnerian with their brand’s sound. They’ve been busy recording instrumental riffs, vocal melodies, heartbeats, even noises from the cars themselves to create their own unique ‘sound style guide’. They can then draw from this palette of themes to compose soundtracks for their future commercials. Just like Wagner, Audi are creating logical frameworks for their music, in hopes that they can more effectively tug at the consumer’s heartstrings.
Will we ever hear a 15-hour Audi opera? Let’s hope not. But if any brand is going to spawn a cult following of music theory nerds, it’s Audi.
Charlie McCarron, Sound Consultant
Matt Lee, Music Supervisor soundlounge
It’s easy to get swept away by Inception’s stunning visuals, but it seems the music and sound design are getting just as much press.
The Guardian revealed last week that Hans Zimmer’s entire epic score stems from one old French tune – Edith Piaf’s recording of “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”. In the film, the dreamers use this song to “kick” themselves awake. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll hear that the main Inception theme is basically a remix of Piaf’s song. Very clever!
Zimmer apparently had some fun as a musical prankster:
“Just for the game of it, all the music in the score is subdivisions and multiplications of the tempo of the Edith Piaf track…I was surprised how long it took [fans] to figure it out.” (New York Times)
Zimmer’s score is an incredible example of how one small piece of musical “DNA” can permeate the entire soundtrack. It’s like a Bach motif woven throughout a piece of music (or Coke’s sonic logo woven into a K’naan track). Even if we’re not fully aware of this DNA, it gives the music a deeper, almost subconscious structure.
The sound design of Inception is just as layered and intricate. Take a peek at this wonderful Sound for Film Profile:
After finding out about Coca-Cola’s clever injection of their own sonic logo in K’naan’s World Cup song “Wavin’ Flag”, many of our readers called Coke out as being sneaky and/or cheeky. So we at soundlounge are here in defense of their brilliant (if a bit devilish) sonic branding strategy.
In the brand-sphere, Coke have proven to be masters of this kind of “audio watermarking” – subtly embedding their brand’s sound in the music of their advertisements. But the idea of a sound signature is hardly new. In fact, the original master of audio watermarking lived and died three centuries ago: J.S. Bach.
Most composers think long and hard about the structure of their music. But Bach took it to an extreme new level. As both a musical and mathematical genius, he composed pieces so intricate and layered that scholars today still find secret meanings in his work. Some say he used the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 8, 13…) as guides for his compositions.
But his most famous hidden message is just four notes: B-flat, A-natural, C-natural, and B-natural. In the original German spelling…B, A, C, H!
It’s the Bach motif! It appears in so many of his pieces that scholars agree it’s there for a reason. It was Bach’s way of “signing” his compositions. Was it vanity? Or was it just a quirky sense of humor? We can’t be sure, but whatever his reason, this recurring theme connects his pieces on a deeper level. It might not be as obvious (or catchy) as Coke’s audio watermark in “Wavin’ Flag”, but Bach’s audio watermark is one of the most popular of all time. Over 409 works by 330 composers have used Bach’s motif in memorial to this brilliant man.
Is Coke taking a few notes from Bach? Since the start of their Open Happiness campaign, they’ve “given” their melody to dozens of international music superstars. K’naan is just the most recent in a long list of musicians to use Coke’s motif.
But “Wavin’ Flag” has seen success far beyond any of the other Coke-watermarked songs. The beauty of this for Coke is that they own this hit-single melody. They can reuse it in their advertising without any licensing fees, unlike say, the McDonald’s/Timberlake “I’m Lovin’ It” scenario. Ideally for Coke, people will hear their melody in the next Coca-Cola commercial and get all nostalgic about that fun song from the 2010 World Cup.
If any brand comes close to musical genius, it’s Coke. Will their melody last for three centuries though? We (probably) won’t be around to report on it, but don’t hold your breath…
Charlie McCarron, Sound Consultant
Matt Lee, Music Supervisor soundlounge
A: Both believe in the secret power of sound to change our brains.
First, these teens…
In the last few weeks, reports have been popping up everywhere about a new craze among the iPod generation – ‘i-dosing’ – listening to music designed to get kids ‘high’. It’s based on the musical illusion of binaural beats. But the makers of these digital drugs have been claiming that listening to these audio clips will create the same effect as taking illegal narcotics.
If the concept sounds silly, the media’s coverage of it has been even sillier:
The idea that certain sounds can mess with our brains isn’t a new one. Far from it. Time for some ancient Greek philosophy…
Back in Plato’s time, songs could be played in a variety of different musical modes, kind of like how we use major and minor. Each different mode evoked a slightly different emotion for an ancient Greek listener, just like the major mode sounds “happy” and the minor mode sounds “sad” to us. But Plato and other philosophers believed music could affect more than just emotions. They thought these different modes would affect mental states and behaviours. Listening to one mode would mold their youths into intelligent warriors, while another would make them lazy drunks. Sound familiar? Some things never change.
If you’re wondering what Plato had to say about it, here’s some of his dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, from the third book of The Republic. They’re deciding which musical modes would create a nation of intelligent warrior teens:
We said we did not require dirges and lamentations in words.
We do not.
What then, are the dirgelike modes of music? Tell me, for you are a musician.
The mixed Lydian, he said, and the tense or higher Lydian, and similar modes.
These, then, said I, we must do away with. But again, drunkenness is a thing most unbefitting guardians, and so is softness and sloth.
Yes.
What, then, are the soft and convivial modes?
There are certain Ionian and also Lydian modes that are called lax.
Will you make any use of them for warriors?
None at all, he said, but it would seem that you have left the Dorian and the Phrygian.
Socrates then goes on to explain that the Dorian mode instills a sense of courage, while the Phrygian mode promotes thoughtfulness. If only it were that easy to change our behaviour! Then again, there’s always the Mozart effect…
A note for our music nerds out there – even though the modes Plato mentions have the same names as modes we use today (Lydian, Dorian, Phrygian), these ancient Greek modes sounded nothing like them. Medieval music theorists confused matters by misnaming and misinterpreting the ancient Greeks!
If you’re interested, you can find out a little more about ancient Greek music here.
And the soundlounge award this year goes to…(drum roll please)…a totally brilliant piece of sonic branding from the Coke team of music supervisors. Those who have been following soundlounge’s extensive blog coverage of World Cup advertising music will know that there were dozens of contenders for the crown. However we are all agreement here, that apart from the vuvuzelas, the most recognizable sound from this year’s World Cup has come from a previously little-known Somali-Canadian artist.
Thanks to Coke, K’naan’s song “Wavin’ Flag” has reached an amazing number one in eleven countries (and still counting). With over twenty regional remixes featuring local superstars, “Wavin’ Flag” has become the most popular and memorable soundtrack to South Africa 2010.
Coke has made K’naan an international superstar by modifying his song and promoting the “Coca-Cola Celebration Mix”. But this socially conscious rapper and poet insists this relationship with Coke doesn’t affect his integrity as a musician: “I don’t work for Coke or anything; what I do is my music.” (Billboard).
So isn’t this just a piece of band-brand marketing? Whether or not listeners are consciously aware, Coke have used a technique we call audio watermarking. This is a popular and well-known trick that has been around for centuries and used by composers and producers to weave a sound/motif into a piece of music. Unlike say the Audi sonic logo, which sits at the end of a commercial, watermarking acts like an ‘earworm’, which gets inside our brains and becomes so compulsive that we go around humming it as we walk down the street and not understanding why. We effectively become living, walking, singing commercials for Coke. Whatever K’naan would have his fans believe, embedded into “Wavin’ Flag” is an interesting piece of branding, and Coca-Cola have been priming us to wave their sonic branding flag for a while now…
We’ve actually been hearing this melody for years in Coke commercials. But this time the branding is even less obvious than their original “Open Happiness” song. By sneaking the Coke melody into an otherwise musically unbranded song, they’ve seen incredible success in the charts. In our opinion, it’s a much more intelligent form of branding than paying artists to name-drop brands in their lyrics.
So why doesn’t the average “Wavin’ Flag” fan connect the dots? It took us a few times before the penny dropped and we started to research. It’s as if Coke wants their motif to be subliminal, so that listeners recognize the sound but can’t say exactly why they recognize it. No other hit single has captured the sound of a brand in such an effective and clever way. Even Billboard didn’t come out and say it’s the Coke motif:
‘["Wavin Flag"] features many elements of the original song but includes a pre-chorus that sets the uplifting, unified tone of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, turning the song into one that is “more open, more inviting, more celebratory”‘.
Coke has clearly been steering the ship, taking K’naan on a grand tour of 84 countries. The big question though – what happens after the World Cup? A&M/Octone Records CEO James Diener says that Coke is “invested in K’naan for the duration of his career” (Billboard). That’s a bold statement given the fickle nature of musical popularity. If K’naan loses momentum, will Coke drop him for a fresh new artist or another ‘local’ artist for the next big sports sponsorship? Until then, will they be moderating all of K’naan’s music and infusing it with the sound of Coca-Cola?
You can be sure soundlounge will be listening out for the next Coke advert. And now that you know the Coke motif inside and out, keep your ears open and let us know if you do hear it anywhere else!
Ruth Simmons, Managing Director
Matt Lee, Music Supervisor
Charlie McCarron, Sound Consultant soundlounge
If you enjoyed our article, feel free to say hello on Twitter – @soundlounge (and @soundequity for Ruth)
As expected after England’s exit from the world cup, the football themed adverts seemed to have ceased as brands scramble to show anything but football on their adverts! However, the world cup IS still going on so it’s left to the BBC and ITV to continue with their world cup campaign.
Both opt for adverts full of energy, although ITV are full pace from the start, whereas the BBC gradually builds to a climax bursting with energy and color. The big difference however is BBC’s editing, which is done to fit the music perfectly and therefore create an ad with far greater impact than ITV (1-0 to the BBC).
ITV’s music choice is the massive “Fire” by Jimi Hendrix. A big license for a big event, but you do question how fitting it is when compared to the well-chosen and well-synched African influenced track supporting the BBC ad. Here the track mirrors the visuals in terms of using both traditional and contemporary influences… a strong 2nd goal by the BBC.
Despite the domination by the BBC, the scale of ITV’s music choice certainly grabs attention, and the pace of the advert does excite the viewer (2-1). However the BBC gave a much stronger performance overall with a far more evocative ad, which shows how an unknown track can be so much more effective than a well-known alternative.
“Football” and “samba”. Two words anyone would use to describe Brazil as a brand. And the two often intertwine. The most popular football-related songs? All sambas. Take “Que Bonito É” for example. It was used in newsreels during football video coverage and is forever associated with the game:
The people of Brazil have been brought up with music and football as such an important part of their lives, its no surprise the two have practically overlapped. “A Taça do Mundo é Nossa” (The World Cup Is Ours) was composed after Brazil won their first world cup in 1958. Here’s a slightly more up-to-date version:
This song is testament to the combination of Brazil’s biggest passions with lines such as “Good in samba, good with leather” as well as “Dancing the samba with the ball on the feet”.
Samba is undoubtedly the sound of Brazil, and is instantly recognizable despite vast variations over the decades thanks to the following rhythm:
This rhythm lies at the heart of a samba, and is played by numerous percussion instruments in a traditional samba. With the addition of some melodic instruments such as guitars and trumpets, it becomes an unmistakable sound, which can be applied across many genres of music.
So if you can sum up a whole country with a simple rhythm and a collection of instruments, the same can definitely be done with brands. One brand that has done this to great effect is Audi, who have taken Sonic Branding to the next level to find and create their sound.
