SOUNDS LIKE BRANDING™ Global Insights in music branding and communication

Help us choose a book cover!

Sounds Like Branding the book is released in Scandinavia in February 2010. Written by Heartbeats International founder Jakob Lusensky, it’s the first in the field of music branding. It tells an exciting story about how brands became record labels and consumers turned into fans. It also presents the models and tools at hand to work with music branding in practice.

The publisher is Norstedts, Sweden’s oldest publishing house, founded in 1823. Together with Swedish online book store Bokus we now let you choose the cover for the book (only the Swedish version…).

Discussions are being made with various international publishers and an english version is planned for later on in 2010.

Food for thought

Being a great fan of both food and music I found this piece from the University of Gastronimic sciences quite interesting. I am pretty sensitive to when the two do not correlate. I don’t know how many times I have had to tell the waiter to change the selection of music. In my world, the level of understanding of music as a way to enhance the eating experience is greatly underestimated. Of course there are exceptions: I can’t wait to get back to Tokyo to once again to experience dining at the China Blue on the 28th floor of the Conrad Hotel. A beatiful experience for all senses where the Philip Glass inspired music selection greatly enhances the magic of the experience.

Read the full article here.

Brands & Spotify

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Sound moves. Not only is online music service Spotify a cool hit with band fans, it’s catching on with brands too. Read the full article by By Simon Fuller on the great new marketing blog brand-e.biz

Samsung music strategy

“With our music strategy we wanted to cut through the clutter and engage people on their terms, and this is exactly what we have done with the Beat show,” says Penny Welch, sponsorship manager for Samsung UK.

3.2 million video views in one month. A pretty impressive figure I must say and it once again shows the effect music branding has on social media networks.

A word from the global music marketing manager

“Music is a marketing tool that can help you achieve your objectives”, says Umut Ozaydinli, global music marketing manager at Coca-Cola.

Watch this interesting video from MediaTV/Brand Republic where he talks about the new ‘Open happiness’ campaign. Mr Ozaydinli talks about the possibilities of working with music on a global basis and the new platforms that emerge through music branding.

I couldn’t hear anything

Fanta is launching a mobile campaign using ultra sounds which can only be heard by people under the age of 25. It seems to be working out. So far 400 000 teens have downloaded the application. Can you hear it!?

Read the full story

The secret recipe of Coke

Coca Cola is one of the world’s most successful brands and a company that always understood the true power of music. The “I like to buy the world a Coke” campaign that was launched in the early 1970s and the specific song that was written for it also became a top seller shortly afterwards the rollout of the campaign.

It’s also fascinating to see how well Coke read the mind of the public and their customers around this time. It was in the days of the Vietnam war and political activism stood high up on the agenda of people. The video clearly emphasize on a very socialistic feeling with a universal message of love. People should come together everywhere and of course the elixir for this movement is Coke…

Now almost 40 years later they again put music in the centre of their marketing mix. In the “Open Happiness” campaign they put together the artists/bands WhatFallout Boy, Gym Class Heroes, Panic At The Disco, Cee Lo and Janelle Monae, for a collaborative effort on the song, “Open Happiness”.

“From our perspective, it was a logical choice to inspire people through music,” says Coca-Cola global music marketing manager Umut Ozaydinli.

Clearly Coke understood that the secret recipe in order to be successful in building an emotional connection to people everywhere is music.

Read more about the partnership here

Key factors for successful sonic branding

This weekend we got a very interesting marketing study that researches key factors for success when creating and implementing a sonic/music identity. Niklas Andersson has a master of science in business and economics at the Lund University in Sweden.

You can download the full report as a PDF here.

Below are ten of the key conclusions Niklas draws in how to be successful when establishing and implementing your sonic/music identity.

1. Knowing your brand identity, i.e. knowing who you are before trying to convince consumers of who you are, through sonic branding.

2. Conducting a deep and thorough analysis, prior to engaging in the creation of a sound identity; investing sufficient enough of resources for this to be made possible

3. Understanding that when determining core values, tied to a company´s or brand´s identity, one must also include a consideration to them being suitable, as far as being possible to clearly and distinctly recreate as music and sounds

4. Gaining knowledge of the tastes and preconditions of certain targeted groups

5. Differentiating the transmitted core values of a sound identity from that of competitors, so that it can become clear and unique

6. Understanding that certain core values, when attempted to be translated into music and sounds, may lie very close to being perceived in a completely different, and perhaps greatly undesired way.

7. Reaching internal conviction within companies, of the reasons for a certain sound identity´s components and attributes. If co-workers are not entirely convinced of the cleverness and importance of its sound identity, they may reject it and in so increase
the risk of it rather weakening as opposed to strengthening the image of the brand

8. If possible, conducting consumer tests prior to the implementation of a sound identity, testing its perceived values by measuring emotional association

9. Enabling a sophisticated marriage between sonic and visual attributes; in so creating the sense of overall aesthetic appeal

10. Reviewing and, if needed, modifying a company´s sound purchasing strategy, in so possibly saving large amounts of resources, as well as increasing the chances of creating a unified sound identity