Underscoring the changing landscape in which advertising and the mainstream music/entertainment industry are coming together in myriad ways is a comparison of the session itinerary from last year to this at MIDEM, a longstanding annual event in Cannes billed as the world’s largest music conference.
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In 2007, a high profile MIDEM listening forum featured Alex Patsavas, TV music supervisor on Grey’s Anatomy. Patsavas led a session in which she and attendees listened to select songs culled from numerous submissions considered for possible use in Grey’s Anatomy.
Fast forward to January 29th of this year and Grey’s Anatomy has been succeeded by Grey Worldwide, New York, as its senior VP, director of music, Josh Rabinowitz, headed a MIDEM forum in which he presented the top 20 tracks sent to him for possible usage in a Procter & Gamble spot promoting Pantene’s women hair care products.
Through the MIDEM organization, Rabinowitz sent out a call for entries to conference attendees, which generated nearly 400 submissions to a joint MIDEM/Grey website. The call for submissions simply asked, “Can you write a head-turning song?, and then proceeded to run down some requirements such as it has to:
• Have a “loved by all” sound (a mainline pop feel).
• Make women feel good about themselves, strong and empowered.
• Be immediately branded yet never a jingle.
• Work as an instrumental and in various forms and lengths.
• And creatively interpret the brand message of “shine” and “let the best of you shine through” (without having to be a slave to those words).
Quality returns Rabinowitz estimated that 50 percent of those some 400 entries were “very good” while five percent were “excellent” and “none of them were horrible.” Judging of the entries was done by Rabinowitz and Pantene, which narrowed the field to the top 20 playlist.
While it remains to be seen if indeed an entry will see the light of day on air or online as part of a Pantene campaign in that deliberations over this are ongoing, Rabinowitz noted that one thing is for certain–that the MIDEM competition yielded some worthwhile work, uncovering new potential sources of music for him and his Grey colleagues.
“This call out to the music industry for entries is kind of a user-generated, new way of ‘A&R’ing’ music,” related Rabinowitz, who noted that MIDEM is interested in a similar ad-related session next year. “The MIDEM session was in response to what the marketplace has expressed a need for. It shows how the advertising/marketing and music sectors are intersecting and cross-pollinating and that’s a healthy dynamic.”
Particularly healthy for Rabinowitz as a spot music veteran who’s predicted for some time that a piece of ad/marketing music will one day top the Billboard charts. “The world of branding is becoming part of the music industry at large and the attention paid at MIDEM to our contest reflects that to some extent,” he observed. “The music business is shifting away from a totally record-dominated industry, getting into all forms of media space, including traditional, digital and mobile. Branding throughout this space also represents an opportunity for music. Music is essential to branding and our branding efforts represent meaningful exposure for music.”
At the same time, Rabinowitz said that this new form of MIDEM-facilitated A&R and other such initiatives cut from the same cloth do not replace the talents of established advertising music artisans. “I come from that community and value it and its resources,” he affirmed.
Disruptunes Similarly, Rob Schwartz, executive creative director of TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles, related that his agency’s homegrown music initiative designed to foster creativity shouldn’t been seen as any kind of attempt to encroach on the ad music community.
“Were not Jonathan Elias,” quipped Schwartz in reference to the stalwart creative director of music and sound house Elias Arts. “What we’re doing is more internally focused.”
That inward focus is embodied in the TBWAChiatDay initiative Disruptunes which lives on an internal TBWA website. Launched last year, Disruptunes has seen in the last five months a total of some 50-plus agency artisans from 31 countries upload more than 100 original songs.
“We had an agency network-wide meeting for TBWA in May [’07] and one of the many charges was to maintain our creative edge as an agency and a network,” said Schwartz. “That means putting a premium on fostering a dynamic and creative culture. Our people are doing creative work anyway but we want to enhance that by finding other ways for our people to continually be inspired, hungry and fresh. I have been talking to a lot of people here over the years regarding what they do during their off hours and found there to be an inordinate amount of musicians. Some of our agency bands and talent have consistently been winning or placing second in industry wide ad jams and competitions.
“The point is we have all this creative talent that has a deep personal love and involvement in music,” continued Schwartz. “So through Disruptunes, we thought we’d give them a forum for their work. My dream is to put together ten great songs and an album by 2010.”
To get the ball rolling, Schwartz sent out an e-mail to Los Angeles agency staffers and then later to the entire network. Assorted songs were uploaded to the internal site, which elicited listener feedback. “We had enthusiasm on both the artists’ and listeners’ sides which is a positive creative dynamic,” noted Schwartz. “A prime mission for us is to keep our people happy and fresh creatively. To give then an energy and in this case with Disruptunes another reason to fall in love with the agency they work at. This isn’t an internal music arm looking to play in the advertising music sandbox. It’s a way for us to keep our creative edge. It’s another reason for the best people in our business to want to work here.”
Grammy play
Still there was a practical marketplace application that emerged from Disruptunes, specifically for the Los Angeles band The Generators whose bass player is Eric Ortega, a production artist at TBWAChiatDay.
Posted on the internal Disruptunes site was The Generators song titled “Thirty Seconds” which dovetailed nicely with a small, modestly budgeted :15 television promo commercial that TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles, created for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), which presents the annual Grammy Awards. The :15 aired during the Grammy telecast and promoted a Grammy branded product and fashion line. Speaking of promotion, the piece also represented a nice piece of exposure for The Generators.
