Rob Kaplan knows his target market because he most recently was that very same target in his former post as director of music production for New York agency mcgarrybowen. Now he’s looking to meet the needs of ad shop music producers throughout the industry as on April 1 he became senior VP, global marketing, for Sony/ATV Music Publishing.
Indeed Kaplan brings to his new roost a deep understanding of–and an insider’s perspective on–agency and client needs in today’s evolving music business.
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“My goal is to help Sony/ATV better interface with the world I came from,” says Kaplan. “And for agency music producers, there are so many resources that are available–great artists, bands, music publishers and labels. The challenge for the music publishers and labels that have the premium content–we control The Beatles catalog, for example–is connecting in the right way with the right people in the advertising/marketing world, anticipating producer’s needs on a proactive basis and seeking out opportunities whether its television advertising, branded content, viral, whatever.
“Holding copyrights on great music is just one aspect for publishers,” he continues. “We have to turn our writers and artists into people who, like music production companies, can create original compositions based on a brief, can work on the same deadlines and understand all the different personalities and unique roles in advertising…I very much want our clients to think of us as full service, that they can come to us with any need they have in the world of music, utilizing our writers, our assets, copyrights, relationships and resources, delivering anything they could possibly imagine or even better yet beyond what they could ever imagine.”
Sony/ATV Music Publishing was established in 1995 as a joint venture between Sony and trusts formed by Michael Jackson. Sony/ATV Music Publishing owns or administers more than 600,000 copyrights by such noted artists as The Beatles, Beck, Leonard Cohen, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison and Stephen Stills. Sony/ATV, which had recently acquired both the Leiber Stoller as well as the Famous catalogs, is entirely separate from the Sony BMG Music Entertainment venture.
Varied experience
Kaplan broke into the business as a junior producer at J. Walter Thompson (JWT) New York. He then had a short stint as a producer at Amber Music, New York, before beginning a three-year tenure as music producer at Euro RSCG, New York (back when it was Messner Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer), working on such accounts as Intel, MCI, Volvo and Philips Electronics. For the latter, the agency licensed The Beatles’ “Getting Better,” with the song performed by the band Gomez.
Next Kaplan freelanced for a mix of advertising agencies, editorial houses and commercial production companies before hooking up with New York-based Driver Media and then mcgarrybowen where he oversaw all original music production, music supervision, music licensing, radio production and music branding initiatives for clients that included Crayola, JP Morgan Chase, Marriott, Reebok and the United States Olympic Committee.
Docu diversification
And Kaplan further diversified his lot into the documentary discipline, recently serving as co-music supervisor (with Craig Romney who’s now a music producer at mcgarrybowen) on the film Resolved directed by Greg Whiteley.
Kaplan took this project on independent of his advertising agency duties as he and Romney went to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, last year and struck up a rapport with Whiteley whose feature-length film New York Doll won the fest’s Jury Prize.
This led to co-music supervision duties on Resolved which reveals both the differences and the surprisingly high number of commonalities between two debate teams–one consisting primarily of African-Americans who come from an inner city school; the other a group of wealthy white teenagers who attend an upscale, well regarded suburban school with all kinds of resources
“It required coming up with twelve songs for two hours with basically no budget to speak of,” relates Kaplan who teamed with Romney to search through a collection of music from independent rock bands, laying the groundwork for the Resolved score.
