The great thing about this consumer driven “viral” is that the author, Mike Solomon makes it easy for others to contribute and get involved. Download the Garageband file here and the audio file here.

Product sounds are a very powerful and often overlooked branding tool. Read a great article about sound in industrial design here. This viral exploits their potential perfectly.

Nokia remix anyone?

via Core 77

This blows me away.

Just great big beautiful songs.

If you’re in the US Nicole’s album is available on iTunes.

If you’re an Aussie you can order her cd from Amazon.

You can find more of Nicole Atkins and the Sea’s music here and on Last.fm.

Update: Unfortunately the Youtube video has been removed -”This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Lakai, Ltd.”.

But we found another feed on myspace: see below the line.

Just in case they pull this feed and create a digital marketing case study, the music in question can be found here on last.fm or type “M83 Lower Your Eyelids to Die With the Sun” into the search box at http://www.seeqpod.com

You can also get it here on iTunes (Australian store)

————————————————————————-

This is great work. Why?

It redefines a category.

That’s what great (sonic) branding does. It doesn’t try to stand out by yelling at you louder than it’s competitors. It does so by daring to express it’s own unique voice in a unique way.

Back in my skating days most vid’s used punk and hardcore soundtracks, now the skating “sound” tends to lean to fast rock and variations of hip hop. More a soundblur than a soundtrack.

Being different is normal.

Some observations about the use of music in the US presidential campaign.

Obama’s gone down the hip hop road and is encountering some problems.

Unlike any presidential election before, the power and influence of music — and hip-hop music in particular — may prove to play an interesting role in a presidential election. Whether you like it or not, the hip-hop culture could possibly create a sea change in perception in how we see the presidential candidate in a way that no stump speech can do.
Read the article on Adage.com

Yes hip hop is perceived as edgy and young, and hip hop does appeal to some people.
The problem is that people and particularly young people get very suspicious when “old people” try to be cool and appropriate youth culture.

The second problem is that hip hop/rap music is not just a style of music but a whole musical sub-culture. Obama has to do two things:

1. Convince the kids that he “fits” Hip Hop culture and
2. Counter negative perceptions of hip hop culture.

Hillary’s branding is much simpler albeit less exciting. She has or rather her audience has chosen Celine Dion’s “You and I” as her theme song.

The real problem with “You and I” isn’t that it was sung by a French Canadian — the real problem is that, like most of Dion’s oeuvre, it’s just a crummy song. Superficially, it sounds like “music,” but it isn’t really. It’s just the product of a well-paid advertising agency’s successful formula for producing persuasive — and mildly sedative — background noise.
Via Hillary’s tone-deaf campaign

Hillary’s theme song gets my vote.
Yes it is bland, yes it is generic. But then so is Hillary (not necessarily a bad thing). She’s safe and so is this song.

So which one’s more effective and what would Michael Jackson think of all this?

Well it’s the end of an active year and the beginning of a great new one with many exciting developments, thoughts and ideas in the pipeline.

A big thank you for checking in to this humble blog, there’s more to come.

Also a shout out to our friends in the biz over seas especially Noel at Intentional Audio Identity and Brian at Rumblefish, Rona at Sound-Strategies and Julian at Sound Business for the link sharing, insights and enthusiasm.

Cheers

Marcel.

I recently did a ring around to client side marketing managers, branding agencies and full service/integrated advertising agencies to find out how and why they use sound in their marketing communications.

All noted the well known fact that sound and music has an immediate and powerful impact on emotions and subsequently brand perception and consumer behaviour.
So I was very surprised to find that no-one, none, zip, zilch, zero dedicated any resources and time to monitoring the impact, continuity and implementation of sound and music across brand touch-points.

This translates to:

1. Music on hold messages that for some inexplicable reason have disappeared with out anyone realising.
2. A lack of continuity across touch points during a “campaign”. Eg: Television commercials, in-store and digital.
3. The random and inconsistent use of musical styles and voice over artists which are the consequence of “creative decisions” being dictated by content producers rather than brand values.

In short the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, resulting in

• diluted and confused messages
• negative and inconsistent brand experiences
• me-tooism that often promotes competing products and services

So what’s the solution?

Before The Campaign:
Pull together your different specialist agencies and/or integrated agency’s
departments and decide why, what and how sound will be used. And stick to it.

During The Campaign:
Conduct regular touch-point audits to make sure that every thing is still working.
Eg: music on hold, podcasts, in-store music.

Observe and evaluate the responses of customers and prospects.
If you do have to make modifications make sure they are consistent, co-ordinated across all your touch-points and still on message.

After The Campaign:
There is no “After The Campaign”.

I’ve just updated my delicious page with lots of links to articles and information on sonic branding and the use and management of sound, voice and music in brand communication.

Authors include brand strategists, lawyers, visual designers, customer experience/usability designers and web/digital media creators and a few of us soundies as well.

It provides a nice well rounded view of sound as a brand reinforcement, communication and marketing tool.

Last time I looked I had cataloged around 100 articles on the the topic so there’s more too come.

In the meantime let me know what you’re interested in, and I’ll tag the articles so that they are easier for you to locate on the delicious page.

Enjoy and happy information overload.

Marcel

Recently Warner Music Group and social networking site imeem announced a partnership where Warner Music would allow imeem to stream full songs in exchange for a share of the revenue from ads that appear next to the song player.

Think of it as something like Google Adsense for music.

We’ll see a lot more of this as record companies try to respond to file sharing and the need to generate new revenue streams in light of decreasing profits.

Ad supported music is a good idea in theory. However, some things need to be ironed out before it is truly viable, here’s a few.

1. How will ads be matched to music so that they reach the intended target market? The reason why Adsense is so successful is that it “senses” key words in the content and matches them to relevant advertising?Tagging of music files is one way to resolve this. Who will manage this?
   The record company, the advertiser’s agencies, ad insertion companies…
2. What control do advertisers have over deciding what music their products and brands will be associated with? How do these associations integrate with and support their broader marketing strategy and campaigns?
3. What happens if an artist has an exclusive licensing deal with a brand and they are “accidently” played alongside a competitor’s ad? Who is responsible for monitoring this?

This La Times article (via Ad Supported Music Central) explains some of the issues with marrying “bands to brands”.

What do you think?

Martin Pazzani, CEO of Elias Arts, one of the originals in the sonic branding business, explains some of the things to consider when developing a musical branding strategy including:

Have you done an objective, comprehensive and multi-touch-point audit of your brand’s audio assets?

Do you have audio-identity guidelines that cover all the points of contact your customers have with your brand?

Do these audio-identity guidelines make their way into the creative briefs used to inform the development of marketing communications?

He also identifies brands who do and don’t do music and sonic branding well.

Read the whole article here

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