ANDRÉ KEMPER
101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior
André Kemper, Founder at antoni Berlin
Kemper kicked off his career as copywriter at BBDO in 1984, before he started working for Ogilvy & Mather 1985-1989. He then became managing partner at Springer & Jacoby. In 2004, Kemper founded the agency kempertrautmann together with Michael Trautmann, featuring a client roster of brands like Audi, Commerzbank, IKEA, and many more, and winning an impressive number of awards from very early on. When Karen Heumann and Armin Jochum joined the agency in 2012, kempertrautmann turned into Thjnk, with Kemper becoming chairman of the agency. After leaving Thjnk for a short stint for Opel,Kemper won the Mercedes account in late 2014 together with Tonio Kröger, and together they founded Mercedes’ new lead agency Antoni.
. . .
“Music is so important. But it‘s still a very under-developed theme in our industry.”
— ANDRÉ KEMPER, FOUNDER, ANTONI BERLIN
Uli Reese: André, thanks for being a part of this and for taking the time to sit down for this interview. Let‘s dive right in: How important is music in branding? What role does music play in your work?
André Kemper: A major role. I use music to get closer to a topic. Music inspires me and is especially important in the creative process when it comes to working with movies and moving images. Music makes up about 50 percent of the effect of a film. And therefore it is a fundamental factor in our work.
Reese: Is it like a soundtrack that you hear when you develop something?
Kemper: Yes.
Reese: At the same time, music and sound are not often seen as strategic means of brand-building. I find that audio is very often neglected and only comes into a project at the very end of the timeline. I can speak from experience – the amount of times that I have picked up the phone in the late afternoon and had a desperate producer on the line looking for a quick and inexpensive solution for the audio in their campaign... I can hardly remember how often that has happened. That‘s why I‘ve started this interview series. I want people to start thinking about music in a more strategic way. So considering all this – how much attention should marketers pay to music in advertising?
Kemper: Well, although music is so important, it’s basically a very under-developed theme in our industry.When we talk about commercials during the preparation phase, 90 percent of the time we address images and only 10 percent of the time is dedicated to music.Which is out of balance if you consider the importance of music in an ad. The industry puts great efforts into producing a fi lm, shooting it in exotic places, editing it, working on it in post-production, and so on, but the subject of music is only brought up in the last minute. Often there’s only very little time left at that stage. I work differently. I prefer to see music as an essential component from the very beginning on and make a point of treating it as a mainstay in the preparation phase of a project.
Reese: Our memory of music is phenomenal. Tests in Alzheimer‘s patients in late stages of the disease show that they don’t recognize their spouses anymore, but they do remember the music they listened to 30 years ago. I find that absolutely stunning. The musical memory seems to trigger very obscure parts of our brain.
Kemper: Apparently the sense that triggers the strongest emotional response is the sense of smell. After that comes hearing, and finally seeing.
Reese: That‘s right.
Kemper: I‘ve done tests where video clips without music were shown to participants. The images lost their appeal after a short time, and after the second, third time of watching the clip, people had grown tired of it. With music however, they were happy to watch it again and again. In other words, music has a “preserving” effect for communication. Pictures alone don’t trigger that emotional response. That’s where music or sound is always superior to the visuals.
You can entirely thwart the emotional impact of the visuals by using a certain type of music. If I watch the war movie “Platoon” and use cartoon music as a film score, the war imagery has no impact on me.
Reese: Twenty years ago, nobody could have imagined that we would all be glued to the screens of little computers that we carry around in our pockets, day and night. If you think about how profoundly the digital revolution has changed our lives until now, how do you think the audio branding of the future is going to look like?
Kemper: I think we will have to ask ourselves: Where and how can I capture people and do they want to be captured in the first place? Audio can be pushy and overbearing. The thing is, if I look at a picture, but I don’t like it, then I look away and it doesn’t bother me anymore. If I do like it, I keep looking at it and it can put me in a certain mood. I’m the decision-maker. It’s different with sound. It affects me more directly and I can’t always turn it off immediately, which can be unpleasant.
Reese: That‘s a good point. You‘re saying that music can have a negative effect on people, in a way that it‘s a little menacing?
Kemper: More like a nuisance, one that I might not be able to escape. Brands that want to connect to their customer have to be really careful about that. If I’m at an airport and an announcement is accompanied by sounds and advertising, I’m not so sure if I would like it. I think it’s more likely that I’d be annoyed. That’s why you have to be prudent about where sounds work and where they don’t work.
Reese: And it’s also about being authentic. A brand has to stay true to its identity, and that also applies to how it sounds. It’s like a human voice – if I don’t like somebody’s voice, I don’t connect to them, no matter what they are talking about. And if they have a voice that changes all the time, I won‘t trust them. That‘s also why I think brands should become more consistent in their audio behavior. An audio style guide can help a brand with that.
Kemper: Yes. It’s like that with Apple. While it’s all about the visual and haptic experience for that brand, there is also a defining sonic experience. I switch on my computer, and I hear that sound. Apple has put a lot of effort in creating those few seconds of sound. And it works – it is memorable, it is likable, and it identifies the brand on a sonic level. It’s brilliant really.
Reese: Just like in the fi lm “Wall-E”, that was great sonic product placement. When “Wall-E”, the robot, is switched on, you hear the Apple sound. It’s not even a melody, but it’s pleasant and comforting.
Kemper: I love that film. Let me ask you a question for a change: Why are there songs that only last for a short while, and then there are songs that we enjoy listening to over and over again?
Reese: I think that definitely depends on how strong the emotional impact of the song is. I listen to music all day long, that’s part of my job. I used to own a little orange record player, and I played Billy Joel, Queen, Elton John on it until it broke. That music was engraved in my brain. If I get Alzheimers one day, and everything else is gone from my memory, I’ll always be able to sing along to those songs.
Note: The interview took place in Hamburg on the 28th of May 2010.
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