Kathleen Hall
101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior
Kathleen Hall, Chief Brand Officer, Microsoft
As Chief Brand Officer, Kathleen Hall leads stewardship and activation of the Microsoft Brand, creating world-class advertising globally and delivering strategic insights that influence business decisions. Hall drove the consolidation of campaigns across Microsoft, increasing effectiveness, impact, and efficiency, resulting in numerous awards: 2016 Clio Advertiser of the Year, 2016 Advertising Women of NY Changing the Game, 2017 Glass Lion, 2019 Grand Clio, 2019 Cannes Lions Grand Prix, and Titanium, and 2021 Cannes Lions Creative Marketer of the Year.
Prior to Microsoft, she worked at Fidelity and various advertising agencies, driving marketing strategy and execution for major global brands.
Kathleen is an executive sponsor of Diversity and Inclusion at Microsoft and a member of the Ad Council's Board of Directors. Hall is a mom of twins and an avid outdoors-woman.
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“There is no more immediate or emotive connection you can create with a human being than you can with music”
— KATHLEEN HALL, CHIEF BRAND OFFICER, MICROSOFT
Uli Reese: What was the first brand that made a serious impact on you?
Kathleen Hall: Coca-Cola. When they came out with I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, I was a kid living in the Bronx-New York City, and it wasn't pretty. It was very much like times are now; people were divided, and there were challenges economically. Their song was about unity, commonality, and happiness, and I wanted to feel that. The sixties and seventies were the heydays of great marketing. There was so much positivity.
Reese: What’s the most pressing issue in the industry right now?
Kathleen: The extreme social and cultural sensitivity. There's no doubt we've progressed through the evolution of brands where your values - and support publicly of your values - are really important. The tone, manner, and the way in which to express that authentically are very hard to figure out; people are waiting for you to get anything wrong as opposed to celebrating the fact that you're trying to get it right. That makes it difficult for brands to bring issues to light and help make a change. We used to go with our gut, and now you've got to think about things a lot more.
Reese: Is the creator economy making us lazy?
Kathleen: Yes. The challenge with a lot of influencer-borrowed equity is that it's not credible over time; it can be risky, and I don't know if it has the longevity of something like I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing. When you make a statement, and it's emotive, communal, and values-based, it's richer, long-lasting, and engenders more loyalty than an influencer who got me 22 million clicks.
Reese: What’s been your relationship to music in your work?
Kathleen: I’m the greatest shill for music.
There is no more immediate or emotive connection you can create with a human being than you can with music.
As I've built brands over time, music has always been important. We were fairly successful for a lot of years at Fidelity Investments [Kathleen was SVP, Advertising, and Brands, from 1997 to 2007]. This was about convincing baby boomers that retirement didn't equal death, it meant doing something you love, and one thing that resonates with that generation is music. We used songs like David Bowie's Golden Years in mutual fund ads, and the sense you got from that was that I’m vital, I’ve changed the world, and I’ll continue to do that. We also used Paul McCartney in a campaign. Never stop doing what you love was the idea. The creatives presented him as this famous Beatle who was also a painter, poet, and husband. We never thought it would see the light of day, but coincidentally, at the time, Paul’s team was looking for a tour sponsor and reached out to us. Paul didn’t really do ads, and Fidelity didn't really do sponsorships, but we talked about what we were trying to accomplish as a brand and what Paul's always been about, which is the greater good and harmony among people. Long story short, we ended up sponsoring Paul's tour. It was a great example of how the intersection of brands, music, and message - and audience - is so strong.
Reese: Give us an insight into the decision-making processes.
Kathleen: You have to care. I've seen spots I wouldn't run with one set of music that brings me to tears with another. For Microsoft, in 2016, we did a spot called ‘Peace on Fifth’ where our store employees walked down Fifth Avenue to serenade Apple’s employees for the holidays. It was a big deal. It came out of some tough cultural times - the Paris attacks happened in the middle of us getting permits, so we almost couldn't shoot. Apple allowed us to do it because it was like the World War I truce, where they put down their guns and played football. The Apple employees came outside spontaneously. We auditioned real employees as our chorus and used the Harlem Children's Choir, but we had a tough time picking the song. We approached the writer for the rights, and she told us she didn’t license her work for commercial use. One of the creative team wrote her a letter to explain what we were trying to accomplish, and she changed her mind. It was amazing to have real people sing this meaningful song during a difficult time, and in my opinion, it made all the difference to the spot.
Reese: Why did audio suddenly become so dominant?
Kathleen: Audio didn't suddenly become dominant; it just came back.
Reese: But now we have a $32 billion business model called licensing music, which means brands don’t take ownership of their sound...
Kathleen: You're right; we would never allow the inconsistency that exists in audio in visual. Tech has done a fairly decent job of the product as the audio source; when we launched Surface, it was ‘click and do more,' and we used the clicking sound. One of our engineers said they wanted it to sound like when you close your Mercedes door. Solid and strong. You've got to root what you want your brand to sound and feel like there is truth in the product and then connect that to the strategic emotion. But a lot more work has to be done in mapping the touch points and figuring out where you’re trying to take people. What kills me as a consumer is the missed opportunity of being on hold. I’m listening to crap. Someone is trying to sell me something! You just lost a great opportunity. And who creatively now owns the pneumonic identity for the company? It's a grey area…marketing? Engineering?
I’ve never done an audio review in the way we do with visuals. A lot of us intuitively figure it out, but not many of us were historically trained to write a sonic brief.
Reese: Are you building sonic brand capital at Microsoft?
Kathleen: We are, but not in a typical way. We build sonic brand capital by amplifying the sonic cues of the product, as I mentioned with the click of Surface. For the 2014 Superbowl spot that launched our ‘Empowering’ brand position, featuring Steve Gleason, a former pro footballer living with ALS—the entire musical track of that spot is created from product audio. The products were the "instrument"; the orchestration created that emotive boom that usually comes from licensed music. It's not easy, and it's never a one size fits all solution. There are times when there is nothing better than licensed music, but there are times when bespoke creation is the best option.
Reese: What’s important to you when it comes to the industry right now?
Kathleen: I'm sad at the lack of uniqueness, the lack of focus on the core idea and it being different and meaningful. Great work breaks the mold. Hamilton is a good example because you can keep making Broadway shows like The Music Man, and they're great, but then someone does a rap about American history and casts counter to every reality that exists. We have to be the ones that go with the ideas that no one else would come up with. I don't want that spark to go out.
Note: The interview took place in Washington, USA on the 27th September 2022.
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