Michael Conrad

101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior

Michael Conrad, President and Co-Founder, Berlin School of Creative Leadership, Berlin

Conrad began his career in 1968 as copywriter for Young & Rubicam in Frankfurt. Meeting Walter Lürzer during their time together at TBWA in Frankfurt a few years later, the two set up Lürzer, Conrad in 1975. In 1980, the agency merged with Leo Burnett Germany, continuing its growth and creative success. In 1986, Conrad moved to Chicago to become President, Chief Creative Officer, and later Vice Chairman of Leo Burnett International. Conrad has presided over many juries of international advertising festivals, including Cannes and Clio.

Upon retiring after 34 years in the business in 2003, Conrad was approached by Sebastian Turner (ADC) to help develop ADC‘s education initiatives. Having identified weak creative leadership as the main reason for low quality standards in creative industries, the idea was born to establish The Berlin School of Creative Leadership as a center for leadership development.

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“When I was hiring, I would ask candidates if they played a musical instrument. Because creative advertising is like music: You need an ear for tempo, for rhythm, for emotion. And if you can play an instrument, it’s already there.”

— MICHAEL CONRAD, PRESIDENT AND CO-FOUNDER, BERLIN SCHOOL OF CREATIVE LEADERSHIP, BERLIN

Reese: I want you to talk a little bit about your first experiences with music.

Conrad: Well, I’ve always played music – I learned to play guitar pretty early on in my life. I had a band with a friend, as most kids do, but that quickly passed as I had to focus on making money. I’m a refugee from East Germany, and the years after we escaped were pretty tough. From the age of 11 I was already doing odd jobs in the afternoon to earn some money. But I still love music and it plays a big part in our family. My youngest daughter is a singer-songwriter in Berlin – she sings under the name Susie Asado and plays several instruments, from ukulele to bass and guitar. My older daughter played flute and piano. My son plays piano and is in a band called Crazy For Jane with my younger daughter. My wife plays the sitar. So you can imagine we have a lot of jam sessions in our house!

Reese: How about your work? What about the power of music in advertising?

Conrad: I first learned what music can do in advertising when I was on a shoot for a cigarette commercial I had created. It was based on the fact that only the lower leaves of the tobacco plant are used for cigarettes, because they have less nicotine. The visual was very simple: a farmer walking through a tobacco field, breaking off the lower leaves. As we filmed, I was sitting in this tobacco fi eld in the north of Thailand, thinking: “What kind of music should I use for this?” At that point a little boy walked by with a transistor radio. And out of the radio came…Greensleeves.

Reese: No, really?

Conrad: Yeah, can you imagine? It was a gift from Heaven, or something. Then something very interesting happened. We had a composer in France working on the music. He did a beautiful piece. But when we looked at the rushes of the film, it was over-exposed. We tried to shoot it again – and it was still over-exposed! The director had underestimated the power of the light. I wanted to open with a stop-motion kind of thing: starting at 4am and then moving very quickly through to sunrise. But when the sun hit, the film couldn’t deal with it. Anyway, we had to deliver the film, so we cut it the best we could. It was more or less OK. But when we put the music on it… suddenly it became a masterpiece! The music made the whole thing. The over-exposed material looked like art!

Reese: As if it was meant to be.

Conrad: As if it was meant to be. Were it not for that music, we would have been in deep shit? It also made me feel guilty that I hadn’t paid attention to the music earlier, rather than on location. A littler later, I visited Howard Guard, the director, at RSA (Ridley Scott Associates), in London. As I walked into the building I heard a nice song (sings): “I don’t want to set the world on fi re.” It played on loop throughout our meeting. We went out to lunch, we came back, and still (sings again): “I don’t want to set the world on fi re.” I thought: “Well, that’s a bit strange.” The following morning I was back again. And what did I hear? (Sings once more): “I don’t want to set the world…” So I said to Howard: “Hey, this is crazy – you only play one song in this place?” Howard laughed and said: “No, that’s Ridley – Ridley Scott. He’s working on a commercial for Chanel, and he’s going to design the commercial to fit the music.” Which turned out to be a really important learning for me. When I saw the commercial in Cannes, it was a beautiful visual composition, but it was really driven by the music.

Reese: How important is music in building a brand?

Conrad: Well, it can be part of signature of a brand – a sound expression that is really owned by the brand. There was recently a German commercial for a slimming product. The whole thing is about the bikini season. There’s a girl running along the beach with her dog, the boys are watching, she’s really good looking, and there’s a certain song. More recently there’s been another commercial, this time in winter, where she shows up at her boyfriend’s house with the dog. The music begins to play, she opens her coat…and there’s the bikini. But the whole thing is driven by the song. You hear it and you turn to the TV because you know this good-looking girl’s going to appear…

Reese: How did you pick Rhapsody in Blue for United Airlines? 

Conrad: The way you pick things is different every time. You’re looking for the right atmosphere, the right signature. When we picked the theme from The Magnificent Seven for Marlboro, for example, that was suggested by an account executive – later he became our CEO. When we picked Rhapsody in Blue, we had designed a campaign for business people. And that piece has elegance, various tempi, a lot of variety… it never gets boring.

Reese: But there are lots of pieces like that. How do you know you’ve chosen correctly? How do you get to the point where you can say: “This is perfect.”

Conrad: Because if you have a target – ideally a psychographic target – then you already know what kind of music will reflect the brand in a meaningful way to those people. I want something that adds value to the proposition. With United we were talking about business class, people who travel the world. I could have chosen Shostakovich – which is very score-like music – or even Philip Glass. It was important for me to have a classic, something that wouldn’t date. And now it’s notable that United has changed agencies but kept that piece of music.

Reese: It’s an iconic example of audio-branding: the sound is as important as the logo. Do you think every brand should have its own sonic space? I find them to be very disciplined in visual communication, but less disciplined in terms of audio.

Conrad: You have to make the decision on a case-by-case basis. The big question is the longevity of the thing. If you’re not careful, a piece of music can bore the audience. I saw that when I worked on Marlboro: some of the decision makers wanted to stick with the same tune, but the fact is they weren’t watching the ads over and over again, as the consumers were. So you had to add variety. (Composer) Hans Zimmer helped me a lot with that: he could do dramatic, he could do quiet, he could do moody. Once we had a Marlboro campaign of four commercials, with quite different atmospheres. Hans scored an eight-minute piece for us, a musical suite, from which we could draw different elements. We were able to refi ne the composition for each commercial…The funny thing is, the music was much more effective without sound effects. Somehow it became more elegant. The sound effects were already there, within the music.

“If you’re not careful, a piece of music can bore the audience.”

Reese: You’ve been part of so many successful campaigns over the years. How do you know if something is great? Do you have a sort of inner compass that guides you?

Conrad: Well, I have my criteria. I try to be true to my particular standards of quality whenever I’m involved in something. I like to set a new standard for a brand – to help it occupy a position that nobody else has. It can’t be a cliché. Our business is 85% clichés in my opinion. But there are brands that take a different route: like the Dove campaign, for example. That’s not a cliché – it’s a position that the brand can own. Low quality advertising can destroy a brand. The funny thing is that the copycat stuff sometimes tests well. So you have to beware of that.

Reese: So where do you start? How do you go beyond the cliché?

Conrad: First you need an innovative strategy. And when you talk about strategy, there is the content, and there is the target. Usually the target is demographic, but I’m more interested in a psychographic target. Take BMW, for instance. In the 1960s its CEO Paul Hahnemann said BMW drivers were those who always drove in the fast lane. Once you know that, you have an idea of what the concept should be. Now you need fresh ideas to express that concept. And finally, you need excellence in craft.

Reese: Which includes use of music?

Conrad: It’s an area where music definitely contributes. Once again, the challenge in music is to go beyond the existing. It has to feel fresh even if the tune if familiar: like the ukulele version of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” (by Israel “Iz” Kamakawiwo’ole) they used for the Axe campaign (in 2010), which made everyone want to buy that record.

Reese: A final question. Nothing to do with music. You have so much passion for what you do. You’re like a kid in a sandbox. Where does all that energy come from? What gets you up in the morning?

Conrad: It’s a good question. You mentioned the kid in the sandbox? I think the secret is to keep replacing the sand – in case some cat has peed in it… More seriously, I think it’s about working with great people. If you have to do something, let’s do it with somebody great. Question is, how do you find great people? And quite often, when I was hiring, I would ask them if they played a musical instrument. Because I think creative advertising is a kind of music. You need an ear for tempo, for rhythm, for emotion. And if you can play an instrument, it’s already there.

Note: The interview took place in New York, USA on the 29th of January 2013.

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