Miki Matsui

101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior

Miki Matsui, Chief Creative Officer, TBWA\HAKUHODO, Tokyo

Miki joined TBWA\HAKUHODO as Executive Creative Director in 2006, when the agency was established as a joint venture between TBWA\Worldwide and Hakuhodo. In 2010, he was appointed Chief Creative Officer and continues to lead the agency’s creative team, which has grown rapidly with wins of numerous global awards including: Cannes Lions, ADFEST, and SPIKES, as well as local awards. He also served on the jury for Cannes Media Lions in 2006 and One Show in 2007.

“Music is addictive. Once it touches your heartstrings, it can get stuck in your head.”

— MIKI MATSUI, CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER, TBWA\HAKUHODO

Reese: In your opinion, how important is music in building a brand?

Miki: It is extremely important. To build a brand without music is like asking an unattractive man to seduce a beautiful woman without saying a word.

Reese: How important is music for you personally and for your work?

Miki: Music is an extremely important element because it has the ability to express emotions that cannot be conveyed through copywriting or art direction.

“Whether the brand is aggressive, open-minded, intellectual, comical, venomous or healing, music can accurately convey a message, which may otherwise be intrusive if expressed in words. Music can touch people without relying on visuals.”

Reese: Do you think the right choice of music can change consumer behavior?

Miki: Yes, I strongly believe so.

Reese: Do you believe a brand should be recognizable by sound only?

Miki: I don’t think so. The role of music is to add emotions to the message. This is similar to how we talk when communicating love. Our voices bring the emotions across in our message.

Reese: Should audio be treated with the same discipline as visual and verbal branding? Should brands have an audio style guide – just as they have a visual style guide?

Miki: I strongly believe that we need to make an audio style guide, just like a visual style guide. While some clients already have it, creating an audio style guide is difficult. It is very important that this guide be eloquent and well written because it would otherwise prevent music composers and supervisors from exerting their full creative potential.

Reese: Can you share your most memorable experience with music and how it influenced your work?

Miki: I would like to talk about Suntory‘s “3D on the Rocks.“ On this project, the challenge for our team was to fi nd a way to make whisky feel modern, appealing to a younger audience, while maintaining its authenticity. We honestly struggled to articulate the positioning through words. Then, the composer with who we were working gave us this music which sparked our team’s inspiration… and immediately felt “this is it!” The creation of the website, movie and all other contents followed the “feel“ of the music.

“In short, the music led the creative direction.”

Reese: Is audio brand design a part of your conversation when talking to a client about brand communication?

Miki: Yes. As we try to set the direction for brand communication, we often create an unoffi cial brand movie with music, which helps in reaching an agreement with our client as to what style or genre of music should be used as an integral part of their brand communication strategy. When we actually create an ad, we discuss and make decisions based on this preliminary video.

Reese: Brands often tend to struggle to define their space sonically. Where do you see the greatest challenge in finding a brand’s voice?

Miki: Expressing a brand’s verbal and visual definitions in the form of music is a great challenge. I find that it’s equally challenging as physically creating a branded object from a photograph. No matter how precise the brand voice may be, the original brand definitions cannot provide a clear picture of what music best describes the brand’s uniqueness. On the contrary, setting such criteria hinders the creativity of composers or music supervisors in many cases. Therefore, we often have no choice but to rely on the sense of individuals, including our Executive Creative Director and client’s Chief Marketing Officer, both who are responsible for the overall brand communication.

Reese: What’s your current decision-making process involving music?

Miki: Our approach to audio brand design tends to vary. When we (both client and our creative team) decide that music is the most important element of the brand communication, we select music when we’re in the conceptual stage. This is quite diff erent from the standard process where music is selected by the film director and editors during the editing phase. In other words, it is not until the very last stage of production that music is finally written or selected. That said, however, it is essentially the music that sets the tone and the narrative of each brand. I am a strong believer that the quality of our work could greatly improve if we could invest as much money and time in audio production as we usually do for video production.

Reese: How do you communicate music when briefing a music partner?

Miki: In the past, I used to choose music that resonated with my image of a brand and list out what I liked about each selection then discuss with the composer. This approach was effective especially when we didn’t have much time. However, it was also frustrating since the music I had selected (as a sample) was often better than the one that would be composed for the brand. Now, the only things I communicate to the composer are the brand’s characteristics, storyline of the ad and its expected emotional impact on the audience. It is an experimental approach that requires more time, but one that’s delivered surprisingly great results in many cases.

Reese: What’s your evaluation process? Do you test audio assets used in your brand communication?

Miki: Unfortunately, few clients in Japan are interested in thoroughly evaluating music. Based on my experience, I know agencies help many beer manufacturers conduct surveys, such as group interviews, before choosing music for their advertisement because music significantly impacts the way in which consumers imagine the product to taste and when they want to drink the beer.

Reese: How do you determine how much you are willing to pay for music – licensed or scored?

Miki: In Japan, along with the downsized scale of the Japanese economy, it is said that creative production costs have decreased by 30% in the past 10 years. I suppose the money spent on music has also declined in the same way. Even when clients use existing songs, they are very price-conscious and tend to select songs that are available at a lower price point. Unfortunately, the decision on how much they spend on music for their brands depends on their business performance. Creative directors have no right to make any decisions on that matter.

“Only the big clients, like beer and automobile manufacturers, understand how much the music can improve their brand and the importance of having consistency. That is why they do not hesitate to invest a relatively large amount of money into audio brand production.”

Reese: Is there a certain brand that you admire in their use of audio in their brand communication?

Miki: Nike and Apple. The music involved with these two brand stories resonates at a profound level.

Reese: Do you see a shift in how important music is becoming in your brand communication?

Miki: There hasn‘t been any change to the importance. It was important in the past, it is still important now. What has changed is that music for TVC was almost all we cared about in the past when considering music and branding. It is now getting very important that we consider all occasions where people hear music and associate with the brand. For example, if it is a retailer, music at the store is important. Companies may use music on their website or some products may play music when people use them. It is important that we consider music used in all these places for brand building.

Reese: Where do you see the challenges and opportunities when working with music in a branded social network environment?

Miki: Music is “addictive.” Once it touches your heartstrings, it can get stuck in your head. I often see comments about such these “addictions” on social media saying, “I can’t get this X’s TVC tune out of my mind!”But I never see posts saying, “I can’t get this Y’s TVC video image out of my mind!” So this is a big opportunity for music. I think there are two secrets in getting people addicted to the music in a branding campaign. One is to create a simple and easy-to-remember melody line, then repeat that melody. I think this is a failsafe rule. Another is to ensure that the melody is freshly linked with the story that’s being told through the video. In other words, although they’re linked from a content perspective and fully make sense, they’re connected in an unconventional way.

“The challenge here is that if you focus too much on creating buzz on social networking sites, people will sense the intentions and the music won’t gain popularity.”

Reese: What does the audio branding of the future look like?

Miki: Let me talk about what I call “Big Data DJ.” I think the music selection process will become more scientific and big data will play the role of a DJ for music selection in branding/marketing.

Reese: What does a big idea feel like? Do you recognize it immediately when it arrives?

Miki: Yes I do. I’m relatively a quick-witted person. Maybe that’s how I have gotten to where I am today.

Note: The interview took place in Tokyo on the 4th of February 2015.

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