Tim Mahoney

101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior

Tim Mahoney, Chief Marketing Officer and Marketing Operations Leader, Global Chevrolet & Global General Motors

Tim was named Chief Marketing Officer of Global Chevrolet and the Global GM Marketing Operations Leader in early 2013, joining Chevrolet from Volkswagen, where he had been Chief Product and Marketing Officer since 2011. In his role, Mahoney is in charge of the overall co-ordination of GM’s global marketing operations. Mahoney has an extensive background in global automotive marketing, having served in a variety of marketing positions at Subaru of America, Porsche Cars North America, Inc., and Volkswagen.

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“Something is triggered emotionally when you hear Chevrolet, it’s something so iconic and American.”

— TIM MAHONEY, CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER AND MARKETING OPERATIONS LEADER, GLOBAL CHEVROLET & GLOBAL GENERAL MOTORS

Reese: How important is music in branding?

Mahoney: Music is incredibly important, and it plays a huge role in the category we operate in. The feeling of being on a road trip, listening to a specific song for the first time... there’s a very close connection between automotive and music. I’ve worked for a range of car brands, and for each one of them, music is a big part of the storytelling, of advancing the story. And it goes beyond just dropping a piece of music into content.

“It really needs to all work together – the visuals and the audio. If it works, it can draw people in and engage them in a lot of ways.”

Reese: I usually differentiate between the strategic and the tactical use of audio. Using a piece of music as a one-off tool for storytelling, for a specific period of time, that’s the tactical use. But if you follow a bigger plan for your audio communication – for example, you commit to a certain genre of music, certain instrumentation, a certain tone of voice, or even a certain audio DNA that’s woven into whatever music or sound you put out there – that’s what we would call strategic use of audio. Do you think this is something Chevrolet should invest in?

Mahoney: In our company history, there have been times where we had an overarching strategic overlay. It goes all the way back to the late 1950’s or early 1960’s, where original music was scored for Chevrolet – ‘See the U.S.A in Your Chevrolet’ by Dinah Shore. Then, for many years, we had ‘Like A Rock’ by Bob Seger, which worked really well with the Chevrolet truck advertising. Also, more recently, we worked with a Grammy Award-winning artist in Nashville for the Silverado launch and scored a piece called ‘Strong’.

Reese: What was the artist called?

Mahoney: Will Hoge. Nashville guy. We used ‘Strong’ for an entire year, and it was a great campaign. I would say, though, that it goes more into the direction of tactical use, to use your language. We don’t put the same two or three little notes at the end of all our commercials. That constant “You hear it and know it’s Chevrolet” – I think it would stand in the way of the creative, long-term. Creatively, the work would all look a little ‘templated’. The strength, on the other hand, is that it would be easily recognizable, of course. You’d associate it to the brand.

Reese: You mentioned ‘Like A Rock’ – of course I remember that campaign! It was great. But you used it first and foremost for storytelling purposes. Think of a brand like Audi – their heartbeat signature is so iconic. I think it’s the way to go. They don’t just use it in their commercials, even some of the car doors now open with that sound. Now if you consider that electric cars and self-driving cars are the future… Sound is going to be very important there. Individualized engine sounds, in-car entertainment, the whole sonic language of a car brand… there’s so much potential there.

Mahoney: That’s true. I drive an electric car myself. As for autonomous driving, I would say a few years ago, people expected it to be much further in our future than it really is. It’s not so far away. The autonomous driving technologies that are coming into the cars now are fascinating, whether that’s adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, etc. At General Motors, we’re working on a product called ‘Super Cruise’ that will debut in the Cadillac line. It’s a limited autonomous-type technology. These technologies are going to help with so many problems that we’re facing all over the world, be it urban congestion, road safety or pollution. The other thing that’s coming really fast, and it’s coming fast on the General Motors product line, is the 4G connectivity – particularly in our home market, the US. So all of our cars have 4G WiFi, which is really interesting from a mapping perspective. To constantly be sending that information back and forth. So I think you’re absolutely right – I think that will come, and music and sound are going to play an important role in it. But to come back to the Chevrolet brand and its connection to music:

“I don’t know if you know this, but Chevrolet was the first car brand to put a radio in a car."

Reese: Wow. I did not.

Mahoney: Also, something like 600-800 songs have been written about Chevrolet. A few years ago, there was a really funny print ad with the headline: “They don’t write songs about Volvos.”

Reese: So the Chevy brand is intrinsically tied to music. That’s fascinating.

Mahoney: Absolutely. But back to your question of strategic vs. tactical: I’ve seen it work both ways. Most often, we follow a more tactical approach – to advance the storytelling. When it comes to the strategic approach, we’re sensitive in trying to understand the role music plays within the Chevy brand, and we incorporate it – when appropriate – into our brand communication. On the product side, we have that great connectivity in the vehicle now, and with it, music-streaming apps like Pandora, or TuneIn radio… Whether our consumers are physically driving the vehicle, or whether they’re watching or listening to Chevy commercials, music is part of the brand experience.

Reese: Do you think brands should have audio style guides, the way they have visual style guides too?

Mahoney: Yes, absolutely. The thing is: people seem to find it easier to wrap their heads around the visuals – in terms of what a corporate identity does and should look like. There’s a sense of purpose and consistency, across touchpoints. The same should be done with respect to sound. We operate in 140 countries. When you think about music: it is truly global and local at the same time, with the impact it has on people, the way it makes them feel – happy, excited, and so on. Music gives you a global platform, with a local impact. And it’s something we do think about. Where would we, as a brand, want to play in that space? Something is triggered emotionally when you hear Chevrolet, it’s something so iconic and American… and the beauty of these things is that you could really be anywhere. Sharing that community globally is something we’re interested in.

“Music gives you a global platform, with a local impact.”

Reese: Do you actually track the return on investment in your music spending?

Mahoney: As we are using music in the tactical sense, we track whether a specific commercial worked. Can we tease out what role the music played in that? No.

Reese: Chevrolet is so charged with music already. But I think what nobody has done so far is to listen to the brand carefully and uncover its audio DNA.

Mahoney: That’s interesting.

Reese: It’s great to use music in a tactical way efficiently, to have people enjoy the music. But especially in the automotive industry, where you have a certain amount of touchpoints – strategic audio branding will play a hugely important role in the future. You have built-in airtime.

Mahoney: You know, I pushed my team a little bit, we’re not there yet… but given the fact that we have the 4G LTE-connectivity in our cars, I think there’s a potential channel of communication which music could be a part of. Now, that doesn’t mean that there would be a ‘Chevrolet station’ – but there could be. To your point – we will need some kind of a framework for building that up. The space that we operate in, which is moving people from one point to another – that’s an emotional experience. Music is part of that journey; it can transport you to a different place. We’re doing it physically, and I think that music can elevate it.

And there are a lot of possibilities. If it’s in-car audio, commercials, or even auto shows. As we continue this journey, our tagline, ‘Find New Roads’ – that sense of adventure, ‘anything is possible’ – will be in the center of our strategy. We’ll be looking at different ways of bringing it to life, through different touchpoints. I feel very passionate about it.

Note: The interview took place at Cannes on June 22, 2016.

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