Tor Myhren

101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior

Tor Myhren, President, Worldwide Chief Creative Officer, Grey, New York

Myhren was Worldwide Chief Creative Officer of Grey, Adweek’s 2013 Global Agency of the Year, and President of Grey New York, which was recently named one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World by Fast Company Magazine. In the six years under Myhren‘s leadership, Grey’s flagship office has tripled in size, to over 1,000 employees. He was named in Fortune Magazine‘s ’40 Under 40’ list and placed along with James Cameron and Lady Gaga on the elite ‘Creativity 50‘ honoring the 50 most influential creative minds of 2010. The E*Trade Baby, the Oprah car giveaway, DIRECTV’s darkly comical ‘Cable Effects’ campaign, and making Ellen DeGeneres a CoverGirl at age 50 are some examples of Myhren‘s culturally relevant work.

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“By far the hardest thing about music is selling it to a client. It‘s so subjective...Everyone has an opinion, everyone is an expert.

I‘ve never had a case where everyone agreed on the music. Never ever.”

— TOR MYHREN, PRESIDENT, WORLDWIDE CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER, GREY

Reese: Let’s dive right in: how important is music in building a brand?

Myhren: It can be hugely important. In fact there are instances when it can be the thing you remember most about a brand, or at least about its marketing. There seems to be a sort of ebb and flow in terms of what music is cool to use: for a while, everyone uses famous tracks or artists, then that goes out of vogue and a score becomes more popular. And then suddenly the big stars come back again and everyone wants the Stones or The Beatles on their commercial. It’s interesting to observe these trends.

Reese: Is there a brand you think does an amazing job in terms of how it uses music?

Myhren: In America, which tends to be the majority of commercials I see on a regular basis, I would say a lot of car brands do it very well. Volkswagen, for example, has historically done great things with music. Cadillac also did a nice job for a while. In another industry, obviously Apple has done really effective work. And here’s what’s fascinating: as little as eight years ago, it was impossible to get really big music artists interested in advertising. Now they’re calling us! Because distribution is busted, so for them to get a song on an ad is one of the best ways of reaching an audience.

Reese: They don’t want record contracts anymore – they want brand contracts.

Myhren: Exactly. And I think the cross-pollination between all these creative industries - music, Hollywood, Silicon Valley and advertising – is a fascinating trend hat’s only going to accelerate. And I really like where our industry sits in that nexus: We’re in a nice spot where other creative industries are starting to take us a lot more seriously.

Reese: At what point in the project are you looking for music?

Myhren: Everybody’s different, so this is a very individualized answer. For me, very seldom have I ever started the ideation process with a song or a band, because it’s rare that music is the idea. Very rare. You gotta start with the idea. But when you come up with the concept and how you’re going bring it to life, you almost immediately begin thinking: “Oh, what kind of music would go with that?” Maybe not specific songs, but something that goes with the pacing. Is this gonna be a jazz kinda thing? Is it going to be rock and roll? And that can really help you write. I’ll put my headphones on and listen to the music I have in mind – not the exact song that ends up on the commercial, but something in the right mood – and I find I can really write well that way.

“Music influences the style I’m writing in, the pace I’m writing in. It’s a huge part of the creative process.”

Reese: As a non-musician, communicating what you want to composers or production houses seems to be a big problem. Is there anything that works well for you, in terms of putting music into words?

Myhren: I think there’s a huge problem in our industry right now. Ten years ago, when the business wasn’t moving as fast as it is now, everyone had more time to actually sit back and make commercials. So you’d go and hang out at the music house. You’d talk with them and bring them tracks you liked. Then you’d listen to their ideas and literally say: “Oh, I hate the violin – take the violin out.” When you have different kinds of artists working together like that, it can be really inspiring and fun. But on the agency side, we no longer have that kind of time. Of course, you always want the musicians to take the first crack at it, but then sometimes you want your say, to influence the direction. And unfortunately, that’s just not happening. There’s a lot of emails. A lot of two second conversations like: “Make it more like Radiohead!” That’s a negative trend – and the product is suffering from it, in my opinion.

Reese: You’ve been part of many successful productions. What’s your evaluation process? How do you determine when something is right?

Myhren: I’ve had quite a lot of luck with music in my career. I think more than anything because I have a strong point of view about it. I am able to very easily and clearly describe what I want. And the music houses really appreciate that. They can do great stuff in any genre – they just need clear direction.

Reese: Can you give me some examples. Do you use attributes like edgy, or soft, or…

Myhren: No, I’ll be more specific than that. I’ll say something like: “I think this entire commercial could be driven by drums.” And I’ll send them a clip from a film called The Outsiders, where there’s a whole fight scene set to drums. And all the music houses know I love piano, so we end up with a lot of that… Another good example is the film that just won an Emmy, for Canon. That’s a remake of a song called Beautiful Dreamer. It’s a lovely remake (by Rachel Fannen) – some people think it’s better than the original. It’s funny, but when I first heard the remake, I didn’t like it. I had the original in mind. And I told the team: “You gotta redo it. Or we have to get the original” – which we couldn’t, it was way too expensive.

So we did the remake, and I think last year it won best score in advertising from Shoot magazine. Now when I listen to it, I really appreciate it.

“So with music you have to be flexible, because if you get stuck on something you might be disappointed.”

Reese: Then you have to convince the client.

Myhren: By far the hardest thing about music is selling it to a client. It’s so subjective… Everyone has an opinion, everyone is an expert. I’ve never had a case where everyone agrees on the music. Never ever. We just did a big spot for Marriott and I fought so hard for that track. I eventually had to call the CMO and explain why I wanted it. It was quite a progressive track, quite edgy. They’d asked us to modernize the brand, make it more appealing to the millennials, make it younger. And this did all of those things, but it scared them. I personally took a stake in that one because there was no second option. And now they’re really happy with it because everyone who sees it says: “I love the song. What’s the song?”

Reese: Cool…

Myhren: Recently we bought a track for Gillette. We have it across all regions, across all media, for two years. And we have all the splits, which oftentimes bands won’t give you. So we can do anything with this song. It’s one of my favorite songs, by Phantogram, called “When I’m Small”. It’s very modern sounding, a little bit electronic, a little bit rock and roll. With a lot of speed changes, so you can use lots of part of the song. And it’s one of those songs where, almost anyone you play it to, they like it. 

Reese: Gillette has very strong audio branding with “The Best A Man Can Get.” Are you going to keep that?

Myhren: We’re not singing it, but we’re saying it, and we’re keeping the tune (hums the tune). We know there’s a lot of value to that. I really believe in audio branding. If there was a TV here playing, I might not be watching it, but if I heard that tune I’d recognize the brand. And part of what you’re trying to do as an advertiser is make people remember the brand. They’ve built an iconic tune over the last 20 or 30 years. Throwing it away would be a huge mistake. So no matter what track we use, we take the tune and bake it into the exact instrumentation. As part of our pitch, we took six different tracks and showed them how – no matter what the track was – we could seamlessly weave the tune in at the end. So you know you’re watching Gillette.

Reese: Do you think that all brands should be identifiable by sound only? Like Gillette, as you’ve described, or Intel? Is that something to shoot for?

Myhren: I think it’s a very, very nice plus. I don’t think it‘s 100% mandatory. But if you can do it and it doesn’t get in the way of the communication, I think it can be a really great asset for a brand.

Reese: It shouldn’t be too rigid…

Myhren: Yeah, I don’t think every time you sit down to try to build a brand you should say, “We must have sonic branding in there somewhere.” But sound is very powerful.

Reese: Last question. A songwriter might write 2000 songs, but only one of them is a hit – a decade-defining song. This is a question I’ve been asking everyone: do you know when a piece of work is going to become iconic?

Myhren: Very seldom at concept stage. There’s things you see, when they’re finished, and you sort of know you have a hit on your hands. There are things you see on paper that you say “That’s gonna be a hit,” and then… they’re just OK. And there are things you’re not sure about, but you do them anyway, and they come to life. You have to see the finished work. When I first saw the E-Trade babies – the very first one – I knew it was going to be on the Super Bowl and I thought: “Either this is going to hit huge, or it’s going to totally fl op.”

Reese: And it hit huge.

Myhren: It hit huge! We also did a recent thing for Direct TV with Eli and Peyton Manning, the football players, who are brothers. They always seem rigid, kinda square. Direct TV has The Sunday Ticket, where you can watch all the games all the way through, any Sunday. And now you can watch them on your phone. So to promote that we wrote a song called Football On Your Phone. It was a kinda hip hop, R&B thing. And the Manning brothers actually rap. I saw the thing and I thought it was damn funny. I just knew it was going to be a smash hit. Sure enough, 8 million views on You-Tube in one week. It took off. Everything about it was perfect. That’s a perfect story for you – it was totally music driven.

Note: The interview took place in Lisbon on December 5th, 2013.

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