In 2010, amp’s global CMO Uli Reese, Author of “101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior”, set out on a mission to engage the top leaders in the world of advertising in honest conversations about the role of music in the digital age. How important is music in building a brand? What informs their creative decisions? When it comes to costs, how do they measure ROI? How do they think music impacts perception and drives behavior? This tremendous effort resulted in the 2015 published Book 101GreatMinds on Music Brands and Behavior/Advertising Edition, featuring 101 Interviews with the brightest minds in advertising.
Because of it’s enormous success, he right away started the Marketing Edition of the series. The benchmark to participate is CMO, VP or Founder. Keith Weed, Raja Rajamannar or Fernando Machado are just a few examples of the level of partizipation.
Follow along as these thought leaders share their perspectives on everything from how they approach music strategically, to how ROI considerations and research impact the creative process. Whether you’re a composer, creative director, music supervisor, researcher, marketer, or brand strategist, you’re sure to find a wealth of insight that can shape your own thoughts about music, brands and behavior.
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- 101 Great Minds
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“Our most recognizable asset is our creative. We put our communities at the center of everything that we do.”
“How consumers feel makes 75-90% of their takeaway – and music can have a dramatic influence on how somebody feels.”
“Nothing evokes emotions so viscerally as music.”
“One great song can make a movie. When you pay more attention to the music, you end up with better work.”
“When you look at how easily accessible music is today, selecting the music that is relevant becomes the real challenge.”
“Because we are so visually driven, we don`t know where to look anymore. Due to that, sound is the next frontier that people will have to understand.”
“The ability of music to trigger memories and associations is a very powerful device.”
“The attention that a piece of music generates is a real return on investment.”
“Sound is one of the most emotional elements you can use in branding and communications. So, we are trying to use it to our best advantage.”
“When you decide to identify the sound of your brand from the ground up and design for it, do that with women.”
“There is a great difference between what people think is most important and what they actually do, and music is a part of that.”
“For us, the beauty is in the fact that the artists we work with are authentic. We pick the ones that fit best to the strategy and to the message we want to send.”
“Music is a direct way to access emotion.”
“Music is outrageously important. It‘s the most visceral of the art forms. It‘s one hundred percent feel. Great brands communicate through music.“
“It’s about the importance of craft in advertising. Music can’t be an afterthought.”
“It’s notable that people now prefer to borrow music. I prefer the idea of creating an original song or jingle that’s born out of the brand.”
“You need to understand the brand essence first, and then translate it into sound.”
“Sound allows you to connect with something in an even richer way than visual does.”
“Music, like smell, evokes more emotions than vision. It’s almost instant recall. And those things are incredibly powerful when you’re creating a brand or working with brands.”
“In a world that is so full and fast-paced, audio has to ability to cut through and connect with the heart in a way that other senses can`t.”
“I believe that not being the loudest is a very powerful tool to stand out.”
“Music is one of the most influential parts of a brand.“
“Most of the times I end up being in briefings where we discuss the story, the photographers and the location for months, but music comes into the process at the very end of the timeline with only very little attention and budget.”
“As Beethoven said, music enters our brains through an entirely different door. It gets our attention immediately and, if used properly, can say things that words would find impossible.”
“Sonic identity can enable our consumers to simplify choice making, especially in the world where there is excess cognitive load.”
“Text and images can tell a story, but music can bring truth to the experience that a consumer needs and wants to feel.”
“The market is well educated in the visual territory and most brands are pretty advanced in creating a distinguished and well managed brand design system. Sound, for many years, was totally underestimated.”
“I believe that music is very much connected to a brand that is close to your heart, and the experiences you had with the brand.”
”Music can be extremely powerful. It connects to the heart. Music in advertising and in film influences you and informs you emotionally.”
“From being a soundtrack, music is now becoming a medium in itself, arguably the most powerful way into the audience’s world.”
“It is not about the right sound or the right piece of music. It is about the strategic question: “What should my brand sound like?” Which is a completely different thing.”
“Well, actually we’ve won awards for the sound design around our work. The “Life Changing Places” campaign was perhaps the first piece where we spent so much time on sound design.”
“I still don`t think that many brands have really embedded audio in a way that they are able to draw the full potential out of it.”
“Consumers are not waiting actively for your brand to communicate with them. In reality, the brand dialogue is more subtle, whether it’s the music in the elevator, the background music in the reception lobby or the retail forecourt.”
“If I think about the role of sound in branding, I believe it’s largely under-utilized. Sound is important because it appeals both to the heart and the mind. And in marketing, you’re trying to appeal to the hearts and minds of consumers.”
“If you think about what audio can trigger in people, I think music will always be at the forefront of creating emotions, and connecting people to a certain emotion.”
”Just like branding is a science and visual identity is a science, audio is a science. It comes down to building trust. It comes down to building alignment. It comes down to building energy.”
“Challenging times force us reflect on things we took for granted in the good times. Auditory stimulus – sound and tone – are great examples. And what a great opportunity.”
“Audio is incredibly important, and I believe that in an ideal world, marketers would be as committed to it as they are to the visuals.”
“Soundbranding crowns the brand positioning and injects emotions you cannot visualize.”
“These brands live in really fun places – music is usually playing, ambient noise or maybe it’s a quiet dim light cocktail bar… and then we write a TV script. It’s bonkers. Music and cocktails go together.”
“Music is engraved in the spirit of a brand.”
“Music is at the center of everything. It doesn’t matter how old you are or what you do, you will always connect music with emotions and memories.”
“You‘re doing yourself a disservice when you don‘t use music to build your brand.”
“We would be able to make use of sound-alikes, but I`m starting to sweat by even thinking about them because they are always so far below the original.”
“Why wouldn’t you invest in music in advertising as an extra layer to elevate your story?”
“Over the past decade our brand has become a digital, mostly mobile experience. Sound in that context is crucial for use to establish an emotional bond with our customers.”
“Music is possibly one of the most underused and yet most powerful forces at our disposal.”
“Music has the ability to change feeling. Because it is feeling.”
“Music needs freedom. It needs room to be what it needs to be. I think what marks music as “Bond music” is the first moment you experience it and all those visual associations that come with it.”
”Music is a universal language. It‘s the only language that everybody can understand.”
“A sonic experience can be a big influencing mechanism and that has often been forgotten.”
”Music can play the role of a multiplier, relative to an image.”
” Sound is super critical. Music and sound are 50% of why a piece is good.”
“If a company’s sound strategy ends at a sound logo, a huge potential is being neglected. Brands must send the right signals – and the same signals – everywhere and always. This means paying close attention to a number of parameters such as continuity, consistency, fit and monitoring.”
“In recent years audio has become the soundtrack of our lives: a barometer of our moods and the mirror of our personalities.”
“If you think about sound, it can be a way that differentiates your brand from others if you get it right over time.”
“We need to start thinking about sound as a necessary part of the whole experience.”
“The future of audio branding is like a sawtooth wave. Quite bright.”
“It’s much more about the culture of music versus just music by itself.”
“Mind the gap!”
“Music is no longer merely punctuating the brand’s storyline. In more and more cases, it is becoming the story itself.”
“We are still in the early days of our branding journey because the focus up to today has predominantly been on the visual side. Now it`s more about the energy the brand has and how we translate that into sound.”
“The online space is so cluttered and ugly. The obvious goal is to create something so beautiful or arresting that people will seek it out and give it space. Music is a critical tool in that endeavor.”
“The question is: What’s the key to turn a brand into an entertainer at every touchpoint?”
” Our job is to build a brand through language, imagery, voice and sound.”
” The quality and the correct implementation of music is as important as all the other parts in branding.”
“Well, actually we’ve won awards for the sound design around our work. The “Life Changing Places” campaign was perhaps the first piece where we spent so much time on sound design.”
“It‘s hard to overestimate how important music is. It can transform a message.”
”If a picture is worth a thousand words, a song is worth a thousand pictures.”
“It’s about choosing the right time to create the right influence.”