Nick Law
101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior
Nick Law, VP Marcom Integration, Apple
Nick Law is the current Vice President of Marcom Integration at Apple. Prior to joining Apple, Nick held leadership positions at esteemed agencies, including Publicis Groupe, where he was the President and Global Chief Creative Officer and R/GA, where he helped transform R/GA from a small web design company into an internationally acclaimed agency for the digital age. A multi-talented agency veteran, Mr. Law’s is now at Apple, helping integrate work across all creative disciplines.
With over 30 years of experience, Nick is an industry mastermind and a game-changer. His creative craftsmanship has seen him win every major creative award and appear in high-profile lists, including Creativity 50, a list of the world’s most creative people.
“I hear people say our attention spans have become truncated because of social media, but I don’t believe that we only spend our time-consuming short media. Podcasts can go on for an hour and a half, or you can sit down and watch three seasons of The Crown in one sitting. When it comes to sound, we have this cognitive flexibility right now that at one time we didn't.”
— NICK LAW, VP MARCOM INTEGRATION, APPLE
Uli Reese: You’re the only one in the first book and now the second. In those ten years, would you have predicted that sound would have become more important?
Nick Law: It’s amazing; people can't get even through the week now without their podcasts. I remember we talked a lot about how sound is a really useful way to understand your interactions through an interface, and that's truer now than ever. If you're sitting next to someone on a train and your eyes are closed, and their cell phone rings and they start sending texts, even without opening your eyes, you know what brand their phone is.
Reese: If you look at smart speakers and the projected $40 billion in sales, where did this come from?
Law: In marketing and advertising, if you wind back to the late Fifties, we went from a print world to a TV world, and key was what [William] Bernbach did when he decided the creative team shouldn't just be a writer, it should be a writer and an art director. What he was arguing for was a world that was becoming more visual, but all along, there was something even more primal, and that was sound. Sound has always been there; it just hasn’t been afforded as deep a discipline in a creative team.
Reese: But Apple saw the merit of sound early…
Law: Apple takes sound very seriously. It goes back to the fact that the first big service that Apple launched was iTunes, so there was always this relationship with the medium. In those early iPod ads, Apple would take amazing songs that were about to break and help them be big. To this day, Apple has an amazing music department and is very intentional about music. It’s a very emotional brand, so it stands to reason that something as emotional as music is an important part of its communications. The other thing about sound is that it’s intimate. Podcasts are rambling and natural, so I think that’s part of it.
Reese: Turning to trust, which is fundamental, we first hear sound in the womb and tribes would pass on knowledge through song. Apple is a trust brand. Can you talk a little about that?
Law: That's how Apple looks at value. The reason for that is people trust that it's going to just work. When I was in the agency world, I had this four-step way to assess the work, and the first two steps were strategy; is it true, and is it relevant? The second two were creative; is it interesting, and is it clear? Essentially, you could use just those four things to assess anything. So, there are plenty of things that are true about a brand but only a few things that are relevant when it comes to a message of the consumer. What I found with a lot of clients is that they didn't even get the true part right. They weren't self-aware enough to understand what their company was, and that's when you break trust.
Reese: Our recall for music is amazing. If you’re 17 years old and you don't hear a song for 60 years, and even if you have Alzheimer's or dementia, when you're 80, you can sing it...
Law: It's why people's favourite music is the music from the best time in their life, and it's usually in their late teens or early twenties. That's the music people remember for the rest of their lives because there's something about that age when you're the most alive. Everything remains vivid for me from the time I was travelling. I remember all the music, and if I hear the first two notes of something, I'm back there. And music, historically, was much more important as a sort of a tribal language, and even going into a sports stadium to watch a game of soccer or rugby, everyone knows the song that they own.
Reese: Many brands ask me how they should future proof their brand? What is your advice to your peers?
Law: It goes back to trust because you have to be intentional with your choices. You can’t change your approach to music, it's got to be consistent. You can choose a piece of music that destroys your communications, or you can choose a piece of music that makes it perfect. It's hard to do. It’s interesting because that's one of the things that being on the client-side you become so close to the brand, and because everything you do is so intentional towards the brand and its success every day, you realise that back in the agency world, you're far more susceptible to ideas that you think will be fun and get attention. When I joined Apple, even though I've been an Apple fan for a long time, it took me a long time to understand how to calibrate the voice. Related to that is that in everything you do from a creative perspective, you have principles and practices - and understanding the difference between them is really important. Principles don't change, but practices change all the time. If you go too far over into practice and leave principles behind, you won't feel authentic, and if you only think about principles, then you get lost because you're old fashioned. For Apple, it’s simplicity and intuitiveness.
Reese: So, 25 years ago, if I’d asked you who is going to be in the top three in the world, in terms of digital music sales, everyone would have said Universal, EMI or Warner, right? But it turns out it was Apple, and this has been so disruptive and drastic…
Law: The thing that Apple has had, since when Steve [Jobs] was at the helm, is the discipline of doing less. It's a lot easier to manage a brand when you're being simple – but that discipline is the hardest thing to do. If I was to look at all the other brands in the world, the one thing I think would be a common piece of advice was to just do less. Right now, brands are doing too much. They always want to be on. Part of the discipline is how do you turn up in an environment like this, where there are so many opportunities, and have the discipline to be focused? My thing is - truth is complicated, but action is simple, so just because you understand this medium, and see all the opportunities, doesn’t mean you should do everything. Do just the one thing. But now is the hardest time to do that because we're living in this twitchy, hyperkinetic world.
Reese: Sonic identity is important, and brands need a sonic DNA. They need recognition, but it also has to be flexible like James Bond. Their 25 songs range from Shirley Bassey to Billie Eilish – diverse artists, but all very Bond. What are your views on that?
Law: I love that example from Shirley Bassey to Billie Eilish - and Bond is such a well-managed brand. When I was at Publicis, on a pitch in Germany, and there was another Australian on the team from Saatchi London. He was the same age as me. We spent the whole time when we were hanging out singing all the jingles from our childhood. These jingles were from Australia in the Seventies when all TV advertising seemed to be just jingles. We found them funny because they were old fashioned and so silly compared to now. That's not true of James Bond, which has a 70-year history.
“I hear people say our attention spans have become truncated because of social media, but I don’t believe that we only spend our time-consuming short media. Podcasts can go on for an hour and a half, or you can sit down and watch three seasons of The Crown in one sitting. When it comes to sound, we have this cognitive flexibility right now that at one time we didn't have.”
Note: The interview took place in San Francisco, California, United States, on the 25th of March 2021.
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