Series: Audio As Added Value

Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:

1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy

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Like this topic? Explore the May 2006 ADDED VALUE AUDIO article from the Critical Noise Archive:

ADDED VALUE AUDIO

Synergy = Energy

Over the years I’ve noted CDs packaged with boxes of cereal and cleaning fluids, among other household items. We have also seen custom CDs distributed by the Gap, Pottery Barn, Starbucks, Victoria's Secret and Williams-Sonoma. Interestingly, a company named LidRock even found a way to turn fountain drink lids into a functional Mini-CD or DVD disc capable of delivering music, video, and games.

In 2003 LidRock launched with a four million unit promotion for Big3 indie label singer Rachel Farris. Rachel Farris is by no means a household name today, but one can hardly call one marketing event a campaign. Also, keep in mind that LidRock wasn't using the technology to promote the artist, but rather using Farris' material to demonstrate proof of concept to potential corporate clients.

I propose such promotions work better when the artist doesn't simply represent available content, but when the advertiser and the entertainer form a synergistic relationship, and each represents one half of a real strategic alliance for the other.

Some people don’t like the idea that artists might attempt to win fans from the back of box of soap or oatmeal, but this concept goes well beyond detergent and oats. I think it could even portend a future music industry where artists are at least in part supported by patronage rather than the deals record companies currently offer them.

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Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:

1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy

Self-Referential Jingles Are Not Content

In the mid-nineties we saw the idea of music promotions updated and repackaged, in the form of promotional CD–ROMS and DVDs, usually offering electronic games, software and video content. Most of these give-aways went from box to garbage, but some were received with popular interest, as when in 1996 when General Mills inserted a free CD-ROM into each box of Chex cereal, which contained Chex Quest, an electronic game created using ID software’s DOOM engine.

More recently, in 2002, General Mills plastered the cover of eight million boxes of cereal (including: Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Golden Grahams, Honey Nut Chex and Cinnamon Toast Crunch) with promotional DVDs touting Columbia titles "Bear in the Big Blue House" and "The Muppets."

However, the Kellogg/Disney/Pixar Industrial Complex fell short with 'Buzz Lightyear’s Exclusive Music CD', which was packaged in every box of their Buzz Blast cereal concoction. One online writer unfortunately described the promo as “3 awful songs extolling the virtues of Buzz Lightyear.”

The lesson here is that collateral produces sales when advertisers go beyond gimmicks to create truly engaging content.

Self-referential long-play jingles are ads, not content. No one finds them entertaining but the people who make them and kitsch collectors twenty years after the fact.

So why not offer real songs, current hits; or original non-promotional content featuring select artist/s (suitable to collaborative promotional experience with a given product); or even Branded Mixes? At least, then an advertiser can promote the content in the usual media outlets, downplaying its role as added value, up playing its role as a collectible.

One then arrives at the desired result: Built-in authenticity –not to mention guaranteed Word-Of-Mouth buzz you just can't get from any other so-called box prize. Johnny Quest PF Secret Decoder Rings exempted, but of course!

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Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:

1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy

Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time

From the beginning of my career as a music producer of television and radio commercials, I sometimes received calls from consumers who wanted to purchase an album that contained the music they heard on a given spot. However, album production is not a general compliment to spot production. So, there never was a product to recommend people buy –unless they were referring to a pop track that an ad agency had licensed in lieu of commissioning an original underscore. In fact, most of the time the music one hears on a TV or Radio commercial rarely extends beyond the thirty or sixty seconds specifically created for the ad.

As a result:

1) A given intellectual property is limited from possible secondary use by simple virtue of its length.
2) Resulting inability to leverage music into extended customer experience (away from the TV).
3) Diminished ROI by neglecting opportunity (based on demand) to create a for-sale entertainment unit (or a Point-of-Purchase gift that may generate future sales).

Considering this, I began as early as 1994 pitching the concept of creating entertainment collateral. At the time I initially conceived of this collateral as 'gifts' redeemable upon purchase. For instance, buy a car, and here's a CD you can play on the drive home, et al. The idea would be to produce the music in tandem with the production of our primary commissions (being TV/Radio commercial, web site, theme park or electronic game scores). However –regrettably– at the time I couldn't convince one account to allocate the resources required to test this concept, although all seemed to think it was great idea (for someone else to do).

Regardless, the concept stuck with me. In March of 2001 the online marketer's magazine Clickz published an article I wrote on the subject of Sonic Branding. In it I argued the merit of this concept and other such alliances; and I suggested the following:

If music in a marketing context does its job, it will inform as well as entertain. And if consumers –that is, your audience– call the company switchboard and ask who wrote the music and where they can buy a CD of it, then maybe you and your client should actually produce a promotional CD that consumers can take home and listen to whenever they want...If you've produced a CD, for instance, folks will listen to it while they eat, work out, make love, and your company will be the underscore to their lives. Oats may be oats, but if I'm making babies to your music, then chances are my babies will be eating your oats.

Now, I was by no means the originator of this idea:

In the nineteen-seventies Post –and other cereal companies– packaged singles with their Super Sugar Crisp product. Many such promotions were dreadful (at least to adult ears). However, the Sugar Bears “You Are The One" continues to enjoy happy memories from enduring fans of the song to this day. Why? –Because the song framed an episode in many people’s youth. Their collective recollection has essentially been wrapped in its own soundtrack, brought to you by Post. And that's why kids of all ages still think the Post Super Sugar Crisp Bear IS THE MAN!.

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Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:

1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy

The Compact Disc Is Dead

Digital Music News recently (October/2006) reported that EMI Music chairman and chief executive Alain Levy called the CD "dead.” He said: "The CD as it is now is dead, but a new version with added value will live on… There will always be a need for the physical product. You're not going to give your mother-in-law an iTunes download for Christmas…”

To my mind, it depends how you define 'physical product', 'added value'; and how you contextualize the download. If by 'added value' he means more digital media on the disc itself, then in my opinion neither Mr. Levy nor his team has quite thought the problem completely through. There is no 'added value' in content that one will eventually be able to download from the web (for free). Therefore, moving forward, 'added value' must indicate something other than elements found on the CD. We may as well dispense with the CD altogether, and invest our time defining an entirely different physical medium. Instead, let's think of the audio itself (and any other added content traditionally distributed on the disc) as the added value element, which we only make available with the purchase of Artist Branded Merchandise (created in or from a non-digital medium).

For instance: You might give your mother-in-law a pair of mittens, and they might come with a coupon redeemable for an Elvis Presley Christmas Album download. Even value-added CDs are just so much packaging, and you can't beat the value of a nice warm pair of mittens, especially if Elvis's handsome mug is embroidered on them.

What is unfortunate for the music Industry, is that digital audio technology is a catalog killer. Barring a hardware malfunction, consumers now only have to buy music once in a lifetime, and often they don’t pay for it all. Whereas, twenty years ago I may have duplicated several purchases in different formats in order to have my favorite music available on vinyl, 8-track and cassette –and I actually bought one artist's Double LP vinyl set twice because I wore out the records.

There is still a magnitude of worldwide customers converting to digital audio, notably in the Southern Hemisphere where analog formats are still prevalent. However, in North America and Europe, the days of repeat purchases (in order to accommodate different play back devices or even simple wear-and-tear) are very much over. Not to mention the fact that neither my kids nor yours will ever have to buy much in the way of old catalog recordings because they stand to inherit their parent’s hard drives.

I can already imagine entertainment companies sending lobbyists to Washington to mandate the destruction of media storage devices upon an individual's death under the auspices of simultaneously fighting piracy and protecting privacy.

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Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:

1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy

Music As Collateral: Using Audio to Add Value

The music industry complains of being broken. Digital Audio is easy to copy. So, now consumers apparently have no reason to purchase legitimate product. As a result there is much talk regarding how to add further value to physical product in order to sustain a consumer base.

Let me suggest that instead of adding value to the music, let’s consider how to use music to add value to other consumer products. In this way:

A) the producers of a recording can profit;
B) the artists gain a vehicle for distribution; and
C) the consumer can feel like they’ve either earned a reward, or gotten something for free that they would otherwise have to pay for.

For instance:

I would personally be more likely to listen to an album of romantic songs if they were delivered with a premium box of Godiva chocolates. Likewise, the global florist, FTD, has an immense opportunity waiting for them if they are first to deliver music along with their floral arrangements. Long after the flowers wilt, a loved one can listen to the song they were gifted and thereby continue living within an FTD branded experience.

I call this Camelback Distribution (or Collateral) because something else is carrying the load. In this latter example the something else is the flowers, and the load the music.

Any kind of sponsorship may not be the best platform for an unknown artist, for either the artist or the sponsor; but you can surely can see how it could be a profitable one for both current hit makers –(Mariah Carey & FTD, for example)– and for classic catalog recordings, which in effect represents a vast emotional repository for the entire culture.

To the customer the experience won’t feel branded: It will simply feel like a love letter received from one person to the other; or it will be accepted as a token gift of music, accompanying the bouquet. Either way, which florist do you think giver and receiver are going to call the next time either one needs to send a bouquet of flowers?

As a teen my friends and I traded songs or mix tapes. On occasion, the exchange was prefaced with an explanation that the person receiving the material was to pay attention to a particular set of lyrics. Thus, the music became the vehicle for a message attributable not to the songwriter, but to the person who made the mix tape, to be decoded later by the person he or she gave the music to. In a way, the gift which arrived was in fact neither the mix tape nor the music, but rather both mix tape and music provided Russian Doll like packaging for an emotive expression, which was the true gift!

Given this scenario, which continues today with the exchange of mp3s, why not bundle single roses with singles (songs) and market the combo to teen romantics at a price they can afford?

I can imagine that the attached card might read:

"Nothing says 'I Love You' like a rose, except for music. This song says more about how I feel about you than I could ever put into words myself."

The reality is, the music isn't free but  it feels free, because the ostensible purchase is for the rose (or other gift (the 'camel'). So, the music is paid for with each and every product purchase. Alternately, a corporate sponsor can eat the cost entirely, either as a loss leader or because by doing so they hope to profit by factors other than an immediate economic payback (–such as the goodwill and gratitude of their customers, for instance).

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This article is one in series of articles about audio as added value. Read the other entries by following the links:

Music As Collateral: Using Audio to Add Value
The Compact Disc Is Dead
Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
Synergy = Energy