In the year 1434, Cosimo De
Medici (or Cosimo the Elder) used his rise to power as occasion to lead the
Medici family on a path that immortalized their family name as patrons of the
arts and humanities. The Medici family used their power and money to commission
and publicize the works of artists in Florence and indeed helped galvanize the
Renaissance movement across Europe.
They would commission artists for
years (practically put them on retainer), pay for their supplies and buy the
works of art they churned out. They even paid for periods of study for artistes
to learn and perfect their craft. Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and Boticelli
were all artists they cultivated and supported; Galileo was on paid retainer to
tutor the Medici children.
Any wonder why eccentric rapper
Kanye West, while on a radio interview name dropped the Medici family in a rant
on his frustration with Nike (athletics brand powerhouse) for not pulling all
stops to push his Nike Air Yeezy sneaker collaboration project.
Said Kanye, "I am standing up and I'm telling you I
am Warhol. I am the number one most impactful artist of our generation. I am
Shakespeare in the flesh, Walt Disney. And who's going to be the Medici family and
stand up and let me create more? Or do you want to marginalize me till
I'm out of my moment?."
Mad rant aside,
Kanye West was highlighting the role that modern day brands can play in
furtherance of the arts, music and our lifestyle culture trend. He juxtaposed
modern brands as the current potential incarnation of the Medici patronage.
Brands can promote musicians via ambassadorships (Alicia Keys &
BlackBerry), collaborations on specific products/projects (Kanye and Nike)
& outright partnerships (P Diddy and Ciroc)
Gold Rush
The Nigerian marketing
space has seen an explosion of involvement of brands with music artistes. At a
point in the year of our Lord 2013, if you were a music star and were not
signed as a brand ambassador to a major brand, your star was perceived not to
be shining.
From telecoms
companies to online retailers, mobile phone manufacturers and even insecticide
brands, signing a music artiste was the new cool marketing trick. As with all things “faddish”, there have been
different outcomes to signing of brand ambassadors.
With certain
musicians also being ambassadors to multiple brands albeit in different
industries, you begin to wonder who is in the driving seat. The brand or the
artiste? There is a point you can get to as an artiste that your brand value is
so extended across too many products and platforms that diminishing returns sets
in for your multiple “Medicis”.
When musicians
“take sides”, (by accepting to be brand ambassadors) it has an effect on their
ability to perform at certain concerts/events sponsored by competing brands,
their social media engagements change ideally their earning power should
increase as well.
The jury is out
on the last point but I suspect for some of these artistes their total earnings
will increase only marginally though they get lump sums payments which help
them with milestone expenditures. I will briefly review some brand moves in 2 industries that played big in music in 2013 (Telecoms and Breweries) before I close in on an outlook for
2014.
Industry Review
As a player in
the telecoms industry, my opinions may seem biased but I have to give it some
of the brands who have shown proper finesse in their marketing spend. My yellow
cousins (you know who) signed up some very good musicians and have been pretty
ruthless in milking the music they create for profits especially through
charged Ring Back Tunes (RBT) at N50 monthly rental per tune.
The marketing
support for this RBT drive has been heavy and covers radio campaigns,
billboards, SMS campaigns, TV adverts, Event specific drive etc. its been a
great year to be a music creator working with this particular network. This
brand has gone into this ambassadorship not to promote their brand as such but
to create a stronger revenue stream as voice revenue begins to decline.
So if you were
lucky enough to sign-on real hit makers, your investment is good to take to the
bank especially when you have 50m+ subscriber base. This is where the rubber
hits the road though. Another player (with a darker green shade) has also
signed many other artistes but their deployment has been geared towards
creating brand association and imagery via advertising.
Without a doubt,
this is a legitimate marketing tactic but also one fraught with some
challenges. Key of which is to answer “what does the brand stand for?”. When a
brand signs more than 8 musical acts and uses all of them for advertising you
begin to wonder what the key message the brand wants the audience to pick from
the resulting brand association.
Each artiste
stands for something and appeals to a demographic so when you deploy them all
“willy nilly” the question that begs to be answered is “what central message do
all these acts help you sell?”. Even more worrisome is how you deploy music
acts in ways that are not consistent to what they are known for. I literally
cringed watching a great rapper cameo as a football player in an ad when the
whole world knows him to be a basket ball player!
Cringe worthy I
tell ya. I’m a message purist and I believe you deploy your marketing resources
where they are believable and reinforce themselves. They have some work to do here.
Their execution of a TV commercial with the Hip Hop twins that used their very
popular single with a known dance step was very well done and should be the
minimum standard they deploy in my opinion.
Not being privy
to their marketing war room meetings I would give them the benefit of the doubt
and conclude they know what they are doing for the long term.
The breweries companies
were not left out in their patronage of the arts but from a slightly less
committed stand point. None of the big players signed any music acts to be
definitive brand ambassadors in the year under review (2013) but some big moves
stood out for me.
Earlier in the year, Nigerian Breweries, parent company of the
Star brand unveiled the Star Music App. Ostensibly it was to be the digital
platform to position Star as a brand that had music as a strategic lever in its
engagement of its defined target market.
The app would be the destination of choice for the target audience
to learn about breaking news from local and international music stars and get to
watch the latest music videos first from artistes they love, all exclusively on
the app.
The launch was followed by a major blitz on online platforms,
banner ads, Yahoo page take overs and even Outdoor billboards. I just had to
take notice of these guys marketing footprint
I quickly downloaded the app (it's available for Android, iOS and
Blackberry) and found it quite rich in the promised content. In due course, Wizkid
dropped the video for "Azonto" exclusively on the Star Music app
followed quickly by Olamide, one of the breakout revelations of 2013, who
dropped the video to "Durosoke" first on the Star app.
In keeping with their normal on ground engagements, Star Trek
came through and had on display some of the reigning musical stars in Nigeria
on display in a 7 city music concert too that earned rave reviews.
As is the tradition with many brewery companies, they tend to
change the packaging of their brands bottle from time to time. Star recently
announced and unveiled a new bottle termed the “Rock Star” bottle. Their
decision to put a marked price premium on this bottle is however worrisome. It
might be the only aspect of the beautiful campaign that requires some tweaks. Overall,
the brand consistency with their “Music” theme 2013 must be applauded.
The Guinness brand came a
bit late to the music party with a brand unveil for their new bottle styled
“The Colorful World of More” concert. Undeniably one of the best concerts in
2013 – audience reaction, stars on line up etc – but the total end to end
marketing play in the music space seemed abrupt. They had the concert only in
Lagos (a big market for sure) but is Guinness now a Lagos brand?. Is there no
need to delight other drinkers across the nation? Knowing how marketing could
be I trust they would have loved to do that but I’m not sure why they didn’t.
Don’t mind me….i love to see a follow through on a marketing
theme. In their industry, I think Star took the crown in 2013.
Let the music
play
In 2014, how should brands engage their audiences using music and
musicians? Marketing is essentially a contest for minds, hearts and eventually
wallets. This contest must however build up the utility of all tools it
deploys…in essence, if music is to be used in this contest we must not reduce the
quality of the music, nor diminish the craft of the musicians.
I fear that some musicians craft is being diminished by their
association with brands. I won’t cite examples but it’s clear that when your
focus shifts from delighting your audience (fans/general public) to driving
brand messages, something in your craft is diminished. Never forget that brands
only engaged you because they felt you were highly regarded by the public. If
eventually this high regard starts to wane be rest assured that brand managers
have no qualms in discontinuing such relationships. That’s a hard fact.
Musicians must focus their time and energy on the creation of
music that delights their fan base. Honing the stage craft to hold a concert
spell bound while remaining connected to the rippling undercurrent of consumer
sentiment that makes one song a hit and another a disaster.
In essence, musicians must themselves act like brands. They must
have a loyalty first to their consumers in all they do. It is in their healthy
awareness of this need that their long term relevance to brands is sustained.
Their associations must be with those brands that help them create more, extend
their reach and become more original from day to day.
The brands will take care of themselves. Their sales figures keep
many of their brand managers alive to their real constituency – the public and
not their brand ambassadors. They will refine their association with musicians,
dropping some, signing on more. I only hope that the deployment of music and
musicians is more strategic, contributing more closely to the bottom line than
ever before.
If music be the food of sales, play on.
