Music_and_Advertising

MKTG232 Advertising Consider how music can be used in advertising campaigns and explain the role(s) it performs.   The term marketing mix describes the role of a marketing manager by mixing all the different ingredients, of marketing, what means that sometimes it uses only one of them, or all of them and some other times none of them. A wellknown marketing expert, E. Jerome McCarthy1, developed the term Marketing Mix and their components (the four Ps of Marketing Mix) that are basically four: 1. Product. Which type of object is produced (Tangible or intangible), how is it produced, etc. It also includes all the logistic problems such as packaging. 2. Price. Setting the amount of money a customer is wiling to pay in order to acquire a certain product or service. 3. Place. In what physical place the product or service is going to be sell and purchased. For example, diamonds can only be bought in certain luxury shops so it is basic to establish this properly. 4. Promotion. It is the concept that concern us the most because it is referred to ways of communicating a product that a marketer has and includes advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion. Advertising is all the techniques and methods that one party tries to try to convince the customer in order to buy the product or service. In the last years, three more Ps have been added to the definition: process, people and physical evidence. At the beginning advertisers only used print media to advertise products but since technology developed we can find advertising almost everywhere; radio, TV, Internet, billboards, etc. So, with the appearance of electric media music                                                          1 Basic Marketing. A Managerial Approach   has been introduced in TV spots or radio commercials, for example. With these new ways of advertising it has been demonstrated that the effectiveness is much bigger that in the conventional ads (press) and music has got a lot to do with this. Music has a strong social component because it has the ability to transmit many feelings or emotions. What the advertisers look for while developing a TV ad, for example, is a connection with the consumers. A very good example of this is what happened with Estrella Damm, a Spanish beer that creates every summer a different ad (the only one they make in the whole year). The best thing of the ad, beside the good-looking boys and girls, is the song they play which automatically becomes the most listen one in the country. The good thing about this is that from that moment onwards the song is completely linked to the product, in this case beer, and as they are playing it in every bar or club, the brand haves an “undercover” free publicity. In fact, in this particular case, in 2010 the sells of Estrella Damm after the TV ad with the song Summercat (Tonight, Tonight) of Billie The Vision and The Dancers, increased a 10% during summer and received the prize of The Most Effective Publicity in 2010. They gave them the prize not only because of the proven results, but also because they were capable of linking a brand of beer to the Mediterranean way of life (the claim of the brand has become “Estrella Damm. Mediterráneamente”) something that was, a priori, unthinkable. In the United States, which every year broadcast approximately sixty billion of advertising hours, about three quarters of it uses music. It can be affirmed that music has a lot to do with the effectiveness of the ads and this contribution to the effectiveness is identified in six different points (Huron, 1989), according to the historical appearance. 1. Entertainment. Good music can basically improve the quality of the ad. If the sound that is coming out of the TV is nice, it will catch the people attention. Before the television was invented, music was normally on the background of long speeches about a concrete product shown in the cinema or in the radio. 2. Structure/continuity. As what happens in a movie, it is very useful that the image that is appearing in an ad is related with the music. To catch the audience attention or even to make them be “more inside” a movie or an ad is to make it match with a dramatic moment, happy moment, etc. 3. Memorability. Make that the product name is easier to remember. This is normally achieved by using a simple and catchy melody that will make the consumer sing it even if they don’t realise. That is something that happens with almost all the information numbers. They always say the number singing so that the people remember the song and, consequently, the number. Familiarity is a clue concept that in many occasions assures success even though the customer is only familiarised with the name of the brand or how it looks like. It has been demonstrated that melodies are better received and assimilated by musicians or by people that are doing an activity that does not requires many mental activity at the moment of listening to it, such as watching TV. For example, Renault, on his Megane GT ad in Spain2, they built a story singing it and it made the people sing the song and think about the product. 4. Lyrical language. It basically consists is singing one song that includes, for example, the name of the brand, and after the song do a spoken passage that also repeats it. This happens with biggest company in changing car glasses in the world, Carglass. The claim in the melody is “Carglass cambia, Carglass repara”, which means “Carglass changes, Carglass repairs”3. This repetition projects a poetic identity to the company that affects directly to the emotions of the consumer. I did a placement in Tiempo BBDO, a publicity agency and one of the clients was Carglass. The only condition that they imposed was that in a 30” ad, the name of the brand has to be repeated at least 10 times. This makes understand the importance of this concept.                                                          2 http://www.youtube.com/watch'v=nSl0KKvv8rs&feature=player_embedded#!  3 http://www.youtube.com/watch'v=qIPnDlDHa8c  5. Targeting. The music used for certain products is directly related with the people the ad is aimed to. You will never use an Iron Maiden song to advertise baby shampoo or a classical music to try to sell a Harley Davidson. Targeting then, is the process of selecting targets and matching the appropriate response to them on the basis of operational requirements, capabilities and limitations (Prokop, 2007). It is vital to make an objective and quality target because if not, all the money spent on the campaign can be on vain. 6. Authority establishment. It is a very similar concept to targeting. It is referred to the credibility of the advertisement. If you want to sell, for example, a new mp3, where the target audience is young people between 16 and 25 years old, it is really important to choose a proper music, which will make the consumer feel and identity with the product. There is no point in trying to sell mp3 to young people with classical musical as the main tune. In order to choose the right melody for an ad, advertisers (specially in big agencies) normally go to music companies that have experts that recommend the best melody according to the briefing sent by the agency, but and advertiser has to have a good musical formation. Also, especially from the 1980s onwards, television was full o musical videos of the latest songs. In some way this is also and advertisement as the artist is promoting his music that is the addressed product to the consumer. The concept is exactly the same as one ad that tries to offer Nike shoes to an audience. The images shown have to be nice and exciting to the target customer, in this case the fans and, obviously, the music has to be the right one. Since the first video clip was made (“The little lost child” by Gorge Tomas and various artists in 1894) this industry has improved a lot. Consequently more money have been spent to satisfy the customer needs reaching almost the 10 million dollars in the video by Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson “Scream”. Basically, when the creative’s of and agency wants to develop a new advertising and they need to choose a song for the ad they have three main options in order to make the perfect ad that will affect the audience. i.e. three different type of music: The first one, and one of the most common things that publicists do, is to choose a really well known artist singing a very known song. The main problem with this practice is that know artists and songs are really expensive. Putting, for example, “Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone” of Bill Withers, will probably make that all the audience like the music that you choose but, at what price' Normally the brands that use very known music are big brands that can afford a high spent in money. A clear example of this is the Volkswagen Golf4 with the music of David Bowie “Heroes”, one of the most expensive ones to pay for rights. The second option is the so-called jingle. This basically consists on developing a brand new song for the product that we are advertising. In this case, publicists need to expand on their creativity in order to develop a song that will catch the audience and will make them sing (previously I explained the memorability of the music with the example of the information numbers). Even though this was very common in the 60’s and 70’s, time after time, it is becoming old-fashion (Karmen, 2005). The third and last main option that publicists have is to choose a new band. This will suppose a double success in the case that the ad becomes popular because it will benefit not only the advertising brand, but also the discovered band. In this context it exists a very big collaboration between the agency and the music company that offers the advertisers a wide range of artists. Normally, after the popularity of one of these songs, the discographies make a compilation CD for the commodity of the consumers.                                                          4 http://www.youtube.com/watch'v=MGS1eYHX1O4  Summarising, music and publicity are two concepts that no longer can be separated. Advertising has evolved a lot in the last 20 years and much more since the appearance of Internet that has lead to new ways of communication. A good choose in the music that sounds in a TV ad does not assures a success in the campaign, but a bad election it will definitely lead to failure in establishing a connection with the target audience. Music industry, as we all know, due to Internet is suffering a lot and, in my opinion, advertising can be very helpful to all the artists. It will help them not only to receive money from copyrights, but also to promote themselves. As I explained previously many artists have become popular after letting their artistic creations to advertise a brand. References Jennings, David (2006). Net, Blogs and Rock & Roll Klein, Bethany (2010). As Heard on TV: Popular Music in Advetising Graakjær, Nicolai (2010). Music in Advertising: Commercial Sounds in Media Communication and Other Settings Karmen, Steve (2005). Who killed the jingle' Czarnecki, Mark. Ibid., p.13. Drewniany, Bonnie L. A. And Jewler, Jerome. Creative Strategy in Advertising Whitehill King, Karen. Kleppner Publicidad http://www.publico.es/culturas/356327/universal-music-spain-negocia-un-eredel-25 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_in_advertising http://www.techeye.net/internet/music-industry-wakes-up-and-smells-thecoffee http://www.creamglobal.com/17799/23820/effective-music-in-advertising http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2011/jan/17/myspace-socialnetworking-jemima-kiss http://parlorsongs.com/insearch/vanitymusic/vanitymusic.php