Chief Sonic Officer

A little future gazing...

It's the 28th June 2020 and in response to the massive surge in music-based marketing and sonic branding initiatives around their global businesses P&G have just appointed their first Chief Sonics Officer. In a press release today, Ashton Kutcher, the FMCG giant's Chief Marketing Officer stated:

"We have been using music as a branding and marketing platform since the dawn of the broadcast age and though for decades our initiatives were handled within the broader marketing mix, it has become clear over the past decade that music and sound are too powerful to be left to chance within advertising or other marcomms activities."

Incoming CSO Damon Albarn, who was known as a multi-million selling popular music writer and performer of Blur and Gorillas, takes up his role based in P&G's Global HQ in Shanghai in September. "10 years ago I would never have dreamed of a job like this but the music industry has changed beyond recognition. When the global market in recorded music died, writers and performers were left with two options; go on the road as a live performer or seek patronage from brands to earn the right to keep creating music.

Musicians have always been funded this way; 500 years ago it was the Church that paid, then it was Royalty, then there was the brief period in the 20th Century when mass, popular music took hold and finally it has come down to the Church of FMCGs to provide the financial backing musicians need.

This appointment follows the recent appointment of Justin Bieber as CSO of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Bieber said "there used to be a joke: Q. what's the difference between a musician and KFC bargain bucket? A. a KFC bargain bucket can feed a family of four! How oddly circular that joke now seems."

DJ

1-9-90

Maybe I am the last to know about it but the number sequence above seems to be pretty famous, particularly among social media connoisseurs.

Never one to avoid lifting a concept from somewhere and seeing how it applies to sonic branding, I have been thinking about where sonic branding is on the 1-9-90 scale.

To explain where this number sequence comes from...it was first applied to the web in which it is a general rule that 1% of people contribute content, 9% edit, amend or add to the content and 90% of people simply consumer content without contributing. So how can this apply to sonic branding?

Well, I am constantly trying to work out where my industry sits in terms of maturity. It has to be said, I mainly do this when I am preparing financial forecasts. Where are we today, what will demand look like tomorrow?

When I started out in sonic branding, I was the '1'. This was not a pleasant experience. Lots of mistakes made, no real model to follow, all the pressure to create the rules as I went along. I think it took about 10 years for the industry to move properly into the '9'. and that is where I believe we are today: there are a number of very experienced practitioners, all contributing to the global understanding of the industry and doing interesting work.

For some time I have been likening the current maturity level of sonic branding to that of visual branding c. 1960 when I would say it was going through its '9' period. A few smart people had the experience of creating logos and though it was still broadly speaking a cottage industry full of artisans and practitioners of IP arbitrage, it was a growth industry - albeit relatively slow growth.

Today, visual branding is a science and is measured and accounted. It is a mature industry with 100s of experienced and competitive practitioners. The maturation took place in the 1980s and early 1990s when branding became something that the whole world knew about. It emphatically entered it '90' phase. It took visual branding 25 or so years. Will it take sonic branding that long?

My bank hopes it will happen more quickly than that - and I remember when I first met Julian Treasure in 2003 (a fellow member of the gang of '9') he said that sonic branding would be 'massive in 10 years'. I am starting to believe he may be right. The speed of change and growth at the moment is astonishing and the next 3 years may well see the industry boom. If it does, those of us in the '9' (and it is not too late to join, I think) will have had the honour of having creating a new branding paradigm and even if this industry never creates a sonic branding billionaire, at least we'll have contributed.

My conclusion on the 1-9-90? Best not to be the 1, better to be the 9, fingers crossed that the other 90 show up!

Shanghai, no surprise

Back from trip to Shanghai where I got a glimpse into the future of the sonic branding industry in China. It was only a glimpse though. Whirlwind trip!

I was very impressed with the place and with the desire of those I met to listen and learn. There is a humble desire to find out how we do things in the West and a less humble ambition to absorb and overtake our creative industries - and do it all locally with local people.

I don't blame them for their ambition, nor do I really see the best innovation businesses in the West having any problems at all staying competitive...but China (Asia in general?) will eat the breakfast of any industry that fails to constantly update their offering. They have proved time and time again the ability to imitate (initially with inferior quality) but then emulate and quickly supersede Western industry.

Fortunately, sonic branding is still an innovation industry. I liken our position today to that of the visual branding world in the 1960s...lots of brands aware of it, very few with any working knowledge of it and a tiny smattering of evangelists running around the world spreading the word. The majority of experience is in Western Europe and North America. China can't replicate that any time soon so China simply isn't a threat to Western sonic branding agencies. If it's not a threat then it must be an opportunity right? Well, yes. But a qualified one.

Here's the equation. If you want to discuss it, let me know:

2.6billion ears + sonic branding - high cost of sales (for a Western business) + innovative revenue model = fame (for Chinese brands) + fortune (for Western business) - Intellectual Property

Enjoy that one.

DJ

Cannes You Back That Up?

Last month I was fortunate enough to spend a week on my company's boat at the Cannes Film Festival. Now, glamour and glitz aside this is a pretty big event in the annual calendar of Cutting Edge as the movie industry is our centre of gravity so it wasn't all champagne and parties; some proper work gets done on the boat.

That said (and though I personally met some very nice, hard-working people) there was a slight whiff of the fake and phony. Reading Kevin Jackson's blog the other day reminded me of Cannes and how it seems full of people pretending to be things, in the hope that one day the pretence might become real.

I lost count of how many actors and producers, development executives, packagers, executive producers and writers I met. Some of them were the real deal - the vast majority were anything but. It is an old joke that anyone can be a producer - all they have to produce is a business card!

To my mind, you are not anything unless you can earn a living doing it. Actors may claim to be actors but if they are incapable of landing a role then why are the deluding themselves?As for Executive Producers...If all it means is that you fund your own activities in the movie business then why not go spend your money on something more worthwhile than a trip to Cannes and a lot of hot air? Buy a camera? Write a script maybe? If you are any good then the money will find you.

But of course, the movie business is not the only one where blaggers pretend to be what they are not. Sonic Branding has seen its own explosion of blaggers; people jumping on the bandwagon without taking the time and effort to know what they are doing. This only damages the industry - every client who is sold a half-baked solution is lost to us for many years. So I urge anyone who wants to be in the sonic branding game to first do your time (and I think the 10,000 hour rule applies).

Read the books, then work in music, sound design, branding or advertising. Do this for a long time. Listen ALOT. Once you understand how the whole relationship between a brand and its audience works, once you know music theory and have an understanding of consumer psychology, then you can call yourself a sonic brander...until that point how about saying 'I am learning about sonic branding'.

I'm still learning and I've been doing this longer than anybody!

Right, I'm off to pursue my career as an F1 racing driver. Did I not mention that is my real job? Of course, I've never actually sat in a car but...

My Friend Jack

Today I visited the London offices of Jack Morton Worldwide. They are one of the very best experiential agencies around and I just wanted to post a few quick observations. Full disclosure: I would love to work with them - they are a good bunch of smart, friendly people. New business goals aside however:

1. JMW is a business that undertakes the most complex tasks in brand marketing. They design and create immersive brand experiences: they put brands in live spaces, let people feel them, push and pull them around and test them. They demand of their audiences that they are engaged physically and emotionally. What other agencies even try this?

2. For a business that has used music for many years as a part of the brand experience, it is amazing how poorly the music industry has served them. There has been no focus on the creation of long term assets, no unifying processes or standardised pricing. Why does the music industry think it is so special as to avoid such megatrends as ROI measurement and industrialisation?

3. If more clients really understood the potential that the brand experience agency offers, they would fire their ad agencies today and divert the budget. The new paradigm; from passive consumption of messages to active participation in a brand's purpose is too compelling to resist!

DJ

Sonic Branding 2.1

This looks like the next in a series...where I am going to slowly tease and reveal how the next gen of sonic branding businesses need to structure themselves to achieve success.

Now, I am not so arrogant as to believe I know everything about everything but I do believe I have specific role in this industry - that is to make all the mistakes first, spot the patterns and help lead us all to a more mature, open and successful future as an industry.

As an aside, I am sorry I was not able to attend the first industry gathering that the IABA put together last year. I hope that the success of the event means there will be another gathering this year. Anyway...

Today's nugget of information, which will join with other nuggets in weeks to come and build into a handy model for the industry:

Composers, musicians and sound designers are all free spirits and should be treated as such. Do not try to standardise, homogenise, industrialise or centralise your relationships as a sonic branding business with the 'talent'. What you can do is use the wonders of the Internet to lower your transaction costs with 'talent' and create what my friend Ian Thomas would call a 'value web'.

It is possible to automate collaborative working among musicians, composers etc (anyone remember the YouTube Orchestra or Bowie's early experiments?) and my business is currently successfully running a globally distributed roster of 'talent' delivering single client solutions via online platforms. We do this without forcing single processes on the talent but by giving them the tools to operate iteratively, in their own time but towards a single goal.

To conclude: Talent cannot be homogenised, nor can the creative processbe standardised but it can all be targeted effectively at unified goals and deliver against the objectives of a sonic branding business.

Subtext: You may have noticed the 'commas' around 'talent'. These are here to signify that just because these people call themselves talent does not mean that they are the only talented people in the business. I value a talented accountant as much as a sound designer.

Subtext II: The implication of this view of 'talent' as an unwieldy and non-standard group of individuals is that you should never, under any circumstances, look to take on 'talent' on an employee basis. I have tried it, occasionally with success but it never works out long term for the business or the individual. Much better to leave the 'talent' freelance/contract. There you go, I have just saved the sonic branders thou$and$ and the 'talent' endless angst at being corporate slaves.

More to come...

Sonic Branding 2.0

So here is a clue to what we are up to at Cutting Edge. And though full disclosure on this blog is never going to happen, I do feel that it is time to share.

There are some major trends in the world of sonic branding that I have been noticing over the last 11 years (yes, it is that long since I founded my first agency) and each of these is reaching an interesting point at just about the same time. Let me expand, one trend at a time:

1. More audio-enabled touchpoints

When I started out, we had TV, radio, cinema and some music-on-hold as our major ways to use sound to affect a brand audience.

Now? Well every retailer puts a proper sound system in, every person you meet owns a digital media device (iPod or whatever) every brand has a website and delivers rich media content. It's a rich playground for the sonic brander.

2. Less power concentration in ad agencies

Don't get me wrong. I support the ad agency model and don't agree with those who feel it is doomed. Big, creative hubs will always be relevant to big, corporate entities. That said, a little less focus on the 30" TV spot as the flagship medium for brand communications has allowed sonic branding to gain traction where none would have been possible 10 years ago.

3. An outward-looking music industry

So they are not 100% there yet but they are getting better. When we all turned off the tap of cash to the record companies a few years ago some of them (and more and more now) realized that they had to look elsewhere (brands?) for revenues and opportunities. Would any major label have seriously talked sonics a few years ago? I was derided in 2000, in 2010 there is a desire (if not yet a clamour) to understand what this is all about.

4. Maturity in the sonics industry

Those of us who have made it this far are just about figuring the right business model. It's not online, it's not pure consultancy, nor simply tactical execution of a client's needs. The model for sonic branding splits into 3 parts...and they will be the subject of my next post!

Meanwhile, I am interested in hearing from anyone out there who wants to join Cutting Edge in London or New York. I'm still hiring!

DJ