Corporate Decision Making and Honey Bees

Music is perceived and consumed inside our brains and nobody knows if how you or I hear a single piece of music is consistent.

We know for certain that listening to music lights up huge areas of our brains - but that the patterns discernible through investigations with EEGs are different for different people. We also know that music and memory are inextricably linked - so we can deduce that when I hear a piece of music, particularly if I have heard it before, then my personal memories of when, where and how I first heard it will form a part of my understanding of it today.

So how can marketing people and corporations ever agree on a piece of music for a commercial or as part of their brand identity when in reality, they are all hearing and perceiving that single piece of music differently?

Over the years, I've seen a few patterns emerge in how decisions get made in this most subjective of areas. Here is one of them. I'll save others for a rainy day...

The Honey Bee Decision

Honey bees are clever little social creatures and the way they communicate with each other shows us one way corporations make decisions (on anything really but I'll focus on music).

In searching out new flowery hunting grounds senior bees are sent out into the world to do some fact finding. When each bee returns to the hive, it communicates the quality of the blooms it has discovered by doing a dance. So what you get after a major exploration day is a lot of bees, all dancing furiously in order to tell the rest of the bees that their discovery is worth a visit. Here's the clever and simple bit. The hive will only follow the bee that does the most elaborate and longest dance. In other words, the bee that bee-lieves (see what I did there?) the most in its own discovery will dance with more passion and fervent energy than any other and as a consequence, other bees will follow it to the flower-bed it is championing.

Over the years I have seen the bee dance in action. In corporations where passion and belief are usually in scarce supply, if one person - no matter their seniority in a group - is willing to jump up and down and wave their arms about for long enough they will often end up getting their own way. Others will follow simply because they don't have the personal belief or stamina to champion their own choices in the face of the long dance. The group ends up making a decision because of the conviction, confidence and willingness to stand up and be counted of a single member of the team.

Now for the bad news. In my experience, the person willing to do the dance is hardly ever the person championing the best option for the corporation - they usually champion the best option only for themselves. Where bees have no ego, unfortunately advertising and marketing people do. My advice? Beware the bee - and don't follow the dancer.

NB Agencies (like mine) are founded on their abilities to identify and select strategies for getting subjective work agreed and signed off by large groups. Do you feel used? Have I ever done the bee dance? Are all questions rhetorical?

DJ

The Half-Life of a Papadum

In this, my second (and probably last) food-based business lesson, I will investigate the strange thing about popadums.

A papadum is a thin, crispy Indian flatbread that goes well with a whole range of Indian chutneys and a pint of Kingfisher. But the really interesting thing about a papadum (and this can only be discovered through close ethnographic studies in Indian restaurants) is that a papdum has a half-life.

Nobody at the table ever takes more than half of a papadum. They start off about the size of a dinner plate - before you smash them into pieces and people start eating. For a while everyone gorges but at some point - usually towards the end of the popadum course - you get down to just one piece left in the basket. This is where the strange psychology of the popadum half-life starts to occur.

No matter how small that single piece gets - with people breaking bits off for a nibble - nobody EVER takes more than half of it. To take more than half would be greedy, uncaring and unsharing. Other diners would be resentful. It's like the single piece of popadum is screaming to stay alive - fighting for its life - refusing to give up until it is too small to be divided again (about the size of a large coin) and it is either left alone completely or some late-comer to the table eats it out of their own desperation and hunger.

The number of interesting business ideas that I've learned from the half-life of the popadum are almost as numerous as the choice of chutneys (4) at my local Balti:

1. Get stuck in early. You are entitled to half a piece - no matter how large the papadum starts out. The early grab gets you a massive amount of value for your half.

2. Don't leave it late. Come into the papadum market at the end at your either get a tiny half - or you end up with the scrap that's had everyone's fingers on it.

3. When you are trying to sell a proposition, double up what you really want to sell because the half-life principals apply. People will almost always bite off about half of what you can do.

Now it's your turn.

You know how you can only fold a piece of paper in half 8 times - no matter how large it started out? I wonder how many times a papadum can be halved before you get to the fingery end-piece. Answers on a postcard please.

Cinnamon Pretzel or Pointy Thing?

These delightful eatables are called cinnamon pretzels. They are from Louis' Hungarian Confectionery in Hampstead, North-West London.

I pass hundreds of cafes and delicatessens, tea-rooms and restaurants on my way home from work every week but once a week, usually on a Friday, I make a point to stop on my journey, go to Louis' Hungarian Confectionery and buy these frankly AWESOME pretzels. I usually buy myself a coffee too. And sometimes something else to eat.

Louis' has been running for nearly 50 years and I put that longevity down to these pretzels. I have never seen them anywhere else, they are ridiculously tasty and they are always the same.

Do I need to spell out why this is interesting?

First up - these pretzels are a point of difference for Louis'. They are the one thing Louis' do better than anyone else - and frankly the coffee is pretty poor but I drink it anyway.

Secondly, these pretzels make my life a little bit more enjoyable. They are a positive force for happiness and Louis' provides them. This is why I love Louis'.

Lastly, they are consistently good, have never let me down (except for when they are sold out) and so I have come to trust them - these inanimate sugar/cinnamon cakey things are like old friends.

So I'm reminded of how my business needs to run: We only really need to be known in the market for one thing - and as long as that thing delivers real benefits and is consistently delivered we should continue to be successful. This 'one thing' becomes what I've heard call a 'pointy thing'; the thing that allows a service business like a sonic branding agency to get through the door of a big corporation - even when they already have vast rosters of general marketing agencies.

Of course, once you have made it through the door, your strategy can change - you can sell coffee and sandwiches - but try selling your average coffee without having a cinnamon pretzel to bring in the customers...it's just not going to happen.

The best sonic branding agencies have cinnamon pretzels; maybe logo design or retail sound design, vocal branding or device sounds. The companies that work out what their pointy things are and concentrate to make them as good as they can possibly be are the ones who will share in the enormous growth of the industry over the next few years. My personal challenge? I like almond danish. And lemon drizzle cake. And pain au chocolat. And Brioche. And tiramisu.

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...