Change of Tune

In an age when consumers are choosing to watch pop videos online, music and brands are collaborating at an all-new level to enhance promo projects and create more income streams, writes David Knight.

Late last year, a new music video appeared for UK grime star Professor Green that broke new ground. Directed by Chris Cairns through Partizan Darkroom for Green’s new track Coming to Get Me, it was an online video shot with a special 360º camera, allowing viewers to explore the environment around the rapper in the video with the click of a mouse – the first of its kind on YouTube – and then subsequently with a groundbreaking iPhone app. But his record label, EMI, paid nothing for the production of the track or the video. Instead, it was entirely financed by Doritos, as part of the snack brand’s global Late Night campaign – even though there is no pack shot and not a single crisp is consumed during the video.

But together with another video for superstar Rihanna that utilises augmented reality technology, Professor Green’s video is based online at Doritos’ Late Night YouTube channel, which surrounds the video with its branding. As such, it is a prime example of the recent upsurge of ‘branded music videos’, where music and brands are partnering to provide gamechanging impetus to existing promo projects, or initiating entirely new ones.

Interactive music experience

“The ambition is to be the UK’s most entertaining snack brand,” says Benedict Pringle, account manager at Doritos’ London agency AMV BBDO. “Our target audience are social creatures who relentlessly crave currency to share with their friends: a funny video, a great photo or – in our case – a unique, online and interactive music experience featuring the most soughtafter UK recording artist.”

Converse and its agency Anomaly New York can probably claim to have pioneered the branded music video when they began the 3 Artists 1 Song project in 2008, as part of Converse’s 100th-anniversary Connectivity campaign. “We curated three artists to make original music who could only be connected by Converse,” says Anomaly creative director Ian Toombs. “Music videos were a natural extension of the campaign.”

The first project was My Drive-Thru by N.E.R.D., The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas and Santogold, who were captured in a music video involving 9,500 animated paper dolls of themselves directed by Psyop. A second teamup last year – Kid Cudi, Best Coast and Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij’s All Summer – resulted in another highly creative video by Psyop, featuring huge puppet heads of the collaborators on human bodies. But neither video had any significant product shots of the artists wearing the brand.

Fresh appeal

“Converse knows it can’t beat its audience over the head with marketing – the audience is too smart and cynical,” says Toombs. “The brand moves through popular culture organically by giving consumers something fresh that they actually want.” The campaign recently moved to Britain with the team-up of Hot Chip, New Order’s Bernard Sumner and DJs Hot City for Didn’t Know What Love Was – and a surreal video by top Swedish director Andreas Nilsson involving multiple Hot Chip impersonators and Sumner being followed around by his human shadow.

Anomaly’s executive producer Andrew Loevenguth confirms that Converse regards music videos as a more credible way of getting the message across than commercials. “Converse has always been a part of music so it’s almost a natural extension of the brand to do things like this,” he says. In fact, unlike a conventional promo where the director would originate the treatment, all the ideas for the Converse videos start at Anomaly. “Then we refine the idea with a director we love,” says Toombs.

Audience entertainment

According to Jack Horner, managing director of London-based FRUKT Communications, a company that has brokered deals between brands and artists for a decade, Converse has blazed a trail for others to follow, thanks to the vision of its chief marketing officer Geoff Cottrill. “It’s an era when brands don’t want to shout from billboards; they want to entertain their audiences,” he says.

The video for veteran dance outfit Faithless’ Feelin’ Good, directed by Stylewar, features Fiat’s sporty Punto Evo in what Krow Communications, Fiat’s London agency, described as the first ‘prommercial’ when it appeared last summer. In the video, voodoo dolls of the band’s Maxi Jazz and Sister Bliss swing around on the rearview mirrors of two Evos, affecting the movement of two hapless clubbers.

“Faithless themselves weren’t paid any money to endorse Fiat,” states Jason Knight, Krow’s head of branded content and entertainment, who supervised the project. He adds that both sides were treated as equal partners in the project, able to veto or approve ideas. “The only proviso was that the car would feature within the narrative,” continues Knight. “But it meant we could cross-pollinate a mainstream car audience and a mainstream music audience.”

The partnership proved hugely successful, he says, not least because Fiat bought out a complete ad break in last summer’s Big Brother to show the video. “That was two years of MTV viewers in one broadcast – 12 million people have viewed the video.” Faithless have a slick, well-produced video they could not otherwise afford – and Fiat also created a special Feelin’ Good edition of the Evo.

FRUKT’s Horner says that artists and their management have been quicker to appreciate the potential benefits of brand tie-ins than record labels. “Most understand the realities of the spend they need on recording, video and tour production. It doesn’t feel like selling out – artists are embracing it. There are some awkward fits, but most of the brand stuff nowadays is pretty slick and credible.”

Win-win situation

Advertisers are certainly adept at judging the crossover between brand and artist popularity. IKEA’s Kitchen At Parties, for instance, has to be described as a ‘win-win’. IKEA’s agency, Mother London, assumed record-label-style responsibilities to get young band Man Like Me to cover Jona Lewie’s song and commercially release the track on Southern Fried Records – all to accompany Academy director Kim Gehrig’s full-length video, where the duo enter a house and perform the song as they pass through four interconnecting IKEA kitchens. The result was a big viral hit, which was voted one of the most popular ads of the year.

Feh Tarty, creative director at Mother, says the project began when IKEA discovered that not many people knew they actually sold kitchens. “So we investigated undiscovered clichés about kitchens – including the fact people always end up there at parties.” As an American living in London, he claims he was not even aware of Lewie’s song. “Then someone played me the track. I’m listening to it and thinking: ‘Is he saying the idea?’”

Full impact

Tarty says that opting to make a music video instead of simply an ad was the most legitimate way of expressing that idea. “The fact is that the whole song is a story, and without it you don’t get the full impact.” He adds that making it a genuine part of the music business – with a new version produced by Arthur Baker and the video being sent to MTV – was “more authentic” for the brand.

Gehrig devised the ‘Rubik’s cube of kitchens’ element, coming up with the Escher-style construction of the set with production designer Gregg Shoulder. She points out that the job arrived “absolutely in the way of a commercial”, but the production process was certainly more like a video. It took three weeks from start to finish and was shot in Romania to save money. “My previous experience in videos definitely helped,” she goes on to explain. “You shoot quicker, you bring everyone on board and it’s actually quite liberating. Agencies think it’s quite enjoyable – it loosens everybody up.”

Chris Cairns also recognises the issue of reconciling commercial needs with music-video-style budgets in his Professor Green project for Doritos. The idea of making a 360º video originally came from Doritos’ US agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners, which briefed AMV in London. Cairns was initially attracted by the prospect of being able to brief an artist he admired to create a suitable song that would work with a 360º video. “That was awesome,” he says. “I got into filmmaking through making stuff to music. This [project] meant we could do that and play with toys we otherwise wouldn’t be able to.”

Horror-story scenario

Having dabbled with the 360º camera before (a five-lens contraption, producing images stitched together later in post) and with an open creative brief, Cairns planned a horror-story scenario to go with the Late Night theme. However, this eventually clashed with the realities of marketing when the client forced revisions to the concept at a pre-pro meeting days before the shoot, to make it acceptable to all ages.

Although a new script was quickly assembled, Cairns can reflect on the potential problems with branded music videos. “The prep was all about the commercial, but the budget was low in commercial terms,” he says. “It puts production in a very difficult position. This was sold as an experimental job to crew – but then it had Doritos attached to it.”

Cairns adds that, “creatively, it hasn’t put [him] off ”, particularly taking satisfaction from the iPhone 4 app he developed with Neil Mendoza, which he considers to be the most intuitive way of experiencing the video. “That’s the sort of thing that gets us out of bed in the morning – doing stuff that was interesting and fun – and the agency was up for us pushing it as much as possible.” And it was clearly a winner for Doritos. “With more than 1.9 million views of our YouTube channel and more than half a million views of our supporting content, the video has been phenomenally successful with our audience,” says AMV’s Pringle.

But is this really the start of something? There is no doubt that the artists and labels will be eager to play ball with the agencies and brands in their ongoing quest to open up new income streams. And Converse certainly looks like it’s on board long term. “We have more things coming up – especially in the UK,” reveals Anomaly’s Toombs. “We’d love to continue this platform for a very long time.”

Here to stay

Mother’s Tarty reckons the branded music video is here to stay too – or at least that music and brands will continue to integrate in interesting ways. “It’s a changing of the guard,” he says. “Music doesn’t have the budgets; advertisers do. And now artists can do things in a way where they’re being themselves.” But Krow’s Knight points out that another group is even more important to the success of this relationship: “The key is that consumers are happy with it. The marketplace is comfortable – so long as it’s done well.”

Ultimately, the most significant aspect of all may be advertising’s adoption of the format associated with promoting music. For example, Gehrig’s next job after IKEA was for Nokia’s new music-making Loop app. No band is involved in Poodle Loop – a very stylised trip to a Shanghai poodle parlour – but with its extended length and aesthetic it feels like a pop video.

“It starts as a documentary, with a product demo at its heart, and ends as a music video,” explains Gehrig. “Music is always associated with advertising. The public are open to that cross-fertilisation. I think we can push it further.”