Sound Lounge Takes on a Latin Beat
Its Hispanic division, led by EP Gloria Pitagorsky and Mixer/Engineer Juan Aceves, brings authentic cultural insights to its work.
Sound Lounge Takes on a Latin Beat
Its Hispanic division, led by EP Gloria Pitagorsky and Mixer/Engineer
Juan Aceves, brings authentic cultural insights to its work.
By Anthony Vagnoni
Last year the New York-based audio post production and sound design shop Sound Lounge brought on Lead Mixer and Engineer Juan Aceves and opened a division dedicated to handling the needs of Hispanic ad agencies and producers working on Spanish-language content. The move comes along just as trends in the Hispanic advertising community are shifting, reflecting demographic changes among Hispanic consumers and the corresponding approach that marketers are taking to reach their Hispanic shoppers.
Driven in part by the hire of Gloria Pitagorsky as Executive Producer at the studio (she's Hispanic as well, despite the European ring of her surname), it's yet another example of how this New York-based audio house is continually finding new ways to engage its community of producers and creatives at agencies, along with feature film and TV program producers, editors and other members of the New York media scene.
The studio, which was founded in 1998 by Marshall Grupp and partners Tom Jucarone, Philip Loeb and Peter Holcomb, all veteran mixers, now boasts a full-time staff of 50, working out of two studio locations in the city. Its Flatiron studio, occupying 25,000 square feet on two and a half floors of a building on Fifth Avenue in the 20s, is its main hub. It's home to its feature mixing room, one of only a handful in New York, as well as a new ADR room (used recently on the feature "Limitless" and the HBO series "Treme"), mixing rooms, recording studios and client support areas. In 2005 the studio opened a second location downtown on Hudson Street in SoHo, to be closer to the increasing number of agencies housed in Lower Manhattan.
The Fifth Avenue dig is where Sound Lounge stages its many extracurriculars, most of which are headed up by Pitagorsky, a perpetual motion machine who maintains a breakneck schedule of events and activities balanced deftly between her work, her involvement with industry groups like AICP and AICE, her home life and her passion for the arts, movies and culture. There are receptions and art exhibitions and a book club and all kinds of stimulating gigs taking place after hours, making Sound Lounge as much of a hangout as a working studio. It's Pitagorsky's way of keeping tabs on the zeitgeist of the community. "The best way to know what's going on is to hold an event," she says.
The arrival of Aceves in the summer of 2010 was marked by the studio's first major Hispanic job. Aceves created the sound design and handled all audio mixing for a feature film titled "The Miracle of Spanish Harlem." Directed by Derek Velez Partridge and starring Kate Del Castillo and Luis Antonio Ramos, the film is a romantic drama that follows the story of Tito Jimenez, a widower and father of two girls who's trying to make it as a single dad in Upper Manhattan, enduring all the trials that such a process entails.
Since then, Aceves has lead Sound Lounge's Hispanic work on TV and radio campaigns for advertisers such as Cablevision, Publix, Panasonic, Chrysler, Verizon and Ford. Among the agencies he's worked with are Zubi, Latin Works, Global Works, Global Hue and Revolucion.
A three-time Emmy nominee for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for his work on the TV series "Dora the Explorer" and "Go, Diego, Go!," Aceves had previously worked on major Hispanic-focused commercial campaigns for such advertisers as General Motors, Coca-Cola and Home Depot. While new to Sound Lounge, he's an audio veteran, having previously founded the production companies Light at the End of the Tunnel and Big Rumble Music.
While encompassing all areas of production, Sound Lounge's mix of business is skewed toward advertising, which accounts for roughly two thirds of the work flowing through both locations. In addition to audio mixing and post and sound design, Sound Lounge also has a busy casting division as well as an offshoot called Radio Faces that can handle creative work for radio spots, when the need arises. Its engineers were well represented on the last Super Bowl, mixing work for such brands as Budweiser, CarMax, BMW and the NFL.
Founder Marshall Grupp says he's long wanted to get more involved in servicing the Hispanic ad community, seeing it as a natural outgrowth of the studio's work for agencies, but waited until he had the right mix of talent to set the wheels in motion. The first part of that process fell in place when Pitagorsky joined Sound Lounge as EP in 2009, moving over from audioEngine.
"I wanted to do this long before I met Gloria or Juan," he tells SourceEcreative. "But I'm a purist at heart, and I felt that if we were going to be creating work for the Hispanic market, we'd need to be working with people who understood the culture and the community."
"Joining Sound Lounge was the logical move for me," says Aceves of his decision to come to the studio last year. It marks the first time in his career that he's not been working independently, yet he was swayed to sign on not just by the studio's reputation and resources, but by its intent to succeed. "They were fully committed to doing this, and they pursued me very seriously," he says.
Pitagorsky can confirm that; "Juan's name kept coming up as we talked to people in the community about starting this division," she explains.
She and Aceves are aware that they've launched a Hispanic initiative just as clients are beginning to blur the lines between what used to be seen as 'general market' and 'specialty market' advertising. Over the past year, some marketers have consolidated their Hispanic assignments into their general brand agencies, a move Grupp admits has thrown them a bit of a curve. Aceves seems not that surprised by the development. "It's really a reflection of the growing economic power of Hispanics," he says. "We're becoming more mainstream in American society, and brands have recognized this."
He feels this trend is prompting Hispanic agencies to redefine themselves, which he sees as a good thing. "The Hispanic agency community is rethinking their role in the process," he observes. "They realize that they need to provide not just the language of the Hispanic consumer, but the cultural insights that only they can provide."
Aceves points out, for example, that Hispanics are tech-savvy users of communications and media, and as such he feels there's a perfect opportunity for Hispanic agencies to take a lead in creating and distributing mobile content for their audience. "All of this thinking and creativity needs to come from within," he says. "We may no longer be quite the immigrant community we used to be, but we still have unique tastes and attitudes that need to be addressed."
An example of this is the feature film he worked on last year, "The Miracle of Spanish Harlem," clearly a project dear to his heart. "The movie portrays Hispanics in a very positive way, and speaks to the struggle of what it means to be Hispanic in America today," he says. "It's a very endearing film that touches on everything from spirituality to economics. What I like best about it is that it speaks in realities, and portrays things the way they are. And that's an important quality about the work-that it's rooted in an authentic Hispanic experience.
"In a way, that's what we're trying to do here at Sound Lounge," he sums up. "To produce work that rings true with its audience and connects emotionally."
Published 14 April, 2011
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