Monthly Archives: February 2010

Trident gum and the long-lasting music campaign

By February 22 2010, 4:01 pm Leave a comment

We picked up on Trident Gum’s latest foray into music at the back of last week. Netting £30,000 for attending 30 global music events over 30 weeks has got to be one of the more compelling prize pots we’ve seen in some time. In terms of playing to your intended audience’s desires, competitions don’t come much more tailored than this, and we fully expect to see young music fans clambering over each other to net this lucrative prize.

The Perpetual Festival marks another tie up between AEG and Trident, who collaborated on last year’s successful ticket giveaway to an exclusive Beyonce concert at the O2. This follow up campaign has the potential to generate plenty of interest, the only question is whether it can sustain that interest throughout the year after the ultimate winner has been selected?

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The BRIT Awards brand endorsement showcase

By February 16 2010, 12:49 pm 1 Comment

The Annual BRIT Awards take place tonight marking one of the key moments in the UK’s music calendar. Perhaps even more so this year as the event celebrates its 30th broadcast.  Music sales will undoubtedly rise post event – albeit temporally – as the cream of the UK’s popular music scene take to the stage. However, aside from the compelling performances (and the media gripes about who has and hasn’t been nominated) there is another undercurrent of interest that barely gets a mention. In many ways the event is a showcase of musical acts that brands, seeking to impact the popular youth market, should be honing in on – if they haven’t already.

With labels and artists eager to supplement their declining recording revenue with lucrative brand alignments the stage is set to highlight some of the UK’s biggest players in this space tonight. If you are shopping for a mass-market appeal act then the BRIT Awards is offering you a one-stop shopping channel for the few hours it broadcasts.  A quick scan of the acts performing tonight highlights their ongoing brand appeal, with the majority of artists present involved in brand alignments running concurrently with the event: Cheryl Cole (L’Oreal), Kasabian (Umbro), JLS (Nokia), Lily Allen (Xbox), Dizzie Rascal (Nike), and Florence and the Machine (a saturation of syncs across UK TV).

Pixie Lott, one of the BRITs’ most nominated acts – who performed at the launch event – has spent the last year racking up a string of endorsement deals (Nokia, Casio, Guitar Hero, River Island, EA, Orange, O2, and MySpace – to name just a few). Even Lady Gaga – one of the international acts taking to the BRITS stage – is open for branded business, having recently signed up to a creative partnership with Polaroid.

Although not on a par with the Grammys or the Super Bowl, it will be worth watching the ad breaks to see just which brands are utilising music around the event. Last year Coca-Cola chose to break its Duffy cycling commercial during the BRITs, and ITV itself decided to run a competition pitching ad agencies against each other for some of the lucrative commercial partnership slots.

Of course the biggest brand of the evening is MasterCard who recently
decided to extend the UK’s longest running music sponsorship for a further
three years. Bearing in mind the MasterCard sponsorship I’d be highly surprised if Barclaycard didn’t roll out the roller-coaster version of its water slide commercial during one of the breaks.  Finance entities aside, one of the brands definitely taking a slot is O2. The mobile brand intends to push its Top-up Surprises programme, offering every one of their users a ‘gold’ surprise – the likes of which could include becoming a popstar for the day with Rihanna.

A full 30 year’s on and the BRIT Awards now operate in a music ecosystem where sales are fleeting and brand alignments offer artists a whole new gamut of opportunity. (Not to mention the opportunities for the event itself which even has its own official watch sponsor.)   However, from the brand side – as with normal TV shopping channels – it’s probably best not to go for an impulse buy tonight. That’s not to say that the acts on show don’t all have their place amid the right campaign. However, entering into an unconsidered alignment, without proper research behind the brand fit, means there is a real chance the endorsement you thought was solid gold could turn out to be an expensive Diamonique stone around your brand’s neck.

For more on ensuring music endorsements work for your brand see our previous article. 

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Product placement ban lift could revitalise music TV

By February 10 2010, 11:48 am 1 Comment

As the UK Government lifts a ban on product placement in British TV programmes, could The X Factor become the UK Super Bowl for brands?  If placement traction in the US is anything to go by it certainly could.
 
The introduction of product placement offers something of a desperate lifeline to the beleaguered broadcasting industry. UK Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw stated that keeping an enforced ban “would lead to continuing damage” of the creative industries and that to do so would also “jeopardise the competitiveness of UK programme-makers against the rest of the EU”. The decision leaves Denmark as the only EU country with a ban in place and new shows utilising the format are expected to roll out in the UK later this year.
 
The news may have a major impact on the way music reality shows – such as The X Factor – are handled in the UK. In America – where product placement accounts for around 5-6% of the advertising market – reality shows stole all the top 10 product placement slots in the US in 2009, according to Nielsen. American Idol featured 4,349 product placements during a recent run – which included a $35M deal with Coca-Cola. This brand saturation saw the Fox TV network generating $903M in advertising revenue in 2008 around the show. It’s not difficult to see how this will be replicated in the UK. ITV was apparently selling 30-second ad slots to late buyers for an estimated £190,000 – £250,000 in the run up to Christmas and product placements are bound to be equally lucrative.   Some experts believe new deals could raise as much as £125M annually for the broadcasting industry, although UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom is estimating that product placement could make a more realistic £25M to £35M within five years of launching.
 
Either way the prospects seem bright amid a £3B TV advertising market that is predicted to decline into 2012. However, some broadcasters are concerned that the news will simply divert marketing resources rather than provide additional funds. Also many advertisers are concerned over the additional ‘blacklist’ – against alcohol brands and food and drinks high in fat, salt or sugar – put in place by the UK Government. “If you take out HFSS and alcoholic drinks, those are the two areas most likely to get excited about product placement,” said one broadcaster.
 
A more interesting question for the music business is whether the recent interest in ad-funded music (such as Spotify) could now swing back to TV and usher in a wave of brand sponsored music TV models. Product placement in Internet music-based dramas – where restrictions don’t apply – have been utilised previously, such as Universal Music and Bebo’s online drama ‘The Secret World of Sam King’ in 2008 (which featured placement by Sony Ericsson). However, these audiences are minuscule when compared to national TV exposure.
 
Arguably the UK music industry has had to position its artists as ‘placed products’ on TV for some considerably time both in stand alone shows and within established dramas. As recording revenues continue to fall the gentle nudge towards deeper brand alignments rapidly becomes a shove of necessity. With the death of the traditional music television format – depicted by Top of the Pops/MTV’s TRL – could product placement see a resurgence of ad-funded music television? With artists and brands both crying out for greater exposure the lifting of the ban potentially opens up a wealth of opportunity. The X Factor hit its highest ever audience figures last year, making it unlikely to move from pole position for some time, but the next generation of integrated brand led music TV could be ushered in sooner than we realise with household names taking centre stage.

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Music awards see 150% endorsement ad rise

By February 5 2010, 3:48 pm 2 Comments

 The 52nd Grammy Awards netted an average of 25.8M viewers, representing a rise of 32% over the same event in 2009, making it the most watched Grammy’s since 2004. A large part of this can be attributed to the calibre of artists performing and a renewed social media push for the annual awards show pre event. However, some of the best music wasn’t actually taking place on stage at all.  

Artists such as the Black Eyed Peas, Pearl Jam, Nick Jonas, Shiny Toy Guns and Eric Clapton all made appearances across ads from Mastercard, Lincoln, T-Mobile and Target during the broadcast. In fact a GreenLight Ad Gauge of the event highlights how 15% of the Grammy ad breaks saw brands utilising celebrity endorsements, up a massive 150% on the previous year. Around 22% of these advertisements made use of licensed music (around the same as in 2009), with only 3% of brands using jingles (McDonald’s and Outback Steakhouse, to name two). “Last year, we saw brands cut costs by focusing mostly on the licensing of pop music to maintain some celebrity presence in their ads,” said David Reeder, Vice President, GreenLight. “This year, we’re seeing brands again use music to connect with consumers, but they’re also signing music acts and other stars to maximize the reach and impact of their message”.

Interestingly it was commercials from the auto industry that made the biggest use of endorsements, with 26% making use of celebrities and/or music. One such brand, which looked to make a sizeable impact with music during the Grammys, was Ford. The auto brand is a regular partner with music in the US, having sponsored American Idol for a number of years (with campaigns such as the Ford Music Video Sweepstakes). Ford’s Lincoln car brand used its advertising slots during the Awards to showcase a series of commercials – for the Lincoln MKZ, MKT and MKS – featuring US band Shiny Toy Guns performing their version of the 1983 Peter Schilling track ‘Major Tom (Coming Home)’. Visitors to a dedicated website could also see exclusive live concert footage of both Shiny Toy Guns and Australian singer Sia (who also sound-tracks one of the new Lincoln ads). In addition to the current ad campaign, those frequenting the site are also being encouraged to participate in a crowd-sourced campaign which will see them voting for one of four emerging bands to perform a song to accompany the next Lincoln ad. There is also a sweepstakes to win one of the vehicles and a chance to see Shiny Toy Guns in concert.

So is it working? Is the car brand’s use of music having the desired effect? The Ad Gauge report suggested the brand arrived  “a day late and a dollar short to the American Idol phenomenon” – an odd choice of word’s given Ford’s commitment to the long-running talent contest. The truth here is that Ford’s ongoing bid to utilise younger consumer touch-points is apparently impacting sales. From 2005 to 2009 Lincoln’s share of the luxury segment rose by a sizeable 30%. During this time their ads have feature music by Daft Punk and Cat Power (who cover Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ in 2008). If that isn’t enough Ford itself has also just announced a 25% jump in sales in January 2010 over 2009.

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