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.
