Marketers Often Overlook Music in Campaigns, but Here's How They Can Start Weaving It Into Strategies

Music and artists are the backbone(s) of culture. They frame fashion, drive social media conversation, invent dance moves and memes and are a loss-leader lynchpin of the first trillion-dollar company. We've watched brands like Kanye West's Yeezy and Rihanna's Fenty Beauty turn entire categories on their head and generate millions in profit as a result.

TV spots can be turned from mediocre to iconic with the right song selection. Most CMOs will tell you how important music is, but many have no idea how to get involved in any meaningful way. It's weird out there in music land, but there are some basic things you can keep in mind as you try and get in the mix.

Think about music

Before you have a project on the go, take a breath and take a minute to think about your brand, the places music naturally intersects with it and what role you might want music and/or artists to play in the future. Think about your marketing budgets and if you could possibly carve a chunk of that out for more music-focused projects. Be realistic. Maybe you're a small brand that wants to cultivate a grassroots relationship with up-and-coming artists through product sponsorship. Maybe you really just need a good deal on a super recognizable song for your yearly Super Bowl ad. Or maybe you just need a resource for some affordable stock music for your endless online videos. Giving some bandwidth to think about music before you actually need it will turn a last-minute scramble into a well-prepared execution.

Investment, commitment and the end game

Music moves culture and resonates with people in profound ways, so it's priced accordingly. Be prepared to invest an allocated budget and be in the game for the long term, whatever your music game plan is. This applies equally to brands like Apple, who have consistently set a tone by working with artists on the cusp of being the next big thing, to brands like McDonald's, who have dedicated their paid media dollars to making their five “I'm lovin' it” notes one of the most recognized melodies by placing it in every single spot. Also, if you want to play the “we want to break a new artist” game, it's actually not tough to do—just spend a ton on the media buy. Cool creative won't do it. A one-off high-profile spot won't do it. Brute force will. But that's what you're buying media for in the first place, right?

Think about the end game when you're making deals, too. Do you really want to be the brand that's known in the music business for squeezing artists for ridiculously low fees, or would you rather be known as a reliable artist ally who gets the first look at the best opportunities and is seen as a legitimate collaborator?

Who's calling the shots?

The magic of music is the fact that it affects people enormously and that it also affects everyone differently. An astounding number of multi-million-dollar music decisions come down to simply a gut “I'm into it” or “I'm not into it” feeling by the person in charge of green-lighting the ad, which is certainly proof that the power of music exists beyond the realm of rational decision-making. However, that also means that no matter how demographically on-point your music strategy involving Migos is, if your CMO hates hip-hop, it will never, ever get the green light. I've never seen anyone talk someone into liking music they don't like—so plan accordingly.

Be prepared to be uncomfortable

It's not an overstatement to say that the music business is the Wild West. Artists curse, have political points of view, feud and sometimes they even reveal each other's marketing plans in the name of beef. Artists are driving culture, but doing business with them can be messy and requires stepping out of your pre-2018 comfort zone. Brands that are able to do so are rewarded with attention and relevance, but also have to navigate uncharted waters, convoluted contractual negotiations and the occasional PR dust-up.

Beyond ads

The next frontier is not simply soundtracking marketing materials but involving artists in product development. The link from artist to ROI for artist-created brands (OVO, Fenty, Yeezy) are clear, but the initial investment is substantial. That doesn't mean your brand can't play in the space. Something as simple as having Tyler, the Creator pick out the colorways for Converse's One Star relaunch last year drove them to sell out in a day. Even PornHub got into the artist collaboration game when they had hip-hop artist Young M.A. direct a film for them, which drove reams of press.

None of these cases were brands simply borrowing equity from a song and slapping it on an ad to affect consumer preference down the road. These were true artist collaborations with immediate, measurable returns on investment.

Now more than ever, the most successful artists are polymaths, as skilled at guiding graphic design and social media finesse as they are at writing hooks. Their triumphs are a result of their work as creative directors marshaling multiple songwriters, producers and publicists on their team to have the public hanging on every word. What more could a modern brand want in a marketing partner?

Former Horace girl to represent ND in music competition

BISMARCK — A former Fargoan will represent North Dakota in a national music competition later this year.

Chloe Marie Watterud, who now lives in Minot, received the most votes in the state competition of "Ethan Bortnick: Celebration of Music — Talent Search," which aired earlier this month on PBS. Her win was announced during Bortnick's Sunday, Sept. 23, concert in Bismarck.

Watterud, 16, was born in Fargo and attended Horace Elementary in Horace, N.D., before moving with her family to Minot in 2012 when she was in fifth grade. She is now in 11th grade and attends Minot High School Magic City Campus in Minot. She's been singing since the age of 8 and has released three singles.

Following the statewide victory, Watterud will compete in the Los Angeles Celebration of Music National Show later this year.

At the age of 9, Bortnick was recognized by the Guinness World Records as "The World's Youngest Solo Musician to Headline His Own Concert Tour." Now 17, Bortnick is seeking to highlight other young talents across the United States.

Five young musicians from Fargo-Moorhead also participated in the competition, including Cassie Ishaug, Katherine Leiseth and Hannah Leiseth of Moorhead and Victoria Sharp and Kwaician of Fargo.

Listening to music while exercising helps combat fatigue, according to new study

In addition to offering entertainment whilst running on the treadmill, listening to music during a workout can also lessen fatigue, according to new research.

The study, conducted by Brunel University London and published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology, found that hearing Marvin Gaye's rendition of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" while being active resulted in stimulation in the region of the brain associated with easing fatigue.

Participants also reported feeling that their workouts felt shorter and more exciting while listening to the 11-minute song, the only song used in the study.

Of the findings, study author Dr Marcelo Bigliassi told PsyPost: "Music is a very powerful auditory stimulus and can be used to assuage negative bodily sensations that usually arise during exercise-related situations".

As the music increases stimulus in this region of the brain, people feel less tired - which can increase the amount of time they are capable of exercising.

Dr Bigliassi thinks the findings could be especially helpful during "the most critical periods of the exercise regimen, when high-risk individuals are more likely to disengage from physical activity programmes (e.g., individuals with obesity, diabetes, etc.)".

However, Dr Bigliassi does have practical concerns when it comes to the effects of music on workouts.

Although science proves music does lessen fatigue, he worries that humans may become too reliant on music as an escape from reality.

"We have learnt so much about the psychophysical, psychological, and psychophysiological effects of music in the past two decades that people are almost developing a peculiar form of stimulus dependence," he said. "If we continue to promote the unnecessary use of auditory and visual stimulation, the next generation might be no longer able to tolerate fatigue-related symptoms and exercise in the absence of music."

To study the effects of music while working out, the researchers had participants lie down in an MRI scanner and exercise with a hand-strengthener grip ring.

Participants engaged in 30 exercise sets, each lasting 10 minutes, to study the impact of music.

Despite his concerns, Dr Bigliassi said: "Music and audiovisual stimuli can and should be used and promoted, but with due care."

However, instead of relying solely on music, he also feels that it is important people learn other ways to cope with fatigue associated with exercise.

Sharp Objects' Music Contains a Chilling Message

Three episodes in, it's still not clear what HBO's Sharp Objects is about, exactly. A string of murders in a small Missouri town? The secrets of Camille Preaker (Amy Adams), a journalist addicted to booze, self-harm, and flashbacks? The ominousness of swivel fans? The creator/writer Marti Noxon's elliptical storytelling and the director Jean-Marc Vallée's wandering gaze make for an immersive trip, but one in which you can't guess at even the next mile.

One thing is clear, though. This is a show about music. The title sequence opens with a needle descending on a record player, and the accompanying song changes week to week. Camille is the hyperactive DJ of her own life, queuing up tunes on her cracked iPhone when on drives, in bed, and in the bath. Her stepdad plays piano, and the town's social life revolves around a karaoke bar. Almost always, the soundtrack is diegetic: Viewers hear the same thing as the characters do.

Which isn't surprising given the show's pedigree. Last year, Vallée brought his alternately gauzy and jittery sensibility to Big Little Lies, another female-led murder-mystery miniseries that, in a very real way, revolved around songs. The children on the show had an eerily deep knowledge of David Bowie, and the parents conducted their skullduggery while humming to the Temptations. Most of the music was diegetic, and the concept of listening was, itself, thematic: a proxy for how people dwell on their own frequencies but can connect by sharing what's in their heads.

In Sharp Objects, something similar but not the same is going on. Music voices the show's central question: Is it better to look at the darkness, or to hide it? This inquiry begins on a visceral level with the creeping dread of the soundtrack curated by music supervisor Susan Jacobs, whether heard in Sylvan Esso's spindly folktronica or in Led Zeppelin's surging doom. LCD Soundsystem, though synonymous with partying, provides a desiccated drum loop as Camille approaches a funeral. Even Franz Waxman's "Dance and Angela," a stately shuffle for 1951's A Place in the Sun, subtly hisses and pops in the first title sequence. Damage, it seems, is everywhere.

Music marks social class and inner attributes, too. Hence why the picturesque mansion of Camille's mom, Adora, wafts with placid classical and standards beloved by her husband Alan Crellin, he of preppy sweaters and a carefully kept library of records. Frequently, the show mines the primness of the Crellins' tunes for irony. During a traumatic flashback Camille suffers in her first night back in her childhood bedroom, there's a spooky clamor in the background. As she frantically runs out of the house in the present day, the sound coheres into "The Way It Used to Be" by shmaltz-master Engelbert Humperdinck. Adora and Alan are dancing to it.

Camille's tastes run darker than her parents, obviously. Led Zeppelin is a staple, and at the karaoke bar, we learn that her go-to song is "Ring of Fire": an on-the-nose choice for an inwardly tormented country girl. (Strikingly, it's the version not by Johnny Cash but by Eric Burdon and the Animals that gets cued up.) The obnoxious bar owner's karaoke fave is Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," a bombastic and indulgent pick. When Camille follows her secretive young half-sister Amma in Episode 3, we faintly hear from her headphones "Mama's Gonna Give You Love" by Emily Wells: a tellingly hip and sexy twist on the classical music played at home. (It's also a typically eclectic pick from Jacobs, who won the first ever Emmy for music supervision last year).

Yet it turns out that Camille's tastes aren't entirely her own. In a flashback saga in the most recent episode, "Fix," we watched her check herself into a facility after cutting herself. There, she bonded with another self-harming patient, a teenage girl. That girl asked her about what she listened to, and Camille—bafflingly to viewers—replied, "It's not really my thing, music." Back then, apparently, she didn't listen to much. But the girl advised Camille that her headphones were the only healthy way she knew of dealing with pain. The two listened to Led Zeppelin's "Thank You" together, and Camille briefly borrowed the phone—only to return and find the girl had killed herself. Horrified though Camille was, she kept the phone.

The message here is as clear as it is queasy. Music acts as a way to self-medicate for Camille and for others like her, not unlike alcohol and long drives. It also reflects—or hides—truth. The women and girls of Sharp Objects have been policed to project one reality: doll-like rather than tomboy, purple rather than black, Engelbert Humperdinck rather than Jimmy Page. The penalties for stepping out of line can be brutal, but for Camille, the choice is between rocking out or hurting herself. When this latest episode ended with her hurling her iPhone from a car window in a fit of angst, it set up one of the show's most gut-churning mysteries yet: Can she survive the silence?

Friends for life, and music

Embracing wide-ranging cultural strains is hardly a new notion when it comes to the performance of music, even Western classical music. That certainly applies to the Nimrod Ensemble. The Berlin-based quartet will make its first appearance in this country Sunday evening at the YMCA in Jerusalem at 8 p.m.

The troupe's stratified ethos comes across, on the most basic level, simply by virtue of the members' nationalities. The foursome comprises Swiss violinist Christophe Horak, Italian violist Francesca Zappa, Belgian pianist Yannick Van de Velde, and "our very own" clarinetist Nur Ben Shalom, who was born and grew up in Tel Aviv. Ben Shalom has called Berlin home for the past decade and in the interim, has furthered his promising career with synergies all across the globe, including stints with the German Opera House Orchestra in Berlin, the Berliner Philharmoniker and a fun gig with classical composer John Williams. Now 27, highly personable Ben Shalom is delighted to come here with his pals in a professional capacity.

As befitting their variegated personal baggage, they have cooked up quite an eclectic program for the Jerusalem concert, which goes by the perfectly name of "From Berlin to Jerusalem." The repertoire takes in Mozart's Kegelstatt Trio for clarinet, viola and piano, and Two Songs for Voice Viola and Piano, and the Violin Sonata No. 2 – both by Brahms, with the vocal role of the former transposed to clarinet. Things get more contemporary with Bartok's Contrasts for violin, clarinet and piano, written in 1938, and the musical and cultural zeitgeist will come bang up to date with the world premiere of Nizar Elkhater's Samai Nimrod, for violin, viola, clarinet and piano.

Elkhater and Ben Shalom go back a long way.

"I've known Nizar since the age of 12," says the clarinetist. He and 32-year-old Lod-born Muslim pianist-composer Elkhater were members of the multidenominational youth ensemble Arab Jewish Orchestra, and Ben Shalom has performed with the orchestra, which Elkhater now conducts. The orchestra's operational theme embraces the inclusion of Western and Eastern instruments and readings of cross-cultural material, so it is only natural that Elkhater's specially commissioned work, which will be given its first public airing later today, feeds off western classical and Arabic sensibilities and sounds.

For Ben Shalom, classical music has been something of a life saver.

"I started out on recorder, like most kids," he notes. "There was a wonderful music teacher there, called Hanan Shomroni. I went to the Open Democratic School in Jaffa, which I didn't like very much. I basically survived the school because of Hanan," Ben Shalom chuckles.

Besides bringing his young charges humus from the nearby feted Abu Hassan eatery, Shomroni also instilled Ben Shalom and quite a few other kids at the school, who subsequently went on to take their music very seriously – and even made a profession out of it – with an enduring love for musical creation.

"Hanan was a sort of mentor," the Berliner recalls. "At recess we'd go to his room and, even if we only had a five-minute break, he'd say 'let's play some music together.' We'd talk about all sorts of things, too. He really was a guiding light."

Shomroni left his inspirational imprint on other Open Democratic School students who later become professional musicians, such as New York-based jazz flutist Itai Kriss, blues-pop musician Itai Pearl and internationally renowned Indian-oriented Israeli wind instrument player and producer Shye Ben Tzur.

Ben Shalom's musical epiphany actually took place outside the school.

"Hanan ran weekly concerts at Bet Tami, on Sheinkin Street. I was just six or seven years old. One day, the program included the Mozart Clarinet Quintet for clarinet and a string quartet," he recalls. The boy's enthusiastic response to the music did not go unnoticed. "To this day, Hanan relates how I sat there transfixed by the clarinet. After that I started on clarinet."

IT HASN'T all been plain sailing for Ben Shalom.

"That concert on Sheinkin initiated my love-hate relationship with Mozart," he laughs. "Mozart's works are some of the most challenging around for musicians." The 18th century Austrian composer's charts do not, at first look or listen, seem to be overly complex. But appearances can be deceptive.

"There aren't too many notes or technical aspects in there, but the minimalism and the simplicity of the sound and the instrument and who you are, are expressed in a very basic way. That's very difficult to achieve."

While he remains rooted in his Western classical training, Ben Shalom says he takes a keen interest in works that feed off of different cultural lines of thought and creation.

"I am not a jazz player, I am a classical musician. But I have connections with electronic music, and I have always been intrigued by interfaces between old and new music, to see what exists between the old cultural world that produced Mozart's work for clarinet, and the specific sounds the clarinet can produce, and compare that with the modern or postmodern world. It is that paradox that interests me."

Unless you're playing solo, you have to be empathetic – not to say sympathetic – toward your partners in musical arms. That, says Ben Shalom, is a basic tenet of the quartet's philosophy, and is an element that is reflected in the group's work and, in fact, even in its name. In the Bible, Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah, was a hunter. It also happens to be the name of the ninth of the 15 Variations written by British composer Edward Elgar, which, in turn, was named for German-born British music producer Augustus J. Jaeger. Jaeger was a close friend of Elgar's, and his surname means "hunter" in German. Hence the connection with the Berlin-based quartet.

"Besides playing music together, we are all really good friends," says Ben Shalom. There is more subtextual intent in the quartet's moniker. "It also references Nimrud, which was destroyed by ISIS," says the clarinetist, referring to the ancient historical site in Iraq.

More than anything, Ben Shalom wants us all to take a deep breath and, to paraphrase and borrow from 1960's countercultural climes, "turn on and tune in." That goes for him and his quartet cohorts, too.

"There is that magical moment when we listen to each other. It doesn't matter where you come from, personally or culturally. There is the moment the connects us all, as long as you are listening and receptive." That avenue of thought pointed Ben Shalom in the direction of smaller groups, rather than full-scale orchestras. "That's why I prefer chamber music. With chamber music you have to know how to listen, and to be open."

Ben Shalom says his old pal's work is a prime example of that.

"Nizar's composition, which we will play for the first time ever, is exactly that – listening. We [musicians] all come from our background, with our own specialist field."

It is the extraneous which, paradoxically, draws everyone in.

"Suddenly, we have to cope with music from a very different cultural place, like Samai Nimrod, with its Eastern elements, we have to be receptive. That generates a special moment. That's also why we chose to play it at the YMCA, and what the place represents – an interface between cultures. That's exciting."