Music Tips for Brands that Want to Turn It Up

“If you’ve ever seen the viral TikTok of Voldemort posing to Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’, you’ll know that music, when set to picture, really can make all the difference!” Associate music supervisor / producer at SIREN, Alice Benton, knows how much difference music makes to creative projects. “Whether it be for film, TV, or for your advertising campaign, music plays a pivotal role in telling your story, and telling your audience how to feel,” she says. 

The strange fact is that despite the platitudes the industry gives to the importance of music in advertising, people still keep having to emphasise its importance, like the marketing world suffers some sort of mass amnesia around this topic. Jack Whitney, head of music at Forever Audio, can’t overstate the power of getting it right. “Approaching music with the same attention and value as visual assets is key to a strong brand identity,” he says. “Music has this amazing power to evoke an emotional response from an audience, so brands should look to tactically harness this power within their marketing.”

Sean Mahoney, sound designer at Jungle, points out that we all know this deep down. “Music has the ability to pull at our heartstrings in ways that visuals simply can't match,” he says. “It's a direct line to our emotions, capable of flipping our mood like a switch. This makes music a powerful tool in advertising, however it can sometimes be overlooked. Its impact should not be underestimated, as it can completely change your perception of a piece of work.”

Let’s not waste any more page space justifying music’s value in advertising. Instead, we turn to music experts to ask them what advice they have for marketers who want to make sure that their musical choices fly high.

Because, as Scott Brittingham, co-founder and executive producer of Pull (a music company), says, “we’ve all read a thousand articles about how important that force is for branding but not many articles focus on why one brand is better at it than another.” 

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Your favourite tracks are never going to be the most suited to what you want to do in your brand’s advertising. “Your Spotify favourites are not relevant,” says Maik Cox, head of music production at Amp.Amsterdam. “What works for the project is more important than your personal taste.”

As Jack at Forever Audio says, to avoid your personal preferences getting in the way, marketers should “always try to bring an unbiased view. Set up some audio brand guidelines, just like you would for your brand's visual guidelines.”

Glenn Minerley, SVP, head of talent collective, Momentum Worldwide is an expert in partnerships with famous musical artists and has produced dozens of private concerts with superstar acts including Drake, Elton John, Sting, Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello. And his advice is equally ruthless: “Don’t have the client serve as a cultural barometer. It’s great that your daughters’ friends love that new song by Sexyy Red, but that doesn’t mean she’s right for your brand. I’m glad you loved JoJo Siwa’s performance on ‘The Masked Singer’, but that’s not the criteria for impactful celeb alliances. Look for shared values, willingness to participate in the concept by the celebrity and synergy with the artist's audience.” 

Thinking about the role of an artist’s audience leads us on to another crucial consideration: How do you want to use music? As Alice from SIREN spells out, it’s not as straightforward as that might first seem. “Is it simply a case of a track against a visual, or is there a clever, more unique way of using music to help tell the story? Can the people in your ad hear the music too? Is there a specific lyric that’s particularly apt, or adds another layer of meaning to your story?”

Creative director at Sonic Union, Zac Colwell, urges marketers to consider who their advertising is for. “Creating the perfect music for media is an inevitable part of branding, whether that’s explicitly understood or subliminal,” he says. “Music is a tool to create a sense of time, a lack of movement, energy, colour, light, sadness, wonder, or any other emotion we feel as human beings, and that’s why it’s so important in storytelling.” To think of something as a ‘backing track’ is offensive to your brand and its ambitions.

"Without music, life would be a mistake,” said Nietzsche. He wasn’t wrong, suggests Scott at Pull, and asserts that this also applies to your brand. “Without (the right) music, your brand would be a mistake. As you know, unlike a static image (your logo here), music and sound are a dynamic force that speaks to us on a deeply personal and emotional level.”

Great music choice needs to consider how it plays into a broad strategy for how your brand is perceived. Sean at Jungle has noticed a trend in briefs that reference popular soundtracks. “While these tracks can sound great, they often lack correlation with the feel and meaning of the project,” he says. “Music has the potential to convey a lot about a brand, making the selection of appropriate music paramount.”

Music can be on-brand or off-brand, explains Jack at Forever Audio. “Does the way it makes you feel resonate with the values and messaging you are trying to communicate? This strategic way of thinking about music is often overlooked, yet it can play such a powerful role in a brand's identity. It goes further than branded music or sonic logos; brands should look to apply this logic to their choice of library, bespoke, and even commercially licensed music. After all, short-term campaigns all contribute to a brand's long-term identity.”

For brands early in your sonic identity journey, Jack suggests trying to ascertain how you are perceived by your audience. “Use market research to evaluate the impact of music on your campaigns, and also determine how aligned your music choices are with your core values. This will help refine your approach accordingly.”

Having a music strategy can build a brand into a dimension that it's never expanded into before. Alice at SIREN has more helpful questions you can ask yourself as a marketer: “How can you brand the music for your campaign now and in the future. Is there a genre, a style, or a particular artist that you could replicate across multiple ads? We find that the strongest musical branding are the brands that stay consistent. Giving your brand a particular sound is achievable across all budgets – bespoke, production libraries, or big name artists.”

As anyone who’s found an old mp3 player from a different age will realise, trends in music come and go. “When it comes to style preferences, try to avoid using popular songs or genres simply because they are on-trend,” says Jack at Forever Audio. “Ultimately, if the music doesn't align with your brand values or messaging, the campaign might not be as impactful as it potentially could be because it doesn't resonate with your target audience. Instead, focus on selecting music that feels genuine and authentic to your brand.”

Why stick to what’s familiar when difference is what advertising trades in. “Think outside the box – something with an edge, that’s slightly unexpected might make consumers sit up and listen. Use music to help you stand out,” says Alice at SIREN.

Music is the quarter of culture from which some of our most beloved icons – some of the coolest people in the world – operate. Glenn at Momentum Worldwide urges marketers to think about the person behind the music you’re using in your advertising: “Brands are constantly trying to create a connection with their audiences. It makes perfect sense. Position the brand as one that aligns with my passions and I, as the consumer, will be more likely to consider the brand in the future. Marketing 101, right? To accomplish this, brands are regularly looking to celebrities. Celebrities break through the noise on TVC and create engagement around an activation. Fantastic! However, too often, brands are engaging a celebrity for the sake of using a celebrity and lack strategic focus.” You need to think about how the person enriches your brand, as well as the sounds they make. 

Artists also have phenomenal social reach which shouldn’t be wasted, Glenn argues. “Don’t create IRL experiences that don’t leverage social content,” he says. “Many of these celebs deliver incredible social scale—use it! Develop creative concepts that play to the celeb’s strengths and create concepts that translate to content. Negotiate access to the celeb’s social channels and recognise true ROI.” 

Alice at SIREN poses more questions for marketers to ponder around artists. “Think about how the music could extend your campaign – are you working with an independent, emerging artist? Could your ad give them their big break? Or do you want to add a bigger name attached to your campaign? Ensuring that whichever artist you work with aligns with your mission can really amplify your brand’s message. There’s plenty of opportunity to tap into an artist’s socials, merchandise, or marketing, if you choose to work closely with an artist on your campaign.”

Licensing a familiar track might seem like the easiest option. And you could argue that there’s enough music out there to suit any brand’s objectives, but many music experts are adamant that more brands should be considering bespoke compositions. “Choosing a bespoke piece for your ad gives you the opportunity to create something completely original and unique to your brand,” says Alice at SIREN. “Not only this, bespoke will give you the flexibility to tailor it to picture and hit or highlight any particular edit points. It also gives you the opportunity to write your own lyrics and truly embed your message in the track.”

Scott at Pull makes an analogy to another art/commerce area – fashion. “Most consumers can differentiate between a quality product and a mass produced cheap one,” he says. “We don’t need a degree from FIT to notice a poorly made article of clothing. Your brand’s choice in music is no different. Some brands may source from the same community pool of prefab songs, while others remain steadfast to a committed and curated ownable sound. You wouldn’t share your brand’s image or logos, why share music?”

A more practical tip that every expert we spoke to insisted upon: get your references right. Martin Estrada from Mean Machine Music (who is also the guitarist for Selena Gomez and Lady Gaga) stresses the importance of this: “My tip for non-musician marketers in working with composers or music houses on your sound is to provide accurate references, or we can collaboratively develop references together. This is key. I think by and large, the music is easy to execute as long as there is a clear consensus on what it should be – instead of the spaghetti-on-the-wall approach.“

As Sean at Jungle says, it allows you to swiftly identify what resonates and what doesn't. “Even if it's just referencing the energy you like from one track and the drum sound from another. These tracks can serve as useful blueprints during a project's early stages.”

But you need to be realistic and flexible. Maik at Amp.Amsterdam has seen brands become too wedded to the wrong track early in the process. “Avoid using popular songs or those you ultimately cannot use in the end, even as placeholders,” he says. “They tend to become emotionally ingrained and exceedingly challenging to replace, presenting legal risks and compromising creative freedom and integrity.”

Keeping things loose is key, he adds. “If it's not this one, it's something else: Stay flexible and open to alternatives; if this option doesn't work, there are always other musical avenues to explore.” 

And those musical avenues might be nowhere near what you first expected. “Go in with ears open,” says Alice at SIREN. You never know, a wild card option might end up being the track you didn’t know you wanted.”

Gabe McDonough, partner and EP at MAS (Music and Strategy), has recently seen the results of this openness. “Take a chance on some music that you like, and stick with it,” is his advice. “‘O-o-o-Ozempic’ is huge and there was no research suggesting that a remake of Pilot’s 1974 song ‘Magic’ was due for a resurgence. Novo Nordisk ran the spot repeatedly and, through their own media buy, MADE their musical choice culturally relevant. ‘Good music’ equals ‘music I recognise’ to 99% of people, so if your brand has the guts to commit to a musical choice and run it repeatedly, it stands a really good chance of sticking with your audience.”

We’re not all musical. And it’s OK to be a tone-deaf marketer. You’re not the one composing a track. But music is called ‘a universal language’ for a reason. 

As Zac at Sonic Union says, the cliché “proves that we don’t need technical terms to talk about music.” In his experience music is best when it’s collaborative, and anyone is welcome in that process. “I’ve spent my whole life thinking about how music works, so that when I collaborate with a client or other musicians, they only need to express themselves in emotional terms. Every response is valid because it comes from our intuition and sense of beauty and energy. Collaboration brings out small elements that, when integrated, create something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. When the right collab happens, it creates a film that simply couldn’t have any element that was different – from the direction to the styling and edit – and that’s very magical.”

Maik also advises speaking through emotional terms. “Communicate through feel: What feeling should the film convey, and do you have a music style in mind that could best represent that? Expert advice from music professionals can help find the right words and fit.”

Woolly though emotional language may sound, getting the wrong musical term might cause more harm than good. Marin from Mean Machine Music has encountered non-musicians trying to communicate in terms that aren’t accurate, for example asking for more bass when it is actually an 808 or a kick drum. “Ultimately music is about conveying feelings so the clearer we are able to understand that, the easier it is to execute,” he says.

Martin’s Mean Machine colleague, executive creative director Clemente Bornacelli, also advises people to refrain from using music terms; “it is more helpful to talk about the story and the feelings you are trying to convey in a particular section,” he says. “It is a bonus when you can reference a movie scene or something, like ‘This is the Rocky climbing the stairs moment.’ Musicians and composers are artists, they are promising an interpreting feelings and emotions through sound, so don't tell them what to do, but tell them what you are trying to achieve and have them do what they do best.”

“You don't need to be fluent in musical terminology when putting together a brief,” adds Sean at Jungle. “Conveying your emotional intent and creative direction is more than enough. It's then up to the expertise of the composer or music supervisor to effectively interpret this emotional language.”

All of which should make it obvious that music supervisors and composers are here to help your brand get it right. “Work with an amazing music supervisor,” says Alice at SIREN. “Whatever the brief, count us in! Don’t worry if you don’t have the musical vocabulary or the right terminology, just tell us what emotion you're trying to convey, how you want the audience to feel, and what story you’re telling. You can even tell us what you don’t want it to sound like. We’re here to answer your brief in the most creative way possible, ensuring that your final track takes your ad to the next level.”  

We all think we know music, but Glenn at Momentum Worldwide is emphatic about the risks of assuming that. “Don’t do it yourself! I’m glad your cousin is dating Coldplay’s roadie. They probably get invited to great parties, but it doesn’t mean they're going to be able to negotiate an impactful celebrity partnership for your brand,” he says. “Use professional talent buyers who understand the marketplace, can leverage their relationships for speed of negotiation and who understand the nuance of feasibility.”

Bringing a professional in early on is also crucial to success. “It sets a clear direction, ensuring a smoother, more creative process,” says Maik at Amp.Amsterdam. “Our most successful projects had us, as a music agency, involved from the very start. Ultimately, when we follow these golden pieces of advice, it results in genuine and authentic creativity. And isn’t that what we all strive for?”

 

Just as you would only trust that skilled architect to build your store or designer to create your logo, a musical/sound partner should be equally considered. “We’re adept at selecting or creating the right sounds to evoke desired responses, whether it's fun, excitement, nostalgia, trust or quality,” says Scott at Pull. “We recognise that while individual tastes may vary, the brand's overarching message must remain clear, compelling and authentic. Your brand is unique. Your music should be, too.”