Entertaining YOUR brand

When driving around town, to work, home or to the shop you are met by messages promoting and representing brands. Probably the most entertaining of these (unless you have a comedian built into your car) is your music.

Since CD shuttles and Mini-Discs are becoming more common, a lot more radio stations are turning to pure music - no more annoying chirps about your favourite group or artist from your local nut job. After all, that is why we all got radios in the beginning, didn't we? - for the love of our musical tastes. If it was just for our DJs then car radios would come in packages - when purchasing a Sony radio you might receive 300 minutes of listening time to 5fm or Nicole Fox! (Great, now watch some bright spark do just that!)

Looking at this whole situation, media people start complaining because their radio spots and promotions don't get heard when people start listening to CDs. Yeah well, there are two sides to the story. One side is yes, you're right, they can't hear the latest dazzling creation your ad department did, BUT then you are obviously not thinking good enough to create exposure of your clients' product, are you? After all, if you did, your brand could be in a song's lyrics, which would mean so much replay value that your client would never believe their ears... or sales stats?

Look at it as product placement such as in the movies, but for music.

What better publicity could you have than a young (or old) consumer walking through Rosebank mall humming or even singing the words to the latest hit song that mentions your brand in it? South African artists like Danny K in one of his songs mentions the backseat of his "Beemer". Not sure if he was "asked" to have that line or brand name in there but nevertheless, nearly every BMW driver probably gets a kick out of it when they are singing the words to that song while driving... their BMW on Rivonia Road. At the same time Audi probably pulls their hair out every time it gets played on radio (a good trick there would be to get the playlist of songs for the day and whenever that song comes on have your "BMW" ad or whatever car brand placed right behind it or before it).

One of the current artists that are internationally well-known and who mention brands in their lyrics is certainly Eminem, though his past album has dropped the amount of brand names mentioned compared to the previous album. In his current one he has increased the amount of kitchen and food products in his lyrics but also mentions the medicine tablet Tylenol quite a few times. Haven't listened to all his material so whether the products he has mentioned are delivered in a good position for the brand or not, I'm not sure. However if communication is good between the artist and brand then you are looking at perhaps a nice standing and space in the listener's mind.

What stands before us is a solution to the media savvy-growing public that are starting to get irritated with adverts that don't make the grade (I'd love to name a medium telecommunications cellular service but that would be bad) and so just flick to another station when on radio or switch to music discs. Those companies that have already started doing this product placement, I congratulate you (especially the US who are behind it 100%) and as for South African companies, you have some way to go so get your ass moving!

Though bringing up the product placement for movies and TV soaps series in South Africa... I suggest you learn not to push your brands - people in real life don't all use the same cellphone brand! Think realistically about where you place your brands. Some US companies can learn as well. I remember a movie ("Bad Company" I think it was) that had black 4x4 Range Rovers in the background everytime! It was so distracting it made me go mad. Use your head and don't get carried away, however this is now a different article I might have to do depending on the interest.

The South African point of the article is this: You are in such a perfect position at the moment to create a relationship with upcoming artists that you should be out there right now, before it's too late, looking for a songwriter and singer willing to use your brand name rather than someone else's in their next single or album. I'm not saying have your product mentioned every two seconds, I couldn't imagine listening to a song with the beat going to the lyrics of Viagra, let alone that song making the top 10, unless it's brilliant and catchy, so remember the placing.
Once is good enough in the chorus or hidden in the lyrics, yet clear and obviously creating a positioning of your product. For example, if the song is about each others' love, why not have Cardies in there somewhere if it calls for it? Or a boyfriend travelling to his girlfriend... why not have Volvo mentioned if he is driving? Come on, people.

If anyone would like some more help on this topic, you can contact me via my details below.