The English electronic duo Groove
Armada, in Miami at the Bacardi B-Live event, is being promoted by Bacardi.
[Rob Loud Photography] - Photo, caption lifted from NYT.
There
was an interesting article in Monday’s New York Times about companies like
Procter & Gamble, Red Bull and Nike who are “stepping outside their core
businesses to promote, finance and even distribute music themselves.” From the
article:
Procter
& Gamble, for example, is joining Island Def Jam in a joint venture called
Tag Records, a label that will sign and release albums by new hip-hop acts. It
is named after a brand of body spray that P.& G. acquired when it bought
Gillette.
At
a time when online file-sharing is rampant, record stores are closing and
consumers are buying singles instead of albums, getting into the music business
might seem like running into a burning building. But as record labels struggle
to adjust to a harsh new digital reality, other companies are stepping up their
involvement in music, going far beyond standard endorsement contracts and the
use of songs in commercials.
The
article spun into the blogosphere, on its way here, stopping at sites like
Marktd, which dares to declare “marketers are the new record labels.”
Well, sort
of. That statement requires a couple qualifications...
First, it’s probably more accurate to declare that anyone can be a record
label now. It costs less than $100 to get a barcode and distribute an album in
stores like iTunes and Rhapsody (the barcode means your sales are charted). If
I can release my own album into the same retailers that stock the Top 40, and
do so on a hobbyist-musician’s budget, then why wouldn’t a brand with big
marketing budgets do more than dabble?
Second,
brands are taking advantage much as they always have, especially in terms of
underwriting content. My parents aren’t old enough to remember watching the
Camel News Caravan (which aired from 1949 to 1956), but the soap opera is an
example we’ve all heard of. Soap operas were named such because they were underwritten by Colgate-Palmolive, Lever Brothers and – this one will sound
familiar – Procter & Gamble.
That
was the Golden Age of Television. Did anyone claim that brands were the new
television networks? Hard to say; The WayBack Machine doesn’t go back that far. I tend to suspect the answer is "no". Most of the televised content we've consumed in our lifetime was free because of corporate sponsors. Even PBS and NPR are underwritten. While this new underwriting of music makes for headlines that sell newspapers and banner ad placements, it's essentially just the latest spin on a tactic that's been practiced for decades.
The idea we can take away is: brands have always underwritten content, and with new digital
means of distributing content come new opportunities to sponsor, underwrite,
and embark on joint-ventures. The challenge is in selecting and creating partnerships that will be beneficial to all parties involved.
UPDATE: Or, perhaps the challenge is finding the right record label for your agency to buy outright. And then finding musicians who will want to sign to an ad agency.
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