Tag Archive for 'branding'

Denny’s Adopts Up And Coming Bands — Billboard.biz

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Rob Stefaniak
on May 19, 2008
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Denny's logoDenny’s, the casual food chain, is getting into the music business via its just launched “Adopt-a-Band” program. The restaurant chain is offering free food and comfort to traveling bands, part of a broader promotional exchange. Participating bands can grab free food at any moment, and host after-show parties at Denny’s locations. “At a time when touring costs are high, Denny’s is here to help,” the company explained on its “Adopt-a-Band” program website.

Participating touring bands will have content featured on the Denny’s microsite dennysallnighter.com including photos, bios, tour dates posted, and one streamed song.

The bulk of participating bands are developing acts, but Denny’s also brokered broader deals with high-profile bands Taking Back Sunday (Warner Bros.), Eagles of Death Metal (Rekords Rekords / Downtown), The All-American Rejects (Interscope), and Plain White T’s (Hollywood Records) — they will create Rock Star Menus consisting of a dish concocted by one of the bands.

In return, the featured band will be expected to visit three Denny’s a month, mention their Denny’s visits on their respective Web sites and post pictures of themselves at Denny’s. Every two months six new bands will be “adopted” and added to the site.

“In value driven times, we know that bands obviously need to eat. We felt good about being able to offer support and have people out there drumming up support,” said Michael Polydoroff, director of sales promotion and licensing, Denny’s. “We looked at a myriad of bands, posted on Sonicbids.com back in March and worked with Filter [Magazine] to narrow down the list. We were looking for great brands who have a huge online following and who will work hard for us.“

Denny’s Adopts Up And Coming Bands — Billboard.biz

Denny’s Late-Night Grub Suddenly Sounds Nice… — Digital Music News

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An Alternative Approach To Marketing Rock Bands — New York Times

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Rob Stefaniak
on May 8, 2008
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No Food - No Sleep - Just RecordsAn article in the New York Times highlights record label Fueled By Ramen as having a promotional strategy and using tactics reminiscent of the Motown era whereby its acts promote one another as well as the company itself.

When a Fueled By Ramen band becomes popular, it starts to endorse the label’s other bands - often touring together.  Many of the bands were discovered by Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, and benefit from his implicit endorsement.

Label owner John Janick, is mentioned as someone who thrives on grass-roots promotion and not having any money. The label and its partners “know how to do things on the cheap.” The key quotes:

“Mr. Wentz set the pattern for Fueled by Ramen’s marketing strategy: blog often, tour hard and keep expenses down. When Mr. Janick signs bands, he tells them how hard they will work, not how rich they will become.”

“The main thing for me is making sure kids can go to one place and get everything from the artist. It’s a branding thing.”

While this might be considered a fresh and “alternative” strategy for the mainstream Rock genre, this type of endorsement has been happening for a very long time in the Hip-Hop scene. Additionally, this is something that happens everyday in music proto-markets when local bands put together gigs to play. No one ever really plays with a band they don’t like (or endorse). There is a social aspect to it - bands only want to gig with people they also want to hang out with for an evening.

An Alternative Approach To Marketing Rock Bands — New York Times

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Music Impresario Jin-Young Park — Executive Articles — Portfolio.com

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Rob Stefaniak
on April 14, 2008
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Future Of Pop Music By The NumbersIn an article on Portfolio.com, South Korean music impresario Jin-Young Park discusses why the CD is dead and what music companies need to do about it.

“In meetings with music labels here, they talk to me about releasing albums,” says Park. “They can’t accept that there’s no such thing anymore. Where I come from, CDs are nothing—they’re just souvenirs. I tell them, ‘Wake up!’”

South Korea is in many ways like America—America 40 years ago when rock was big and labels were booming. Back then, like South Korea now, the U.S. music industry was heavily focused on live performance, the release of hit singles, and the active cultivation of loyal fan bases through direct promotional activity. It’s the artist as brand: In South Korea, consumers don’t buy music; they buy a product relationship that reaches across every media platform and entertainment genre.

Biggest difference between US and South Korean markets? In South Korea, 80% of computers are linked to high speed cable. In the US, broadband penetration is only around 50%.

For Jin-Young Park, music sales are nearly a rounding error. It’s everything else that creates the success. According to a report from the Korea Times and business portal Chaebul.com, Jin-Young Park Entertainment generated $16.3 million in revenue in 2006 and $10 million in the first six months of 2007, of which music sales were the smallest part. The report estimated the company to be worth in excess of $100 million, making it the most valuable independent entertainment company in South Korea.

Music Impresario Jin-Young Park — Executive Articles — Portfolio.com

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Digital Music News @ SXSW 2008

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Rob Stefaniak
on March 19, 2008
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SXSW 2008 A couple of solid articles by Paul Resnikoff of Digital Music News reporting last week from SXSW that have caught my attention…

The first, Rock Brand 2.0, explores how Artists forge powerful and profitable relationships with brands. Because the music industry is not the best industry at understanding it’s consumers, this means deemphasizing the artistic elements of the music for a moment, and shifting towards more concrete demographic details in terms of what the Artist is offering the brand partnership.

It’s interesting to me that the article is from the perspective of the Artist pitching themselves to the brand, and not the other way around. I am assuming this is all happening from within the major label system with a conglomerate of decision makers acting on behalf of the Artist. I would have thought the brands would be chasing the Artist.

The second, The Games People Play, highlights the gaming industry as an unparalleled promotional platform for up-and-coming bands. In March of last year, video game developer Electronic Arts formed a collaborative venture with Nettwerk Music Group called Artwerk Music, and started signing, distributing, and promoting artists on its own.

Not really a record label, Artwerk is a next-generation music publisher that goes way beyond video games. It’s an aggressive, proactive publisher that delivers master recordings, film and TV synch deals, advertising placements and distribution. The sentiment is that album sales don’t matter anymore, from a publisher’s point of view - cross-platform global song placement does.

But according to Steven Schnur, worldwide executive of Music and Marketing for Electronic Arts, apparently the total licensing amounts paid to Artists are still “mostly modest” and “you won’t make your yearly nut from a gaming license,” he advises.

Rock Brand 2.0: What Advertisers Really Want — Digital Music News

The Games People Play (And the Bands That Play With Them) — Digital Music News

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Terry McBride: “A True 360 Deal Should Include Stock Options” | Digital Media Wire

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Rob Stefaniak
on March 7, 2008
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Terry McBrideAs reported by Digital Media Wire, in a panel entitled Band as Brand at the Canadian Music Week’s digital music & media summit, Terry McBride of Nettwerk Music Group suggests that in order to align the Artists’ interests with those of their record label or management company, they should get stock options, much like the company executives get.  That way, it would be a true partnership in building the artists’ brands for the long run.

He also went on to talk about how the music business can “monetize free” and used the example of how Gillette almost gives razors away for free in order to make money off selling razorblades.

“If you see the Artist as a brand, then all of a sudden you have several verticals of monetization at your disposal. It could be ring-tunes, clothing or live-shows etc…“

Additionally, McBride points out that record labels don’t have the marketing muscle of some of the consumer products companies anymore.  So he expects we’re going to see a lot more of ‘brand alignment’ over the next 18 months.

Terry McBride: “A True 360 Deal Should Include Stock Options” | Digital Media Wire

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Jazz Summers Invests £10m In Music Talent — Telegraph

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Rob Stefaniak
on February 6, 2008
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Power Amp MusicBritish newspaper The Telegraph is reporting that Jazz Summers, the manager to bands such as The Verve and Snow Patrol, is fronting a fund which aims to raise £10m to invest in new and established UK music talent. He is joining forces with venture capital and advisory firm Power Amp Music to launch the tax-efficient investment vehicle.

The Power Amp Music Fund will invest in up to 30 artists, with independent labels or concert promoters, in exchange for a share of revenues from recording and publishing, merchandising and live events.

With CD sales in decline but demand for concert tickets and music festivals at an all-time high, record labels and music business investors are seeking a cut of everything from TV appearances and ticket sales to T-shirts.

According to their website, the Power Amp Music Fund is described as a tax efficient vehicle offering the opportunity to invest in a diversified portfolio of UK music talent. The Fund uses an artist-centric development model that brings the source and destination of music closer together and generates enhanced returns for artists and investors.

By investing directly in artists’ careers, investors participate in all revenues available: recording, publishing, live, merchandising, and alternative (digital, branding etc,). The model offers an effective route into an industry with strong future revenue potential.

Jazz Summers Invests £10m In Music Talent — Telegraph

Summers Fronts Music Investment Vehicle — Billboard.biz

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Seth Godin: Tribe Management

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Rob Stefaniak
on January 30, 2008
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This is essentially the fabled “Grateful Dead Business Model” but I love it all the same. Seth Godin coins the phrase “Tribe Management” as a whole different way of looking at the brand management world. From Seth:

It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn’t an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about.

Instead of looking for customers for your products, you seek out products (and services) for the tribe. Jerry Garcia understood this. Do you?

Simply stated, the “Grateful Dead Business Model” holds that any success comes NOT from a pre-conceived master plan, rather growth is generated from a love and respect for the fans/customers:

  1. Demonstrate love and respect for the fans/customers
  2. Spend quality time face-to-face with the people who matter – the fans/customers
  3. Celebrate uncommon sense - adhere to your unique ideas
  4. Create a community of fans/customers
  5. Stay true to the brand and extend it with integrity

Seth’s Blog: Tribe Management

What Radiohead’s In Rainbows Has Taught Me — Coolfer

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Rob Stefaniak
on November 14, 2007
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A solid article on Coolfer yesterday. The main thing I would add with regard to artists offering a “varied number of price points in order to capture as much value as possible”, is that they already do!! They come in the form of a concert ticket, t-shirt (or other merchandise), or a shrink-wrapped CD. It’s not explicitly about selling songs (or packaged music), it’s about selling a brand that represents an idea that is bigger than ourselves. It’s art and it’s sometimes (probably most of the time) hard to quantify or qualify.

What makes Radiohead unique among artists is that they understand what they are selling - they understand their own identity myth that is forged from the ethos and aesthetic experienced through their music. And they, themselves, are the owners of their artistic message which they have used to build lasting emotional linkages with their fanbase.

It’s about offering a medium, a virtual dialogue, a token in physical form. It could be anything really, and they know it. They know people want to feel some connection to the idea, and they want to experience it and advertise it too. This is bigger than simply selling music, it’s about the artistic legacy.

What Radiohead’s In Rainbows Has Taught Me