Month: July

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As recorded music sales slip for the business and advertisers find their markets to be fragmented over new media platforms, it's easy to see why both are looking to co-brand in new campaigns. Marketers see using music as a way to reach consumers with a deeper ring that is not forced or contrived. Sara Bareilles' success within the Rhapsody spot along with The Shins and McDonalds, Santogold and Bud Light, and many more have shown a change in how it is easier to pair artists with brands in a day where people are just looking to make things work. Toyota, Red Bull, Barcardi, and Procter & Gamble have marketed, financed, and released music as part of branding campaigns. The next step happened when Reckitt Benchiser's agency of record Euro RSCG acquired a majority stake in an independent record label, the:Hours, with a distribution agreement with Universal Music. The:Hours' goal is to create a large, commercial friendly catalog through signings to be used for many campaigns. The company will continue to work through other labels and publishers, as well.

Month: June

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Columbia Records wanted to make sure that the new single "Hammerhead" by The Offspring was successfully reaching as many radio DJs and station programmers as possible. So rather than send out CDs, which would probably get lost in a pile of others, the label used eNotes to e-mail the single directly to the desktops of their targets. The result was the single being #9 on the airplay chart of Radio & Records for active-rock, according to Billboard. eNotes sends an email with a streaming version of the song and gives the recipient the option to download the tune from a secure digital courier service. This multimedia advertisement gives labels the ability to track results on how many and how downloads the single. The company also targeted over 1,200 DJs, station programmers, and decision makers at rock stations for The Offspring's track. An e-mail also saves money and is eco-friendlier than shipping out physical CDs to radio stations.

Month: May

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Online advertising is the way of the future as far as concert promotion goes. 80% of all tickets purchased on Ticketmaster are done so online, yet concert promoters are only spending 2% of their total marketing budgets on online advertising for their shows. Live Nation is looking to give local concert promoters more bang for their advertising buck with their new service, eFan Finder. eFan Finder is a free reporting and tracking tool that is offered to local promoters of Live Nation events and is geared towards making advertising on the Internet more effective. It uses AdBrite, an Internet ad network, to customize ad campaigns. Promoters can enter in a demographic, city, and genre of music into the system and that will create an advertising profile that determines anything from which sites to place ads on to how big or what color the ad should be. This way, AdBrite places the ads for concerts on sites only fans from the event's city will see, giving promoters a break from paying high per-impression fees. The service also tracks how effective each ad is through impressions and click-throughs. When Live Nation launches their ticketing service, they will be able to see how many tickets are directly purchased as a result of the ads as well. Promoters can take ads off certain sites to put more on other sites that are getting higher response rates and traffic. Live Nation is using the service for its own online advertising, and has since increased its online advertising spending to 10% They plan on making the service available for national tours in the near future. The remaining question is how to make this service better for less tech-savvy fans and in areas where there are less Internet users.