Mumbrella360: Selling out no longer exists for musicians
Ella Hooper burst to national fame when still a teenager with her band Killing Heidi. Even at that tender age, she was keenly aware of how important it was to control perception.
“I wouldn’t have used the word ‘brand’ at the time, but I knew it was important”, Hooper told attendees at Mumbrella360, during a session titled ‘Marketing like a rock star’.
Hooper said she recognised the concept of branding in music through being a fan of older artists, even if she didn’t recognise it as such at the time.
“There’s a look, there’s a feel, there’s a sound, there’s a message, so I understood marketing”, she says, albeit without framing it that way.
Hooper also came up during the late 90s, a period when the idea of ‘selling out’ for musicians was the very worst crime imaginable. To sign with a major label was seen by some as a necessary concession in order to spread your art, but placing your music in an advertisement was the antithesis of the cool rock star image.
Hooper recalls the backlash surrounding a lot of her band’s early commercial decisions.
“We were on Pepsi cans,” she laughs. “That was quite wild at the time – we copped flak for that.”
The Pepsi promotion was tied to Pepsi Live, a short-lived Channel Ten show that featured live music – an anomaly on commercial television at the end. “It made sense”, Hooper reasons of the tie-in.
This combative attitude towards ‘selling out’ means Hooper made some missteps: she rues turning down the chance to soundtrack the ending credits for popular teen drama The OC, but noted that, by 2004, when one of their songs landed on the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack, the attitude towards such placements had changed.
“The opinions were changing by then,” she remembered. “People were like, ‘that’s so cool’. It is cool, but you weren’t saying that two years ago…”
The synergy between advertising and musicians has further improved along the way.
“It’s way less scary [nowadays] because the approach has come so far,” Hooper said.
Advertisers used to come with a limited proposition: “We wanna use your song: we’re gonna change the lyrics and cut out that part.” She recalls feeling like this was a bastardisation of “my baby” – meaning whatever song was being considered for the ad – and assumes a lot of other artists felt the same at the time.
Nowadays, the consideration given to music-led campaigns means there is “less fear”, she says. Plus, given the rise of streaming, and the decimation of the mid-tier live music scene, musicians are more likely to make such deals work.
“We really need it,” she admits. “For the reach and financials and to be involved in the big, wide world.”
Hooper was recently involved in one of the most singular campaigns for a while: promoting box company Signet on Air.
She admits being puzzled by the match. “Do I scream box factory?,” she asked, joking, “I thought I was outside the box.”
For the campaign, which also featured musicians Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother, and acoustic crooner Pete Murray, Signet on Air ‘gifted’ the musos their very own air guitars, which they lovingly pulled from Signet On Air boxes, and shredded imaginary solos on.
“That sounds cool,” Hooper recalls thinking. “It actually sounds crazy… but cool.”
James Griffiths, executive creative director for Universal Music For Brands, who spearheaded the campaign, explains how unboxing videos were popular on YouTube during the pandemic, as e-commerce peaked. In addition, for Signet’s 30+ male-skewed audience, “rock and roll over-indexed for that category.”
A silly idea no longer seemed as such.
Adam Ireland, Managing Director, BRING Agency, Universal Music For Brands, credits their “very, very, very trusting client” for trusting the vision.
The trust paid off: Signet enjoyed their biggest sales day ever as a result of the campaign, with overall sales leaping by more than 600% – their biggest increase in fifty years.
And for the record, although no music appears in the campaign, Ella was air-guitaring to Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd for the shoot – ironically one of the most expensive songs to licence.
Silence, however, is golden. So is a great idea, matched with a greater talent.
Got a tip?
Nathan Jolly is the Deputy Editor of Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
Linkedin
topics
Adam Ireland
Bring Agency
Ella Hooper
James Griffiths
Mumbrella360
Universal Music For Brands
Have your say