In our previous article we spoke on Individual Customers and their needs, and today we’ll tackle the other main category of customers for artists: Corporate Customers.
Artists like the Black Eyed Peas have become tremendously successful by understanding and serving the corporate market well. Corporate customers are much more practical in their needs than Individual Consumers. Brands like Verizon or Pepsi work with the BEP’s in a corporate setting to be associated with their image and brand, not because they actually enjoy their music (though they may of course!). When dealing with Corporate Customers an artist is first and foremost expected to contribute to the corporate customer’s value chain, just like any other supplier in the production process. In that way music is treated similarly to for example, bottles of water or an ad design – and Corporate Customers will be quite unemotional in comparing price, quality and customer service. Rather than the higher-order needs like belonging or self-actualization that we identified for individual consumers, corporate consumer needs are about production, marketing, sales and HR.
Production Needs
Many companies need music as part of their own end-product. Supermarkets and other retailers need music in their stores. Gyms need music for their customers to work out to. The creative industry needs music as part of a film, video game, TV show. Serving such a production need may not seem like the sexiest of ambitions for an artist, but it can be very profitable and creatively rewarding. Junkie XL, for example, has pioneered and built a career in music production for video games. Moby once famously licensed every single song off of his album Play, before it was even released. Ingrid Michaelson’s success is largely due to some key music placements on TV. John Williams made his name by composing the scores for Star Wars. And even our own Family Records Wakey!Wakey!’s current success has a major TV component as well. In addition to the financial rewards, the ability to start a word of mouth campaign through a song placement is a serious benefit to the artists involved. Let us also point out that serving the corporate customer doesn’t necessitate changing your creative process or your song writing. While writing songs specifically with placements in mind is indeed a worthy strategy, this won’t be the right way to go for every artist and most artists that have music already appropriate for placements need to focus on getting it to the right people instead. While most movies, TV shows and commercials will be looking for music from the genres of pop, rock, hip hop and singer/songwriter, every genre has it’s place. Some video games use punk rock, or metal, certain brands use classical music, and the list goes on.
Marketing and Sales Needs
Many companies involve artists to build their brand, reach the right customers and eventually sell more of their products. Especially for companies that make consumer-focused products like mobile phones, electronics, apparel and certain food items, having the right brand in the eyes of the consumer is important. Marketing departments spend months, years and sometimes decades “loading” their brands with the right set of values. Ben and Jerry’s are all about natural ingredients and social responsibility. Coca Cola’s brand focuses on feel-good elements. Volvo radiates safety and stability. By associating themselves with an artist, companies essentially adopt part of the values that the artist stands for. Sometimes corporations can make some pretty hilarious mistakes in this arena too, eg. Royal Caribbean Cruises using Iggy Pop‘s “Lust For Life” (an ode to heroine) or Ronald Reagan utilizing Bruce Springsteen‘s critical “Born In The USA” during his presidential campaign. If you are an artist, it may be a good exercise to think about what values you represent and how that relates to corporate brands. Again, it’s not necessary to change anything about yourself or your music to fit in. Authenticity is key and it cannot be faked. We’re merely suggesting to look at your authentic self and music, and see which types of brands this might combine well with in a synergetic way.
Another reason why companies want artists to play a role in their marketing and sales strategy is because they want to reach the artist’s audience. This is communication in the opposite direction to the previous need. Rather than locking into the values that an artist represents, they decide based on what demographic group they want to reach. Honda’s recent association with Paramore is an attempt to reach out to a younger audience of car users. Artists who know more about who their audience is (age group, sex, income bracket etc) and what they like will have a better story to tell to potential sponsors and advertisers. In this light it’s, once again, very important to keep track of your customer’s data and learn as much about them as possible. If you know that you have a huge fan base in Florida, and they’re mostly young teenage males, this will tell you that it might be more worth while to pursue a partnership Vans than with Harley Davidson. Understanding our customers at Family Records, for example, recently led us to combining forces forces with Hard Graft to bring our music and their products to the attention of more people with similar tastes.
As we did previously with Individual Customer needs, we’ve added a chart with the identified Corporate Customer needs, and associated products an artist can provide to fill these needs.
(This is the fourth part in an on-going series of articles written together with McKinsey & Co’sErik Rutten*. Through regular brainstorms we will examining the music industry starting from an outsider’s perspective as business men and music lovers, and working our way through the different aspects during the next six weeks. *Erik is on sabbatical and the views expressed are his own, not his employer’s.)