Music and sound are often an afterthought when it comes to branding, yet, when it comes to many businesses, they are intrinsic to the brand. Can you tell us more about this?
Music is indeed still an undervalued, yet essential tool for brand communication. Consumers spend 31% of their media time with audio, yet brands, on average, allocate only around 9% of their media budget to audio. For many businesses, it’s much less than this. This creates a huge missed opportunity: research shows that brands with music that fits their values are almost twice as likely to be recalled than those with the wrong music or no music at all. The reason? Many marketers still consider music an afterthought, focusing on what customers see, not what they hear, when interacting with their brand.
Businesses that have been successful with audio branding have results to show for it. Think Playstation, TikTok, Netflix, and McDonalds. Not only do customers remember their iconic sounds decades after first hearing them, but the music often still generates emotions and memories long after their initial interactions.
In the GCC at large, how are brands waking up to music or sound when it comes to integrating it in their brands?
The GCC region is unique in that less than a decade ago, most brands didn’t leverage audio branding at all. The few exceptions are big names like Majid Al Futtaim, Emirates and others who have owned unique, recognizable audio assets for several decades. Fast forward to today and the equation has been flipped, with brands in this region now at the forefront of the global sonic branding industry.
Our clients now have a clear desire to build a holistic brand experience in sound and music, going beyond the concept of just a jingle or sonic logo. Music is now seen as a strategic tool that covers every touchpoint: marketing materials and advertising, phone lines, UX/UI sounds, apps and products, events and sponsorships, retail spaces, offices and experiences. Today’s GCC marketers now have a deep, thorough understanding of the power of music, and are leveraging it to build complete sonic universes for their brands.
There is often a mismatch about music and sounds in communication. Anything from not paying the rights, to not knowing about the procedures, or as in the case of AbdelHalim Hafez and Timbaland/Jay Z, issues about how music is being used “ethically”. How can you help brands with all these different angles?
MassiveMusic’s role is twofold. Firstly, to make the world sound better by helping brands source and create the most culturally and creatively relevant music, to meet their objectives and connect with consumers. Secondly, to facilitate interaction between the world of brands and the music industry.
We advise clients on rights management and a healthy approach to copyright, working with independent artists and global stars, timelines and budgets for music, and more. We are a 360 degree music agency for brands with the right in-house talent to solve almost any challenge. The biggest challenge we face are clients either coming to us too late in the process to solve issues they have already created for themselves, such as going on air with a song they didn’t pay the rights for, or being unwilling to explore options in music as they have a fixed idea in mind, which is difficultly feasible. My advice to any marketers in music: start thinking about it early, get the experts involved right away, and trust their experience!
The definition of noise is “any unwanted sound”. Oddly this can include anything and everything. How does one deal with differences in taste, specifically in the GCC where culture and heritage is different from one country to another or even among regions within the same country?
The GCC is a fascinating part of the world in which to work in music, because of its extensive cultural diversity and its unique relationship to heritage and history, which often arises in music work. When creating a sonic identity or music for a campaign, we are often faced with the same challenge: how can we create something with broad, international appeal that also accurately reflects the history and culture of the brand and its home country. This means experimenting with new fusions of genres and musical techniques, bringing local instruments into electronic or western orchestral compositions for example – or the other way around. The same applies when licensing existing music for content: we must always carefully consider who the content is targeted at and what the heritage of that specific piece of music is for those audiences.
MassiveMusic has been in the region for three years, can you tell us more about your trajectory, and also aims and goals for the future?
When we set up MassiveMusic Dubai in 2022, our offer to the MENA region had two primary goals. The first: to play a part in building the region’s music industry, and particularly the sonic branding industry, which at the time was still nascent with only a handful of local companies and little understanding of the purpose of this kind of work on the client side. The second: to become regional leaders in this field and build the MassiveMusic reputation as a reference of qualitative and effective work for regional brands. After nearly three years of hard work promoting the importance of good, strategic music, and involving our MassiveMusic team in a multitude of client and partner initiatives across the region, I’m proud to say that we have come far in realising these initial goals. For three years in a row, we have won top sonic branding awards at the region’s leading show, the Transform Awards, taken on a wealth of clients across industries , and helped to build a competitive, ever-growing music agency industry for the region. Our future is bright, too, with plans for further expansion to new regional markets, to further support local talent to grow their skillset and work portfolio, and to continue to promote excellence in sound for the brands who are still to benefit from the power of sound.
