www.musicweek.com FEATURE MUSIC AND BRAND PARTNERSHIPS BRAND NEW CHALLENGES
07.09.12 MusicWeek 21
LEFT Green goods: Professor Green has maintained credibility even though he has allied himself to the likes of Puma and Relentless energy drinks
BRANDS BY TIM INGHAM
I
n terms of branding, we’re ahead of the game in the record industry, but not compared to top sports agencies. You can continually raise the bar
when you don’t just challenge yourself on music industry competitors.” EMI Music UK CEO Andria Vidler is no slouch
when it comes to smartly teaming up her product with top brands. But even she admits that when it comes to using its content with outside commercial entities, the music industry is behind the curve. It was an opinion drilled home by Richard Moore,
CEO of PR and sponsorship agency Capitalize, at a recent Brand & Music Partnership event at Henley Business School; a taster of the institution’s new MBA course for the Music Industry. Capitalize’s clients include Puma, Bacardi and Ray
Ban – and Moore believes that compared to their sporting equivalents, music rights holders are throwing away significant potential income by simply being too choosy. Moore provided figures from Price Waterhouse
Coopers’ Sport & Entertainment Outlook 2013-2015 which showed total sponsorship revenues of £43 billion were available, with sports companies commanding £31 billion of that figure. Music limped home by claiming less than 10% of the total. “That’s a massive disproportion between music and sport, which to me shows a massive opportunity
How can the music industry improve its ongoing relationship with brands – and are sports companies really that much better?
BELOW ‘A massive
opportunity for music’:
Capitalize CEO of PR Richard
Moore believes music has not mined the untapped potential of brand
partnerships
for you guys,” he said. “In my opinion, music hasn’t even touched the sides. “A huge chunk of brand investment in third-party
rights is currently with sport – 70%. That should change. The music industry has an opportunity to very aggressively tap that sector, to learn what sport has done over the many years in which it has embraced brand partners, and to apply it to your industry in a way that has your DNA running through it. For me, music should be 70% of the pie.” Moore said that music rights-holders’ attitude to
the brands they’re willing to team up with limits the potential revenue being brought into the industry - pointing to financial services and banking as an area with huge potential global sponsorship revenue gains. “I’m not sure your industry is prepared to embrace
them,” he commented. “The insurance sector desperately needs your world – you offer rich and engaging content that allows them to have a dialogue with their consumers about something other than bloody insurance. That’s your strength. “Are you really prepared to engage with those
brands? I’m not sure you are yet. All the calls I get from the music sector are ‘What could Puma, Ray Ban or Martini do with us?’ Great, but they’re sexy and aspirational brands. I don’t get anyone saying: “What could we do with Thames Water or Aon Insurance”. Not everyone in the audience agreed that music
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