Music & Marketing: Best Friends Forever – How Tunes Can Make A Brand

Take a look through some of our favourite music-focused brand activations around the world.

Music brings us all together, and brands have long-realised the connections that can be made with music and their audience.

Read through all the activations here, or jump to your favourite:

• Chiswick at Splendour in the Grass
• Spark Music
• H&M Loves Coachella
• Coors Block Party
• Tomorrowland 2018

Chiswick at Splendour in the Grass

The dust has started to settle on Australia’s favourite festival, as covered by Jaden Digital, but that doesn’t mean we still can’t live in the moment!

The strength of the festival has led to the consistent presence of major brands investing in Splendour, running activations that continue across years. An audience with a high disposable income and feel-good attitude allows long-lasting relationships to form between brand and fan – and that same audience comes back year after year. At a time when brand loyalty is more important than ever, associating yourself with a ‘time of your life’ moment can only be a positive.

Australian chef Matt Moran knows this all to well, so this year brought the popular dining experience of Sydney restaurant Chiswick to Splendour. The palette of festival-goers has certainly changed from Splendour’s inception nearly twenty years ago, when cheap sausage sizzles lined the fields. Now instead, guests were served a three-course menu including ‘options such as Cos lettuce, spanner crab and avocado taco; Moran Family lamb shoulder, eggplant & red pepper chutney with flat bread; roasted beer can chicken, baby corn and pine nuts; Splendour-colada, roasted pineapple, coconut and rum, and more – with vegetarian and vegan options available‘.

Spark Music

Is there anything worse than a phone plan that doesn’t come with any perks? All around the world, these companies are trying to offer their customers the greatest value in order to keep them in their eco-system. New Zealand telco brand Spark (formerly Telecom) has embraced this, with their exclusive music partnership in Spark Music.

Thanks to a collaboration with Live Nation customers gain pre-sale access to the latest tours across New Zealand, along with a weekly competition, Free Ticket Friday, offering up double passes to the best gigs.

The investment in music has also seen Spark claim the rights to Auckland’s premier music venue – Spark Arena, providing a real-life presence to the music focus of the brand.

Spark has also teamed up with global music giant Spotify to include Spotify Premium for free on selected plans.

H&M Loves Coachella

It’s the festival in the California desert that draws the world’s biggest names, along with a faux-hippie cash-rich crowd to match. And the only thing bigger than the bands playing is what you’re wearing whilst listening to them.

Bandannas, tie-die tee’s, and ripped denim unite for one incredible festival – and H&M seized the opportunity in 2017 to push its latest line.

With a sync cover of California Dreamin’, the vibes are high in this campaign. As said in TeenVogue, ‘the entire vibe of the video will make you want to put on your jorts and flower crowns, stat’.

Coors Block Party

A newly formed partnership with the NBA inspired Coors to host an event celebrating everything basketball and urban street culture. Bringing Jaden Digital on board, the first every Coors Block Party was conceived.

A night of live music, fashion pop-ups, live art installations, food trucks and brand activation areas was blasted across social media channels by an exclusive guest list of influencers, brand representatives and winners of an online activation using the #coorsblockparty hashtag.

This activation of the Coors brand, driven by music, saw 1.5 million people reached through content, with the combined audiences of Coors Australia, influencers and brand partners, and additional press coverage in some of Australia’s leading publications. Watch the video below to find out more, or read our case study here!

Tomorrowland 2018

It’s the festival that sells out in just an hour, and has just finished up for 2018, held over two weekends in Belgium.

And this is a festival like no other – an electronic line-up playing to nearly half a million people. But what truly sets this festival apart is its theming. The power of a story combined with music creates an out-of-this-world experience.

A social campaign combined with visual creative kicks back at the stereotype ‘festival lineup’ video of artist names flashing quickly on screen to funky music.

Instead, a story is told. A story, which to the unknown would not link to a music festival. The mystery is in the festival itself. The experience of music.