During a recent “Happy Hour” livestream event — dubbed ‘Making Music for Ads: The Do’s + Dont’s’ — we welcomed two of today’s foremost music placement professionals to discuss how musicians can set themselves up for sync licensing success.

 

Happy Hour Guests

  • Joe Belliotti – For eight years, marketing mainstay Joe Belliotti served as Coca-Cola’s head of global music, spearheading music-based partnerships, promotional initiatives, and much more. Additionally, the Advertising Week and SXSW featured speaker founded The Music Division, an “outsourced music department” connecting brands with songs that bring their adverts to life. 
  • Michael Szumowski – Music supervisor and producer Michael Szumowski spent seven years as head of creative and A&R at Alberts, signing and working with the likes of ARIA Award-winners Nicole Millar and Josh Pyke, to name just some. On the supervisor side, he’s driven the emotional direction of campaigns from leading brands such as Uber and Toyota

The discussion was moderated by Songtradr CXO, Victoria Wiltshire.

 

The Path to Getting Into Music for Advertising

Kicking off the Happy Hour, Belliotti and Szumowski described their career beginnings and the respective paths that led them to prominent roles in the placement space. Significantly, both men have experience on the creative side of the industry, which may well have aided their ability to link brands (and visual media as a whole) with well-suited tracks. 

“I came from the music industry,” said Belliotti. “Actually, I was a musician, a very bad musician [focusing on guitar and piano] when I was a teenager. I never had a chance to actually play music, so I absolutely respect and love people that do.” 

“I was in the music industry, music publishing, I got into music for film and TV,” he continued. “And then I sort of got into music for advertising and marketing and started an agency in New York.

That led to the deal with Coca-Cola. 

“Coke came to me in 2010 and asked me to be the head of global music. And I basically told them, ‘You got the wrong person. I don’t have an MBA, I’m not corporate.’ But they said they wanted someone from the outside, they wanted someone that knew the industry, knew the people, knew how to connect with that outside world.” 

The mutually-beneficial professional relationship saw Belliotti formulate music-use strategies, organize partnerships with Spotify and others, and create tracks for major campaigns – essentially leading all the music-related endeavors for the world’s most popular soft drink. 

 

Szumowski, for his part, began working in the industry shortly after graduating, eventually transitioning into behind-the-scenes positions. 

“I’ve sort of been in the music industry since leaving school. And initially with songwriting, producing, playing in bands. I spent a lot of time doing that, and I was quite lucky to work with a few artists that sold a few records,” said Szumowski. “It sort of pivoted to a point where I had an opportunity to write for picture. 

“So I’d never done it before, and I was actually renting space in a studio in Sydney, and that studio actually did quite a lot of ad work.”

“The owner of the studio was like, ‘Have you ever written for ads?’ And of course, I went, ‘Sure, I could do that.’ When you’re a freelance songwriter or musician, you just say ‘yes’ to everything and then figure it out later.”

This unexpected opportunity — which, like many of the chance happenings described by our Happy Hour guests — resulted from networking and building contacts. For Szummowski, it led to work on multiple campaigns. Alberts later purchased the studio, and soon thereafter, Szumowski began his previously mentioned seven-year stretch as head of creative and A&R. Signing a number of talented acts further aided the producer and music supervisor’s career.

 

Getting Ad Placement Opportunities Isn’t Always About the Song

Segueing into the factors that they consider when making placement decisions and choosing songs for ads, both of the livestream event’s guests first emphasized the consequence of elements unrelated to music itself – once again highlighting an idea that other Happy Hour panelists have touched upon.

“It’s not always just about the song, you know. And I think in order to get your song heard, you need to build a relationship with somebody, right? You need to build a relationship so someone’s welcoming that song in and listening to it with friendly ears,” said Belliotti. 

“I’ll give you an example,” continued the USA Today, Forbes, and The Economist contributor. “There was one kid who was amazing – and I’m not gonna say his name – but he was amazing at keeping me updated on everything that he did. And unfortunately, his music wasn’t great. But he would send me the nicest notes. And I was rooting for him, and we would retweet some of his things and do what we could do. 

“But I walk away from eight years with Coke, and I remember him,” continued Belliotti, proceeding to note the overarching significance of making positive (non-musical) impressions on all professionals. “The songs are important…but again, the timing and the relationship-building I think are equally as important.”

Expanding upon the invaluable point, Szumowski indicated that there’s no such thing as an ideal sync song – in terms of genre, lyrics, or otherwise. While certain musical styles have a better chance of scoring brand placements, marketing sync deals are exclusively dependent upon the underlying track’s suitability for the ad campaign at hand.

“There’s no such thing as a perfect sync song,” said the Indecent Obsession co-founder and keyboardist. “It’s whatever song works for the vision and helps convey, ultimately, what the vision’s trying to communicate. And that can be absolutely anything.”

 

Belliotti encourages musicians to operate more like brands, in the sense that they should embrace and broadcast their unique characteristics to stand out from the crowd and garner a larger number of ad placement opportunities. 

“I like to tell artists to start thinking about themselves as a brand, and what that means. Because Coca-Cola doesn’t go around saying, ‘Yeah, we’re kind of like Pepsi, kind of like RC Cola.’ But an artist will say, ‘Oh, we’re kind of like Coldplay and Travis,’” explained the Techstars Music Accelerator mentor.

“If you’re an artist, start talking about your brand in the context of, you know, what it’s gonna do for people. How does it make people feel, what role does it play in people’s lives. It all comes down to the way people, actual humans, listen to music. We select music based on our mood, the moment, the occasion. We don’t select music based on genre anymore.” 

There are multiple ways to achieve placement success in today’s high-volume advertising landscape, and different approaches have proven effective for different musicians. But according to these two preeminent pros, creators who are pursuing placements stand to benefit from prioritizing musical quality and being memorable for the right reasons. Then, with the perfect combination of preparation and timing, everything will fall into place. 

 

Fans can catch the full replay of the Songtradr Happy Hour on YouTube.

 

Watch the full panel discussion:

 

Watch other Songtradr Happy Hour Sessions in full:

 

The content of this post was written by Paul Resnikoff and Dylan Smith of Digital Music News, as a broader partnership with Songtradr.

 

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