FINDING THE MUSIC YOU NEED

Gareth Cousins

Following on from ‘Why does my Campaign Need Music?‘, a post from Gareth Cousins, musician, on finding the music that you need for a PR?marketing campaign – ahead of Friday’s thupr event on music

Once the need for music has been established, you will need to choose whether to commission a composer to write music for your specific purpose, or to choose music that already exists as production or library music, or as music already released by an artist or band.

Using music that already exists will be dealt with later in this article.

a.     How Do I find A Composer?

If you choose to use a composer, what is the best way to commission original music?

Commissioning music means paying a composer to write a composition for a specific purpose. Anyone can commission a composer, and any type of music can be commissioned.

There are many ways to find composers:

1. Word Of Mouth – If you are commissioning a composer for the first time, this is probably the best way to choose a composer. Ask around, and if your contemporaries have had a good experience with a composer, the chances are good that you will too.
2.  References – You can check for references on LinkedIn, for example, to see who recommends that you work with a particular composer. Or screen credits can be verified on IMDB.com (the Internet Movie Database, which includes some TV credits). This will help you establish the credentials of the composers recommended to you.
3. Read more »

Why does my campaign need music?

A post by Gareth Cousins, Composer and Producer of Music for Advertising, Film and TV

(Ed: much of this was written with advertising in mind, but the same principles apply to PR)

Music has several functions when used in marketing, and you will need music if you wish to fulfill one of these goals:

a.       Entertainment

If a moving image is made more entertaining, then it is quite simply more attractive to the viewer, which helps focus the attention on to the product or service that is being marketed. Nike are good at this.

b.       Storytelling

It is a basic attribute of music that it helps to tell a story, to guide emotions, emphasise dramatic moments and to bridge the gap across disjointed images. It helps convey the overall meaning of what is being viewed. See Carling Black Label Dambusters advert for an example of this.

Read more »

State of Search’s PR column

Claire Thompson, freelance PR consultant. Waves PR

Thought I’d share here that I’m going to be writing a monthly PR column for State of Search.

Mostly read by online marketers, it’s a daunting prospect: SEO PR Training is teaching me daily how complex SEO is, and how different agencies each offer a very different ‘brand’ of SEO.

The first column was on approaching local media. Although it was written with SEO teams in mind, many small or start up businesses could find the same information useful

You can have a peek at it here: Local Media Love. I hope those with experience of local PR will share in the same space.

Thupr event, Mobile Apps – interview with Kathmandu

At this weeks thupr event, amongst the stand out things was a live call to explorer, Mark Wood,  in Kathmandu.

As a PR consultant, this kind of ‘live link’ is terrifying – you know that it can all go horribly wrong whenever you’re reliant on various pices of technology which may, or may not, perform on the day. First rule of PR: always have a Plan B.

But using Mark Smith of ipadio’s mobile, Mark Wood in Kathmandu’s satellite phone (notoriously narrowband technology, prone to foibles), ipadio and speakers, they pulled it off. Live.

You can hear the interview here, including the afterchat we didn’t hear over the speakers. (Second rule of PR – make sure the microphones are off: remember Glenn Hoddle?)

Still, Mark Smith flying by the seat of his technology pants (and in fairness, it is just a phone call with clever stuff attached!)  is nothing compared to the seat of the pants ride that Mark Wood is undertaking .