Culminating Experience Reflection Danel Illarramendi Reflection of the Culminating Experience Project that was done as a consulting Project for Warner Chappel Spain Global Entertainment and Music Business Berklee College of Music Valencia, Spain July 2015 W a r n e r   C h a p p e l   S p a i n             Danel  Illarramendi   Reflective paper CE Index Introduction  ........................................................................................................................  3   Summary of the project  .................................................................................................  3   Results  ..................................................................................................................................  4   Process  .................................................................................................................................  6   Next Steps  ...........................................................................................................................  9   Contribute  to  the  discipline  and  profession  ..........................................................  10   Impact  on  the  student  completing  the  work  .........................................................  10   Bibliography  ....................................................................................................................  11     2   Danel  Illarramendi   Introduction When I first came to Berklee, my future career in the music industry was blurry, probably as blurry as my knowledge of the industry. Even though I might have wanted to create a business plan for my Culminating Experience (from now on called CE), I did not have any idea and, since I wanted to be employed by a multinational company by the end of the year, I decided to go for a Consulting Project. Taking Marjorie Scheker’s publishing class and taking into account that she works for Warner Chappell Spain, I saw a good opportunity to ask her for a consulting project. I understood the importance that synchronization is gaining in publisher’s revenue streams and I thought that doing a study on how Warner Chappell could better market their music to brands would be a great project to work on and something that could actually be worth for the company. Marjorie Scheker thought the same way and after signing the agreements, I started with my project, “How to better market Warner’s catalogue to agencies and brands”. Summary of the project As mentioned above, this project consisted on a consulting project for the publisher Warner Chappell Spain. To complete their question, “How to better market our music to brand”, I needed to conduct a research that   3   Danel  Illarramendi   consisted in both, secondary information research and primary information research. Whereas the secondary information research consisted on articles and books about music advertising, the impact in music in advertising and even how psychological theories like neuroscience impacted in music advertising, the primary information research was, in the end, what brought most value to the project. It consisted in firstly, analyzing the music of successful Spanish advertisements of all time, trying to find similarities between them and seeing whether the music was key for them or not. Later on, I conducted a series of interviews with different profiles of industry specialists, not only music industry experts but, in fact, I also reached marketing specialists of IT companies and consumer goods companies. This led to interesting answers where sometimes all the interviewees clearly agreed on, and where sometimes, the variety of answers led to an interesting approach depending on the specialization area and hence, industry. Results The results of the conducted investigation were interesting. It resulted clear that advertising agencies and brands needed data to take decisions, that Branded Content was going to take more and more market share in the advertising industry, that advertising agencies like to ease their job in song selection and that there was not enough knowledge of music in advertising when selecting the songs. Therefore, I concluded in some recommendations that I presented to Warner in my paper. My overall recommendations, summarized, are the following:   4   Danel  Illarramendi   1. Market Research on Catalogue: Brands and advertising agencies would like to have data to make decisions on which songs to use in their advertisements. Up until now, there has been no objective and data driven decision options for brands. All decisions are made because “feels like a song it would fit the ad and the brand”. That is why making a market research could be valuable for Warner Chappell. The market research could be done with both, direct to consumer surveys, asking the consumers how do they feel by a particular song in their catalogue; and big data provided by digital streaming platforms on consumer’s behavior on music consumption, where Warner Chappell could see when and how do consumers consume their catalogue. 2. Interactive song selection application: An application that would ease the life of advertising agencies could be key to differentiate between other competitors. An interactive application that could be use from the advertiser’s computer, where they could filter all the song that they are looking for through its characteristics (that could range from genre to prize of synchronization), would be easier for both, the advertiser and the publisher. 3. Playlists for Branded Content: If a client is looking into creating a branded content campaign, Warner Chappell could offer a standardized prized playlist (that fits the needs of the client) so that the brand can implement it into their campaign. This is especially interesting for the brand because it can help them to have a more   5   Danel  Illarramendi   integrated, multi-device campaign since they could create a sponsored playlist in digital streaming platforms. 4. Become music branding consultants: The synchronization department has to step up and become experts on the advertising world, the music advertising world, the psychology of advertising and music and, of course, the best fit of music in advertisements. This could expand their business interaction with their clients, offering a bigger, more reliable revenue stream than just selling songs to advertisers. Process The first step of the project was to meet Marjorie and frame the problem and the project. That way, we decided to work on the CE in the following way. I would first gather secondary information, 8 articles or books related to the topic I was researching and write a secondary information conclusions paper. Once having that done, I would prepare Focus Groups, that would be conducted in 4 different regions of Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, Basque Country and Valencia), about the perception of the music in advertising and how people felt with some music or other. Once the interview where conducted, I would prepare an abstract, write down the methodology, the profile of the interviewees and the results of the “Focus Groups Primary Information Research”. Once having that settled down, I was going to interview some advertising agencies and trying to gather as much information as possible from them for the topic that I wanted to research on, to finally write   6   Danel  Illarramendi   the methodology of the interviews, the results and the final paper. I avoided conducting an online survey from the begging because of the complications that it would bring. People would’ve need to watch different advertisements and then express their opinion about them in the following questions. This, not taking place in a control environment, was unlikely to provide results worth taking into account in the research since probably, no one would watch all the advertisements or watch them full length. After having my first meeting with Ferrán, my supervisor for this project, this plan changed though. We thought that I did not have enough resources to do a relevant research based on focus groups, since I would need to conduct much more Focus Groups than what I had planned so that the data was reliable. This way, after the meeting, the planned changed. The main differences between the first plan and the actual process that I followed during the work on the CE was that in this last one, I did not conduct Focus Groups, I broaden my secondary information research and I interviewed to more profiles rather than just advertising agencies. I ended up having interviews with different profiles of marketing specialists. An advertising agency professional, an IT company marketing professional, a consumer goods marketing professional, a digital streaming professional and a branded content and music industry specialist. I started gathering primary information on successful advertising campaigns in Spain and analyze how the music impacted on them in February. While doing this, I also conducted my secondary information research. These two researches took place from February up until May.   7   Danel  Illarramendi   Focusing one different topics, the secondary information research was the hardest. I found out that this was a very exploded topic and most articles did not provide nothing especially new or interesting for my research. That is why in the final paper, I only implemented the ones that I thought were more relevant for the specific case Warner Chappel wanted me to research on. By the end of March I also started conducting my first interview with Kiko Fuentes Nuñez, branded content manager of Newcast Multimedia. This first interview was possible because of Ferrán Coto, my project supervisor, since Kiko Fuentes was his friend and contact. Ever since, I approached numerous companies to try to get interviews with a very little rate of success. I ended up reaching 57 professionals to try to get interviews and in the end, I could only interview people with whom I had a closer relationship with since the rest did not answer my emails. This though, ended up positively because, as mentioned above, I could reach people of 5 different specialization areas. From April to June, there was not a time where I conducted most my interviews. In fact, I tried to adapt the interview to the time that would most fit the interviewee and the rest four interviews came from April to June having an interview pretty consistently every two weeks. The order was the following: Kiko Fuentes Nuñez, Alex Gibelalde, Leo Nascimento, Pedro Esnaola and finally Pedro Oyarzabal, who’s interview took place the 1st of June. After conducting all interviews and having my research done, I started writing the final paper of the CE. Even if I had not finished the whole writing part for my trial presentation on June 17th, I had analyzed the whole research   8   Danel  Illarramendi   and was able to present the most important thing of the project, the recommendations. The last week before turning in the project (June 17th to June 25th), and after the trial presentation feedback, I have finished writing my final paper and I have been getting ready for my trial presentation on July 3rd. If the project is successful, later during the summer, I will go to Warner Chappell Spain’s offices in Madrid to present the consulting project there. Next Steps As mentioned before, the next step will be to present the Project in Warner Chappel’s offices in Madrid. After doing so, the company should evaluate my recommendations and discuss whether they will try to implement them or not. I know that most of my recommendations are pretty ambitious. That is why in the paper I have tried to propose a more economical solution to try to get a similar (yet, probably less effective) answer to the market. I would be open to discuss anything the company would like me to, and will be happy to help them. Being a consulting project though, my official work would be done once I present the consulting project in their offices in Madrid. From them on, the responsibility of implementing or not the strategies, as well as tracking the results, would be of the company since they did not offer me a continuity of the project after I graduate.   9   Danel  Illarramendi   Contribute to the discipline and profession This paper will hopefully help Warner Chappell to gain market share in Spanish synchronization industry and be preferred by most brands and advertisement agencies when they are looking for a publisher to synchronize their advertisements. It feels like major publishers still need to innovate in this business area that, even though is increasingly growing its revenue, they are still working as they did a decade ago. Given the dynamism of current the current market, especially in those industries where IT is impacting (like music), major publishers should step up their game and try to be more competitive having a more young and dynamic culture. It is my hope that this paper shows them new possibilities to innovate and new things they can do to, not only improve their own revenue, but also be the first ones to change the major publisher’s paradigm in advertisements. Impact on the student completing the work Completing the work has showed me different perspectives of the music industry and how music can be useful for this way beyond listener’s experience. It has helped me to get a little bit more connected with some Spanish marketing specialists and, even if it was not a direct consequence, having an interview with Leo Nascimento and closing up our relationship helped me to get an internship in Deezer in Barcelona.   10   Danel  Illarramendi   Before completing this project, I had never worked in a project that had such a big timeline on my own. I really had to work on my planning and, even if I got stressed a lot of times for not doing the work I needed to do some days, I ended up finishing the project on time. Bibliography Interview: Scheker, Marjorie: “Consulting Project for Warner Chappell”, 07 November 2014 Coto, Ferrán: “Consulting Project for Warner Chappell”, 22 January 2015   11