Companies like Honda and Dropbox are taking the centre stage in their industries by integrating music into their brand engagement model. By introducing musical elements like playlists and music communities, these companies are gaining Millennial momentum. Music streaming services have logged that “sponsored listening resulted in a 12% lift in brand awareness and a 30% lift in purchase intent for advertisers” (Fast Company).
Honda
Honda are steadily promoting themselves as more than a car company. In doing so, they have created the Honda Stage, where Millennials can gain access to live music from their favourite artists. To add to this, Honda has also created playlists on YouTube and a growing music community, building their mobile brand engagement that sits in the pockets of their target audience.
When asked why Honda has introduced this new wave of mobile brand engagement, Tom Peyton, Assistant Vice President of Advertising and Marketing for American Honda, told Forbes “We want to take this to a whole new level that’s not really being done by anyone else. We want to be a blue-chip company that gets into the music content and curation business and creates our own advertising platform from it.”
The result so far hasn’t let Honda down. In November 2015, Honda teamed with One Direction to promote their most popular car model (the Civic) amongst Millennials. The commercial was teamed with a One Direction Honda Civic Tour, which is the cornerstone of the Honda Stage platform. The tour was attended by 700,000 American fans.
The results so far show that the Honda Civic is the industry’s top selling car model to millennials in 2016 (PRNewswire). Currently, the Honda Stage YouTube channel has over 30 playlists with over 1 million views, thanks to artists like Macklemore, Ryan Lewis and Ariana Grande.
Dropbox
Dropbox have jumped on the music bandwagon by sponsoring the Awards Luncheon at Music Biz 2016 – a conference run by the Music Business Association. In doing so, Dropbox has also partnered with Musexpo, an international music and media conference focusing on new talent in the industry. These strategic partnerships are the result of the company’s desire to reach more millennials through creative industry, as noted by Liz Armistead, Dropbox’s Brand Marketing Manager, “Sponsoring the Music Biz conference is an opportunity for us to hear more from professionals in the music industry and share best practices for working smarter.”
According to Forbes, Dropbox’s newfound positioning as a tool for media professionals comes at a time when the company is rapidly expanding its enterprise presence as a whole, adding as many as 25,000 new business users per quarter. On a higher level, the enterprise collaboration market is forecast to grow from $47.3 billion in 2014 to $70.61 billion in 2019, and will likely see particular growth in creative industries as collaborative teams grow in both influence and size.
Taking music into account in your brand engagement model by introducing playlists and a community for music sharing and experiences can dramatically change how your brand is perceived by your target audience.
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