Tapping into the passion of Sony Music employees to help bring visibility to their favorite albums through powerful videos.

Sixty Second Soundtracks Player

The Challenge:

Develop an effective and cost-efficient way to raise online visibility for albums from the Sony Music catalog not currently slated for marketing attention or re-release.
Increase the visibility of Sony staff in a way that demonstrates that they are music fans very much like the audience.

A video series where Sony staff would discuss selected titles, to be featured on legacyrecordings.com and across social networks.

This project was originally conceived solely for the A&R staff to discuss the importance of various key titles in the catalog. I decided that in order for the content tone to be authentic and engaging, we should tap into the strong personalities and passion for music that existed across the company and open the concept up (via company-wide casting call) to anyone interested in sharing their feelings about a favorite album and how it has affected their life.
I specifically disallowed certain top albums, both to avoid competition (everyone would have spoken about The Clash’s “London Calling” or Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” otherwise) and to ensure that we got a wide sampling of albums rather than just the ‘top hits’.
After ensuring there would be no duplicates, we recorded the interviews in a corner office at Sony which happened to have some amazing views of the city (thus saving any location costs).

Over 40 stand-alone videos filmed over several days, for use on social networks and throughout the Sony Music website ecosystem, at a total cost of under $2,000.

By the late 2000s, the industries handling of Napster and other p2p services had polarized public perception of the music industry, and it was clear that the people who’d stuck around after were there because of a genuine passion for music. Those people were really strong advocates for what music and the industry could be, and I knew there was an opportunity for me to hone my craft with them and humanize an industry that most people thought of as being made up of evil faceless corporate cogs.
Happily, we had a bunch of people interested in sharing their memories. This became a great example of the kind of storytelling that I believe is most powerful. Simple, personal, relate-able.
These personal story projects are a great way to build awareness and appreciation for any business. They also make sense financially. The videos are timeless, widely varied, and very affordable.