Ad Music Solutions: Groove Guild Delivers Versatility to Sonnet

Let’s look on the bright side: Advertising agencies have more music options than ever before.

At the ready to match sound to their picture are an ever-increasing array of composers, music houses and production music libraries, not to mention synch-ready publishers and labels, clamoring to meet their needs.

The flipside of all these options is an avalanche of choice. Agency creatives are almost always operating under time and budget pressure, are famous for leaving music to the last minute, and – oh yeah – don’t always have an in-house music producer. But clients don’t want excuses, they want results, and an underperforming campaign can leave an ad agency on a short leash.

There’s no sign of any such stress when experiencing seven new spots for Sonnet Insurance, however. A brand new entry to the Canadian home/auto insurance market, Sonnet took a different tack with a campaign that’s comprehensively optimistic. The disastrous vibes often associated with home/auto insurance are banished for a positive perspective – an engaging approach that highlights the good feelings people can get from a company they like working with.

Sonnet was looking to flip the insurance advertising script with its new campaign.

The campaign’s concept was hatched by Johannes Leonardo, a New York City advertising agency known for their adventurous work. With a client list including Adidas, Google, TripAdvisor, Bacardi, NBC, Coca Cola, and more, Johannes Leonardo knew the Sonnet campaign would require original thinking and have diverse musical needs.

Outsourcing the Music Department

The agency’s co-founders, Jan Jacobs and Leo Premutico hooked on to their musical solution early, enlisting NYC-based Groove Guild to cover all bases. Led by music supervisor Al Risi and creative director/composer/sound designer Paul Riggio, Groove Guild, established in 2013, is a music supervision company that offers an unexpected take on the music-to-picture vertical.

“We founded this company around the concept that the world didn’t need another music house,” Risi says. “There’s tons of them out there, and there are a lot of great ones. What it really needed was a higher-level resource to help navigate the world of music. The idea was to be an outsourced music department, which is a traditional role. Some ad agencies have those. We figured we’d offer that service or that luxury to agencies that did not have that service.

Groove Guild co-founder Al Risi.

“As we evolved over time,” he continues, “we realized that there’s a need for more of a full-service creative music resource with a true deep reach into the world of music, as well as a really deep understanding of music itself. All that with the ability to execute music as well.”

With Riggio a highly experienced composer/sound designer who’d come up at Big Foote before starting his own music house So Loud, and Risi a music supervisor who got his start on the label side, Groove Guild found a natural diversification in how they were being engaged. Operating from a music supervisor perspective, although with more of a film/TV world approach as opposed to the way that role is traditionally considered in advertising, they evolved to have a client base that includes Burger King, Diet Coke, Chrysler, Fisher Price, Trident and Google.

“In the world of advertising, the term or title of music supervisor is more relegated to someone who finds music, and assists in the licensing process,” Risi notes. “For us as a company, it’s meant to be somebody who oversees the entire music process, whether it be supervision, original music, sound design, post. Really all things audio.”

Staffed by a team that can compose music as well as expertly produce, Groove Guild goes beyond what an ad agency music producer typically covers themselves. “We’re able to play that role of supervisor,” Riggio says, “but we can actually dig in, pick up instruments, and fix things in a real way. So while being a music producer for agencies is a service that we can provide, it’s just one of a multitude of services.”

“This kind of approach allows us to take parallel paths,” explains Risi. “We may want to go down the original song lane, but we also want to see if there’s an existing track out there that might be great for picture. We might want to engage a specific composer also. This allows us to explore all options for our clients, and deliver the best possible music that helps elevate the creative, regardless of where it comes from.

“For a campaign like Sonnet’s, if you had an agency producer working on it that was just farming this out to a bunch of different people, that agency producer for a period of time would almost need to be full-time just concentrating on music. There’s so many moving parts and thoughts on a package such as this, and so many different avenues an agency might want to chase. Our role allows them to go down all these lanes, but also gives them a lot of bandwidth to deal with the other disciplines of the business from a production, editing and post standpoint.”

A Diversified Campaign Strategy

Tied together with the tag line, “What’s the Best That Can Happen?” Johannes Leonardo’s Sonnet spots aims to inspire consumers towards a more optimistic outlook, in varying degrees. In the ebullient “Balloon” optimism takes on a whimsical guise, “Journey” is more contemplative, “Dolphin” connects with nature’s grandeur, while “Rocket” is a cinematically uplifting – and funny — view of mankind at its best. Voiceover from the beloved actor Michael J. Fox add an additional sonic dimension to several of the spots.

The agency’s creatives have long worked under the philosophy that music for advertising shouldn’t be a fire drill. “While the process of creating music can be separated from the film process, the end product itself can’t be,” says Johannes Leonardo’s Premutico. “So we’ve learned not to leave it to the last minute. It’s way too important in setting the mood, and sending a signal to the audience before the visuals or dialogue does. So it’s typically planned at the beginning of the process.”

In search of additional bandwidth for ad agencies — Groove Guild’s Paul Riggio.

With Groove Guild on the Sonnet project Riggio, Risi and their team — which includes original SonicScoop co-founder Janice Brown as Head of Production — went through the storyboards to formulate a diverse musical approach. “One of the things that we like to do,” says Riggio, “is develop some sort of a tone and also get feedback from the client to understand what kind of a tone-per-spot that they would like. See if there’s some sort of cohesive thread that can happen.

“We aim to provide very high level work that is also within budget, and can be licensed or purchased from the onset. We started the project by pulling music from a number of different composers, music houses and soundtracks to establish an audio palette of what they might like, to get a sense of their taste and what they were feeling would be right for the campaign for every spot that was on the list. That was very helpful for the agency: We’re going in with a clear idea of an aesthetic for each spot.”

According to Riggio, the need for flexible strategies on Sonnet was immediately apparent. “That was clear before the job even started, because they’re a highly creative agency. They’re known to leave no stone unturned with their creative process and what they do. They’re constantly saying, ‘What about this, what about going down this path, what about this path?’”

“You have to be open in the early stages,” the agency’s co-CCO Jan Jacobs says about musical resources for a campaign. “Is it going to be an original piece? Is there an existing piece that would suit? For an agency like us it’s important to have someone competent who can lead the process and be skilled in all facets [including] original compositions, access to musicians, dealing with contracts, without bringing a set of biases to the process.”

As the project moved forward, solutions began coming into focus. It became apparent that “Rocket”, with its unique combo of dramatic scope and tongue-in-cheek attitude, would require an original piece of music to picture. Groove Guild recommended some particularly adept resources and the job was eventually awarded to the award-winning NYC music house duotone, which helped set the pace for the campaign’s inaugural spot with an epic orchestral score that simultaneously drives its humor and emotional impact.

As a creative resource that is also hired to compose and sound design themselves, Groove Guild often has to help music houses understand why they’re a friendly force, not a competitor, before they collaborate for the first time. “Outside composers often have a lot of pointed questions about how we work,” Risi acknowledges. “When we engage a music company like duotone, we make it very clear to them that we are not competition to them in any way, shape or form. We refuse to be involved in competing with them — we’re not one of three companies that are writing for that particular spot.

“We just make it clear to them that as long as they do their job well, which of course they will, that there’s going to be no conflict whatsoever. In that role we put on our agnostic music producer hat and help however we can to guide the process and keep everything on track.”

“Being from the music house side and hearing a lot of talk about music producers in general we’ve heard things like, ‘Who needs a music producer? I work with this client all the time directly,’” Riggio says. “The role of any intermediary is in question from the music house perspective, and I understand their trepidation. Being on this side, where we’re doing more project managing, and acting in a bigger role, I now see how much we’re able to streamline the process and sometimes even save the music house undue extra work.”

“Generally, I think we make the job a little easier for them because we speak their language better than sometimes a producer or a creative can speak,” Risi adds. “We’ll pave the way by putting some tracks in front of the creatives to get an idea of direction, to drill down, so it’s not a shotgun approach. It’s a bit more pinpointed for them. In the long run, it benefits everybody.”

Multiple Music Sources

For “Journey,” a moving spot that masterfully encapsulates a lifetime’s responsibilities within one minute, Groove Guild helped to realize an idea brought to the table by Premutico. He’d thought of a track by Def Poetry Jam spoken-word artist OVEOUS whose backing track created a compelling underscore to the commercial’s message.

Journey_Sonnet from Groove Guild on Vimeo.

Simple and sophisticated in its original form, OVEOUS’ composition was merged with a jazz-tinged melody by Groove Guild composer/pianist Jon Notar creating a perfect match to picture. “The OVEOUS track wasn’t usable in its current form because it was recorded live,” Riggio recalls. “It connected but it wasn’t fully connecting, so we took it on to create a new arrangement to fit the spot, but it’s the essence and melody of the original song that they loved, and we were able to make it feel right for the piece.”

Clocking in at almost 2:00, the ambitious “Balloon” fully embodies the campaign’s “What’s the Best That Can Happen?” theme. In the animated mini-movie, a fortune-kissed balloon floats happily through a non-stop series of pop-potential situations, ultimately ascending skyward to safety. Here, Groove Guild acted as both music supervisor and music producer, finding the ideal recording artist in a global search, then crafting a catchy, offbeat track that ensures the tagline is eminently memorable.

Groove Guild found the Irish singer/songwriters Kevin Barry, Doug Sheridan and Ray Harman to write and record the anthem through Crucial Custom. “We ended up working with this really great Irish band,” says Risi. “We drilled down with them, and mitigated a lot of the back-and-forth by working through the lyrics and arrangement with the agency on our end so we weren’t putting [the songwriters] through that entire process, which can be frustrating for artists. We’re really happy with the way it came out. The spot was never actually intended for TV, but they decided to put it on air as well.”

Sonnet Balloon (Full Length) from Groove Guild on Vimeo.

While the widespread musical feels required by the Sonnet campaign certainly added considerably to the overall process, the music helps to widen the scope of the creative.

“Every time we work with them they go above and beyond,” Premutico says. “The launch campaign for Sonnet was all based on the same idea, that optimism is the most valuable asset anyone can ever own, but was all extremely varied in tone. ‘Rocket’ needed a movie-like score. ‘Balloon’ was entirely an original creation that needed a sing-along quality. So we knew we would require a partner who could stretch with us. Someone with a real breadth of skills, contacts and tastes. And someone who would treat this as important an assignment as it was to us.”

True to Groove Guild’s mission, the agency saw them in effect become their music production department throughout the entire process. “Above ensuring we never had a last-minute scramble and helping our budget stretch further, they helped us make sure we were dedicating the same amount of attention to the production of the music as we were the production of the films themselves,” says Jacobs. “They basically helped us ensure the music lived up to the quality of the film, and if that meant pushing us to aim for better when they felt something was falling short they did just that, even if it meant more work for them.”

A Shifting Landscape

As competition intensifies within music to picture, simultaneous to ad campaign budgets tightening even as client expectations escalate, Groove Guild can find itself facing challenging situations.

Groove Guild’s central studios.

“We’re seeing budgets of all types, for sure,” Risi states. “It depends on the client. We are on every end of the spectrum, including working with production libraries. You have to get creative on a certain level when budgets are restricted, but there is a limit to what you can do.

“When it comes to production values — with the technology that’s available and the skill level that’s rising — it’s great to see that a lot of the quality is going up. At the same time, the challenge is when there’s a request for a piece that is clearly a very high level, highly produced, very well mixed on the level of an album — being desired to be had in a day. My personal challenge is I want to be able to deliver that, but it’s been kind of an education too over time, to see where the limit is. You just cannot get a certain level of quality for a certain amount of money within a restricted amount of time.

“Even the libraries are getting tapped. We’re seeing a lot of clients that have been using the same libraries for years and are starting to repeat the same tracks, so they can’t use them anymore, because they use the 10 that are at the quality level that’s needed.”

“The other 400,000 (tracks in the production music library) are not good enough,” Riggio adds. “There’s also the problem of seeing it on air on another spot, because those libraries are all non-exclusive. You can’t get those tracks exclusively, so you really run the risk of pulling the cream from these production libraries and seeing them on multiple spots out there. That dilutes the efforts of the brand along the way.”

A double-edged sword for Groove Guild is also the innovative aspect of their business model. Ad agency creatives – like many humans – can be creatures of habit who are reluctant to try something too new. “Some clients are used to working a particular way, and they can get comfortable working with the same handful of music houses and that’s where they tend to default to over time,” says Risi. “The reality is that the world is your oyster as it relates to music these days, and we want to be a conduit to help bring that to the content that we’re touching.”

To make further inroads, Groove Guild stays focused on client education, to help current and potential future clients understand how their unorthodox approach can be a good fit. Along the way, they’re also creating their own content so they can not only have fun with music, but also introduced amazing talent to their world via a new web based music series titled “Unsupervised”. It features on-the-rise artists playing live for an in-studio audience coupled with an interview hosted by Risi. “It’s a platform for truly gifted and amazing artists to be seen and heard by our creative community so they can get some exposure, but also inspire the audience too,” Risi says.

Evolving a time-honored industry like music for advertising can be equal parts exhilarating and exhausting. For Risi and Riggio, that’s a dynamic worth diving into as their portfolio expands in tandem with the pressure.

“The clients are switching from doing one-to-three huge spots a year to doing two spots a month,” Riggio says. “The volume is increasing tremendously, and the shelf life of a great piece of content has become much shorter, because once it’s posted and everybody views it, it’s done. That volume increase requires more creative solutions: You can’t always do the massive license fee for certain projects, and you also don’t want extremely low quality music. There’s the need for both ends of the spectrum and everywhere in between.

“I see our approach gaining traction, because the model is coming from a need: We’re seeing a problem on the content creation side where there’s a tremendous amount of supply and variety in music to navigate. It’s helpful to have a creative conduit like ours in that world.”

• David Weiss is co-author of “Music Supervision: The Complete Guide to Selecting Music for Movies, TV, Games & New Media”
  

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