Rosemary Waldrip, VP Marketing at Music Audience Exchange explains how for marketers, the data associated with music represents the best chance to pinpoint and connect with a specific audience in a meaningful way, because frankly, we are what we listen to
There’s a BuzzFeed quizOpens a new window that promises to guess your age based on how you answer nine questions about pop music. Like all BuzzFeed quizzes, this one is more about entertainment than a deep data dive, but the underlying premise rests on solid analytical ground. Music is one of the most data-rich cultural identifiers we have, making it especially valuable within the larger martech mandate to prioritize personalizationOpens a new window . For marketers, the data associated with music represents the best chance to pinpoint and connect with a specific audience in a meaningful way, because frankly, we are what we listen to.
Of course, people are more complex than a playlist. We exist inside a larger social construct of family and community. Frequently, marketers rely on broad proxies to stand in for community associations, in part because, according to a recent eMarketer studyOpens a new window , collecting and using granular data to pinpoint audiences remains a big challenge. Sports teams or religious affiliations represent two incredibly strong communal forces, but in terms of psychographic data, those connections aren’t all that rich. Identifying someone as a devout Catholic or a Dallas Cowboys fan doesn’t give marketers enough data to go beyond surface level.
Music is different. Choosing Usher over Justin Bieber as the “ultimate pop dude†can help predict your age, but the insights that can be drawn from our musical tastes actually run much deeper than demographics. Music is one of the primary ways we express our identity within the larger culture. And unlike religious and sporting affiliations, our musical tastes aren’t limited by exclusivity, making music the ideal reflection of our complex identities and associations.
At the genre level, marketers can reach accurate conclusions about particular groups of fans in a general sense. Country music fans are obviously very different people from electronic music fans. But genres are too monolithic to be meaningful for marketers. Through data analysis, marketers can dig deeper and understand how a Toby Keith fan differs from a Hank Williams III fan. Marketers can then deploy that data inside their marketing stacks to reach specific audiences in a very personal way, one that is literally music to our ears. With those kinds of audience insights, emails became more personal, social becomes more meaningful, and video—which typically relies on music to achieve emotional resonance—becomes so much more impactful.
Think back to high school for a moment to understand just how central music is to identity. Did you sing along with your favorite artist? Did you model your personal style off the way that artist dressed? Did the opinions of your favorite artist shape your social and political views? There’s a reason why Rock the Vote works with artists ranging from Megadeth to Miley Cyrus—our personal music heroes have an enormous influence on us, especially at a young age. There’s something absurd about crafting a message telling all 18-year-old Americans to vote—the group is just too large and fragmented to have a singular identity, and therefore broad messages fall flat. But messages crafted to convince 18-year-old Kanye fans to register to vote can be incredibly powerful because the data tells us how to make that message personal. By the same token, adding music-based insights to a marketing stack can help marketers rethink the way they segment and speak audiences, regardless of channel.
Of course, our musical tastes change over time. While we do tend to hold on to many of the “big†favorites we grew up with,Opens a new window rel=”nofollow noopener” title=”Opens a new window” target=”_blank”> researchers at Cambridge University identified five broad categories of musical taste during a person’s life. During adolescence, for example, we’re most likely to identify with “intense†musical genres like punk, or metal. As we transition to early adulthood, we’re more likely to construct our identities around pop music. But as we reach middle age, our identities tend to go in one of two directions: sophisticated or unpretentious. The former tends to have a strong association with jazz and classical music, whereas the latter tends to be defined by interests that associate with blues, country or folk music. Regardless, marketers can link those changes to an evolution in consumer and lifestyle preferences, and they can make those insights actionable by using data to identify specific artists within those broader categories. At that point, marketers aren’t just thinking narrowly about a consumer journey, they can think holistically about a lifelong relationship with their customers.
But no matter our age, we’re never fans of just one musician. When we analyze our musical tastes, we begin to understand just how far-reaching and interconnected our passions are. It’s common for people to have musical favorites that go against type; that’s why we’re all familiar with the concept of a “guilty pleasure.†It’s possible to love Seal and Skrillex. The same data that allows marketers to go deep into the identity of a Seal fan only becomes more useful when we identify unexpected musical combinations. When those combinations can be found at scale, as with Morrissey and young Mexican fans in Southern California, there’s a powerful opportunity for marketers to leverage a deeply powerful connection.
Marketers have long understood the value of that opportunity, and as a result, many brands have a successful track record of associating themselves with musicians. But most of that history was made in an analog era, where gatekeepers enforced a top-down music culture. Today, thanks to the democratization of music via streaming, there’s more music available than at any other time in human history. That’s great news for musicians and fans, but it also presents a challenge in terms of discovering the music we love.
The real opportunity for brands isn’t about aligning themselves with musicians, it’s about helping the process of musical discovery. When brands partner with musicians by helping them to use data to identify and grow their audiences, the brands aren’t just sponsoring a popular cultural icon; they’re enabling discovery. On a practical level, the brand is providing a valuable service to musicians and fans alike. But on a deeper, more emotional level, the brand is participating in a cultural connection that is central to the identities of the people they want to reach.