Converse Music have quietly launched a new initiative called Warm Ups where they follow an up and coming act on tour who are opening the show. The Converse Team shoot a series of videos aiming to: “capture the interaction between support and headliner, touch on the highs and lows of being the supporter and give viewers an insight into the opinions of both the band and headliner”. The excellent Wet Paint are the first act to take part in this campaign who have recently been opening up for Bloc Party in a short tour around the UK.

The videos are posted on the currently quite roughly edged Converse Music website. Following a relatively unknown act is a brave move for Converse but the benefits come from the long game. Follow enough of these new bands and you imagine one of them will hit the big time, at which point these videos could serve as a timely reminder that Converse was there from the start, recognising the talent early on and helping the band get to where they are today.

Wet Paint did not only benefit from a bunch of free plimsoles and some coverage on the Converse Music website. Being the support band on a tour is an expensive business. Unless you are headlining tour fees are a token gesture which go nowhere near to covering costs and are traditionally expected to be covered by the record label. In this case Wet Paint’s label is the rather fantastic, but extremely broke Trial & Error Recordings. Whilst the tour would have gone ahead even at a loss, Converse’s support definitely made the tour more viable.

I think this is a great little scheme, Converse have been involved in supporting new music for some time and this is a very interesting addition to that strategy at the lower end of the mix. The fans are offered a real insight into the world of a touring band at a stage in their career which could be the tipping point.

A new episode of the Grand Theft Auto 4 game is arriving later this month for Xbox 360 which will feature new missions, characters and music. GTA4 was hugely successful and “The Lost and the Damned” will no doubt boost interest in the game for fans who are eagerly awaiting the release of the next instalment.

The game lets players choose their own soundtrack via use of the in game radio unit. Players can tag tracks that they like in the game for purchase later on via iTunes.

This release adds 5 new radio stations including one that is hosted by hip hop supremo Funkmaster Flex. On his channel you can listen to an interview with Busta Rhymes and also hear a new track “Conglomerate”, which debuts exclusively via the GTA platform.

Busta has a new album to plug, so being able to use the worlds fastest selling video game as a touchpoint is an extremely effective way of people hearing a track off this album before it’s available to purchase.

Independent radio is a good thing, it celebrates what is different and daring and gives anyone with a radio a chance to hear stuff they might not otherwise come into contact with. In the USA independent radio stations operate as non profit organisations, relying heavily on local support and often operating close to the breadline.

A campaign was put together in 2007 by a partnership of two brands: Toyota Yaris and Urban Outfitters which came about to give a helping hand to these indie stations. Free Yr Radio has seen a series of free events across the US, with live performances and DJ sets at key Urban Outfitter stores and local venues.

The recent extension to this series of shows is that a digital compilation is now available to purchase, featuring tracks from most of the acts that have played the 2008 tour. The download costs a mere 99¢ and is exclusively available through another independent organisation Insound, all profits of which go to the 12 radio stations that were supported in 2008. The tracklist looks like this:

The campaign literally drips with the altruism of supporting good, local, independent music scenes. Any brand association in this area has to be done 100% right or it will seem like the radio has sold out and the brands are cashing in on some credibility. However, I think this one works well. The attention garnered through the great series of free live events plus the donation of money from the compilation makes this a great fit and a winning campaign for all involved.

Coca Cola is moving away from it’s “Coke side of life” tagline which has been in use since 2006. The new global campaign comes under the heading “open happiness” which rolls out across the marketing mix, but most interestingly includes a single to be released digitally by Atlantic in March.

The track features a supergroup of sorts including members of Fallout Boy, Gym Class Heroes, Panic At the Disco, Gnarls Barkley and erm… Janelle Monae (no idea). The single is to be used on the new tv spot which will be hitting over 100 countries early this year and the artists will be printed on 20 billion cans of the fizzy pop. “As a brand we feel we might be able to take (the artists) to the next level,” says Umut Ozaydini, global marketing manager, sports and entertainment marketing.

Coca Cola and Atlantic are splitting the sales revenues for the track but Coke (who commissioned the track) retain all publishing rights, giving the campaign a potentially lucrative extra income stream.

The track which was unvelied (not sure that’s physically possible) at Midem was apparently met with a big fat meh from the industry.

So what’s in it for the artists? Well in these days of diminished marketing budgets (especially in the music industry) there’s a big global push for all of them. With such enormous and beneficial weight we might ask why Coke has chosen artists who already are very well established (maybe not you Janelle Monae), but then again the massive teenage fanbase that these acts tap should generate plenty of interest in the campaign.

My problem with this is with the credibility of the project when none of the artists had anything to do with the writing of the track (unlike last year’s excellent Converse music collaboration which I must write about another time). Why are the artists happy to put their name to this when the final product does not represent their art? Is making the audio from a tv advert a commercial product in it’s own right a good move? Do we want branded music in the charts? Surely not. I wonder if the artists feel proud of the song or have Coke paid them enough money to grin and bear it? Maybe I’m a cynic but I suspect that latter is far more likely.

In the current climate people no longer are happy to have brands invade their space as much as they were. Marketing needs to be respectful and subtle. Brands need to understand that shouting at the consumers is counter-productive and that to turn audiences into advocates, a softer approach is required.

Of course until the track is made available to the public, and we can hear it for ourselves we will have to wait and see.

So today marks the launch of the much talked about Bacardi B Live campaign, heralded by many as The Solution to the music industry’s ails and possibly the highest profile music marketing news story of last year.

So what’s it all about? Take one international drinks brand looking to re-engage their consumers with a new music property, add one high profile act who are free of contractual recording obligations, mix them together and what do we get? A symbiotic relationship whereby the brand gains exclusive rights to recordings and a number of live performances throughout the year (not to mention a fair bit of press off the revolutionary deal alone), and the band gains a suitcase full of crisp notes and a cuba libre each. Sounds like the major labels are fucked right?

Well now that the site has gone live what does BLiveShare look like? What we appear to have have here is a clever use of the word “share”. Having signed up by giving my email address to Bacardi and Groove Armada what I get is a free mp3 and my very own profile page. This reveals a series of “rewards”, joy upon joy, it’s 3 more Groove Armada mp3s! The “share” part of this campaign is not sharing music as one might hope, rather they want you to share your contacts. To get your hands on the rewards you need to coerce your friends to sign up too. The more people you get to join, the more rewards you receive although this looks pretty steep to me, here’s what’s required:

• Share Track 1 20 times to unlock Track 2
• Share Track 1 200 times to unlock Track 3
• Share Track 1 2000 times to unlock Track 4

Yikes, don’t think I’ve got enough friends to even get to track 2. Luckily for me it’s a pyramid type scheme so if a friend signs someone up that counts towards my total as well as theirs. Oh and this all ends 40 days from now because on 2nd March the tracks are released as a soft EP available through the normal channels. I guess Bacardi want to be making some money back somewhere.

In terms of a brand using music as a marketing tool this is a revolutionary campaign, it walks new territory, never before has a brand effectively replaced a record label and I can’t think of an act that has access to this much international marketing budget without relying on the coffers of a major label deal. If the ROI works out for Bacardi we’re likely to see a bunch more of these brand-as-label campaigns, so I for one really hope that it does. Although can whoever does it next please pick a good act instead, Groove Armada suck my balls.