Grapevine Consulting

I attended Iris’s 2nd annual Under the Influence event last week. I spent my afternoon mainly camped out at the sessions held in  ”The Dive Inn” aka The George Inn near Borough Market listening to speakers from Iris Experiential, Contagious Magazine, Frukt and Poke.

For my round-up of their “best bits” I’ve written a few posts on the speakers.

Jack Horner & friend, FRUKT

I don’t know why but I’ve always struggled to understand what FRUKT does exactly, even though I’m subscribed to their Brands, Bands and Fansnewsletter, but people keep referencing them to me so I was keen to hear more about them. Basically they sum it up as “making music work”. Music is not a medium, channel, or a platform so brands wanting to use music need help doing it effectively - enter FRUKT.

They identified three strategic ways of associating music with brand:

1. the ‘Organic’ model: going with a community which is already championing you e.g. Hilfiger & Adidas built on their existing fan bases respectively
2. Multi-channel: e.g. O2 has a grassroots “undiscovered” strand, a “fixed location” strand via the O2 dome and an “events” strand through the Wireless festival, to weave together their music strategy
3. Identifying an engaged community: this is looking at where there’s natural tie in between your brand, a community, and music. They gave the example of Nike developing jogging kit which played on the fact that joggers were already closely connected with music

They then gave their top tips to making music work for your brand:

• “Go long and go deep” - meaning engage for the long term and be properly immersed
• “Let the music set you free” - meaning it doesn’t have to be formulaic, be innovative with your use of music
• Find *your* angle - basically make sure you pick a strategy which is relevant to your brand, don’t try & be something you’re not

Under the Influence: Part 1, The event

Paul Kemp-Robertson, Contagious Magazine