Bands and Brands: Supercuts' Rock The Cut ... - US Music Jobs

Last week I was invited to a panel discussion hosted by salon chain Supercuts to hear about their Rock The Cut campaign. The campaign sees four independent musical acts share their experiences of how style inspires their musical performances.

The bands/artists were carefully selected to cover different genres, as well as fulfilling the criteria of having great music and style. The acts are; four-piece R&B band Vintage Trouble, country singer/songwriter Laura Bell Bundy, Chicago-based indie pop rock outfit Gold Motel, and DJ and electronic producer Ken Loi. Ryan Heuser, Senior Director of Music & Entertainment at GMR Marketing, who conceptualized and developed this campaign, told Forbes ?We focused on emerging acts across genres, specifically Indie Rock, Country, Electronic, R&B/ Soul, to broaden the appeal of the campaign and reach a wide audience.?

The main forms of traditional promotion for the campaign are print and video; the artists are featured in posters in the network of 2000 Supercuts salons across the US, and were also filmed alongside their regular Supercuts stylists for ?candid interview? type videos. In the videos, the musicians discuss how their fresh cuts make them feel, especially when going on stage. Looking your best gives you confidence, and so the partnership of music and style reveals itself as a great match up. In one of the videos (featured below), Ty Taylor, the lead singer for Vintage Trouble, says ?There?s a pride in the way you step out into public, especially when you have a good haircut?.

Bands and Brands have often worked together, but it has usually been in a faceless hit-song-for-a-TV-commercial or Britney Spears-Pepsi billboard kind of way. Over the last decade, even the less exciting brands (insurance, home improvement) have connected with young, hip bands, as they realise the value of licensing songs from labels other than the majors, and also realise the opportunities presented by the market share of independent musicians.

What Supercuts have done to really engage music consumers, and to step above other music branding partners, is move beyond just print, TV and Radio broadcasting and set up an ?Artist Ambassador Program?; basically a Rock The Cut website which features tracks and information on over 700 artists also wanting to gain exposure for their music. In return, the participating bands promote the brand through their social networking sites, reaching into corners of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest et al, where Supercuts may have not had a presence before.

The salon franchise have also established four custom channels on iHeartRadio (to each represent the selected artist and their musical genres), an online and mobile radio service, a further media partnership with ESPN X Games and a concert promotion deal with Live Nation.

Panel Discussion

And so, on to the roundtable panel discussion held last week in Chicago. Featuring Jon Gotreau from Supercuts, Janine Schaults from Illinois Entertainer, Ryan Heuser from GMR Marketing, Alex Fruchter from Ruby Hornet, and Domingo Meneses from Crowd Noize, the panel discussed Supercuts? Rock The Cut campaign, how music and style relate to each other, and their tips for this year?s Lollapalooza festival. The discussion was recorded and edited by Jaime Black of Dynasty Podcasts, and you can stream the audio below.

The fact that Supercuts followed up the campaign by staging a small event like this lends credibility and depth beyond that of standard brand placement. The wrong campaign could really damage a band?s career or tarnish their image, but it seems that the impact of the Rock The Cuts promotion is helping the select artists in positive ways; more airplay, greater national exposure, and ultimately, new fans. As for continuing to break out, that responsibility has to be passed back to the band. A strong branding partnership can really give you a platform to take off from, but you need to be able to play live and continue to write good music in order to truly ?make it? in the music industry.

by Lee Jarvis

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Tags: bands, branding, campaign, Chicago, commercial, GMR Marketing, Gold Motel, independent, indie, Ken Loi, Laura Bell Bundy, licensing, Rock The Cut, Supercuts, video, Vintage Trouble

Source: http://us.music-jobs.com/blog/index.php/music-industry-news/bands-and-brands-supercuts-rock-the-cut/

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