Josh Rabinowitz, senior VP of ad agency Grey Group, opened up the “Integrating Unkown Artists into Global and National Campaigns” panel at Billboard and Adweek’s Music and Advertising conference by presenting the audience with the challenge his team faced in 2008. After huge success using Natasha Bedingfield “Unwritten” for Proctor & Gamble’s Pantene brand across a global and campaign for the previous year and a half, Grey Group was tasked with finding a replacement song that would show similar success.
A call for submissions was made in conjunction with the 2008 MIDEM conference, and approximately 400 songs were presented to the ad agency for the Pantene spot. Rabinowitz said that Grey Group was looking for something that reflected the brands emphasis on female empowerment, Pantene’s concept of “shine,” and that would translate to a global audience; a song that could be “part of the brand.”
They chose Brooklyn songwriter Rosie Golan’s aptly named “Shine,” which had been produced in conjunction with New York group Human. In discussing the opportunities this placement had created for her career, Golan said that the placement “allowed me to make my album independently, which was great.” Furthermore, the placement opened the door to further TV placement for Golan’s songs, including “One Tree Hill” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” Rabinowitz liked “Shine” so much that Grey Group and P&G decided to put out a full length version through iTunes. P&G would benefit from further development of brand equity, and “if the thing exploded, the artist would keep the majority of the revenue.”
The trio, including Morgan Visconti of Human Worldwide, also discussed how the sound had been submitted to Grey Group. “Submission was close to the final (commercial) version,” said Visconti. Rabinowitz agreed and suggested that while some agencies had the capacity to hear a good song and tailor it for their use, that submissions that are well produced were more likely to make the cut in finding ad placement.
During the Q&A session, there was some discussion of the deal structure between P&G and Golan, where the original 30- and 60- second spots were considered work-for-hires, “which is an industry norm,” said Rabinowitz. The agency would then keep publishing rights on behalf of their client, and the writer would get the normal writers share. In Golan’s case, “Shine” was subsequently released as a single to iTunes. In that case, a second deal was made where P&G would own the master rights, and then granted the artist permission to use the single elsewhere, such as in TV spots.
Rabinowitz then introduced the 2009 call for submission for a global Revlon campaign, playing a few of the candidates for the audience. Included in these was a live performance by New York songwriter Leah Siegel of her song “Firefly.” Siegel also worked with Human Worldwide’s Morgan Visconti on her submission to Grey Group. She also cited the flexibility she had gained as an independent artist through advertising placements.
