Capturing Eardrums

It's getting toward 10 p.m. at the offices of Rumblefish in Portland, Oreg., but founder Paul Anthony will not be going home anytime soon. Instead he is sitting in front of an elaborate mixing board, staring up at computer monitors that show graphic representations of the sounds coming out of the adjoining recording studio. A local singer named Liv -- with a style reminiscent of Jill Scott -- is laying down vocal tracks at a leisurely rate, and Anthony is anything but impatient. "If I'm not producing something," he says, "I go crazy."

Anthony, who is 27, means that in the sense of producing music, but he's also had a productive couple of years in his day job, as the "Big Fish" -- that's his official title -- of the unusual "music delivery" company that he started while still a student at the University of Oregon. Combining a passion for music with boundless energy and a willingness to shift his business model to find opportunities, he has created a concept he calls "music identity" to reel in clients such as Adidas, Red Bull, JCPenney, and Pabst Brewing and quickly crank up revenue into the seven figures. That's not bad for a start-up with 10 employees, and it's a case study in making it up as you go. Doug Fieldhouse, CEO of Portland-based Vesta, the highest-revenue company on last year's Inc. 500 list, encountered Anthony as a contestant in an Oregon Entrepreneur's Forum business plan competition (Rumblefish won) and ended up investing in the new company and joining its board. "I had no idea if Rumblefish would be successful," says Fieldhouse, "but I had no doubt that Paul would be."

In about 24 hours, Liv will be performing at an event for another Rumblefish client, Umpqua Bank. If the idea of music identity sounds a little confusing at first, the relationship between Rumblefish and Umpqua is a helpful introduction. The theory is that one way consumer-oriented companies can give meaning to their brands is by way of the music they associate with -- whether it's simply the soundtrack to their advertising or through more ambitiously unpredictable marketing tactics. Anthony argues that while plenty of brands are willing to rely on teams of specialists -- design firms, color experts, and so on -- to craft a logo, they often give too little thought to how the brand sounds. And this matters, he contends, because music can reach any customer or potential customer who is watching an ad, who's on hold, or who's in a retail environment. "That's pretty much everybody," he says.

And for Anthony, music is not just a trendy new way to make brands stand out -- it's pretty much his life. He was playing drums in San Francisco Bay area clubs at the age of 14. And that's why, after a full workday, he has settled into Rumblefish's in-house studio to record Liv. Her collaborator, Sedell, shows up with "the MPC," a device that is somewhere between a musical instrument and a portable computer, used to create beats and loops. Soon Sedell's latest backing-track creation is flowing through the speakers, and Liv starts working through her lines. It's slow going; every phrase seems to require dozens of takes. But Anthony looks energized, which is good, since he'll be here until almost 4 a.m. On some level, it's this deep connection to music that he delivers to clients.

As aggressive as he is about finding creative ways for his clients to use music, Anthony always comes back to how much licensing can help the artists. Too many musicians simply don't understand business, and either naively fail to exploit their creativity for all it is worth in the marketplace or just as naively hope that they'll hit the increasingly rare jackpot of old-style rock-star megasuccess. Smart musicians, he argues, "don't want to be rock stars anymore." They want control over what they create and a steady, fair income. "That's what's driving the new independents," he says.

You can see why a youth apparel firm or a beer maker might see the appeal of the Rumblefish music identity theory, but does a bank really need a music identity? The fact that Umpqua -- which has 92 branches, from Seattle to Sacramento -- has decided the answer is yes says something about both the bank and the state of marketing and branding today. Ray Davis, who took over as CEO about 10 years ago when Umpqua was a small chain with about $100 million in assets under management, wanted to push for aggressive growth, but faced the obvious question: How do you differentiate a bank? Since bank products are pretty much interchangeable, he has decided to address this dilemma by treating Umpqua as something like a lifestyle brand. "We're almost more of a marketing company than a bank," he says. This is why the company pays a lot of attention to things that don't seem to have much to do with banking -- such as the design of its "stores" (not branches) and its own line of coffee. And it's why it tries to connect with consumers through, for example, ice cream trucks.

Specifically, it was a stunt to promote the opening of new branches (um, stores) in northern California that started Umpqua thinking about music identity. The bank's advertising agency, Portland's Leopold Ketel & Partners, hired three ice cream trucks to drive around the relevant neighborhoods pumping out music, handing out free ice cream, and in the process spreading buzz about a different kind of bank. But what music, exactly? Up-tempo numbers like Outkast's "Hey Ya" and James Brown's "I Feel Good" made the 20-song playlist, and Rumblefish was brought in to help with the sonic logistics and to make sure any licensing issues were handled correctly. That was the opening: Anthony has since convinced the bank that its "handshake marketing" style is a perfect fit with music identity, and he has a couple of fresh projects in the works.

Rumblefish is not an advertising agency or a marketing or branding firm per se, he says, "but I've met a lot of brand managers who invest heavily in new ways to speak to their consumers." In a world where every consumer is assaulted with marketing messages, music can be a way for a brand to make a connection through all the clutter. "That connection," Anthony says, "is what they're buying from us."

Improvisation is part of music and part of business. Anthony's improvisation skills got a test in college that set him on the path to starting a business rather than a band. He had a double major in composition and recording technology; what he didn't have was enough money to get by. He hit on an idea: licensing.

Of course, he didn't really know anything about how to, say, license his music to a filmmaker or an advertiser. So he cold-called every production company listed in an off-the-shelf filmmaker directory, and showed up at a local television station and asked, "Who makes your commercials?" In other words, he didn't really know what he was doing. But the cold-calling hooked him up with small-budget filmmakers who were thrilled at the idea of obtaining a full orchestral score for a few thousand dollars. Films like Dawn of the Dwellers and The Killing Club didn't become box-office smashes, but the money was pretty good for an impoverished college student. Meanwhile, Anthony's persistence with the local TV station led him to a gig writing a jingle for the local power company.