Capturing Eardrums
In a world that's increasingly awash in marketing clutter, Paul Anthony, founder of Rumblefish, believes music can help a brand stand out. So what does your company sound like?
Published May 2005
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLEIt'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.
