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Radio Marketing Wiz Brian Farrish Discusses His Plan For Songs That Sell

In May 1994, marketing visionary Brian Farrish set out to make radio commercials as creative as the songs. His brainstorm: to promote and place adsongs--song-length commercials--on the radio.

Like infomercials and product placements, adsongs would help integrate commercials with programming. Farrish and his company, Wriite Radio, aim to make the transition from song to commercial as soothing as possible by eliminating the current commercial "interruptives." Instead of using jolting 30-second spots, advertisers will buy up entire 3+ minute breaks and use them for song-length ads.

How it works: A company such as 7Up hires an adsong agency such as Farrish's Wriite Radio to create a 7Up adsong. 7Up pays only for the radio time to air the adsong; the adsong company makes its money by selling CD and cassette singles of the adsong in stores.

Whether anyone would actually buy adsongs remains to be seen. However, Coke-a-Cola pulled off a similar stunt in 1971, selling 500,000 copies of their "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" jingle as a single. And the charts today are loaded with soundtracks and TV themes, endorsements, licensing deals, etc.

Farrish abhores the commercialism of art, of course, but adsongs aren't real songs, they're just song-form commercials, aka "Product-Placements-Into-Yet-Unwritten- Songs-Making-Them-Commercials." In fact, he says one of the advantages of adsongs is that they eliminate the problem of "selling out." You can't sell out what you already sold. Or something like that.

The following interview was conducted via email.

Brian Farrish: No. Adsongs are in the critical second step, finding U.S. national advertisers. Stage one was seeing if enough new-music non-country stations would consider accepting adsongs.

Why not country stations?

Because of the relatively low sales volume of country music, per radio airplay. Also because of the almost non-existent crossover of country artists.

What companies have you asked so far?

It's too soon to say; the advertiser campaign (stage two) is just getting started.

What musicians are you working with?

Talent searching (stage three) is not being performed yet.

Is anyone else working on adsongs?

I am aware of certain people who are considering similar ventures. Some are waiting to see what comes of my efforts, and some want to join my efforts.

Over 200 FM radio stations have agreed to accept adsongs on a case-by-case basis, so have you noticed substantial difference between how stations with different music formats react? Like do modern rock and adult contemporary respond differently to the idea?

No. The only similarity between people who liked the idea was that they had experienced an earlier musically-intensive attempt at marketing. If the particular person I was speaking to was in the broadcasting business when the Coke tune came out, then this person would become an advocate of the idea.

That's surprising considering radio audiences are so different. Like marketing studies say that older Americans are more persuaded by information-based advertising, advertising that provides information about the product. Whereas young people are more persuaded by image advertising (which is what adsongs are), advertising that evokes some sort of "hip" or pleasant feeling that doesn't really have to do with anything about the product.

This is true. The sales effectiveness of adsongs will drop as you skew upwards in age. Overall, the prime effectiveness will be in the 12-24 year old (pop-music buying) range. Secondary effects will carry on up until about 30. Adsongs would be of no use for anyone above age 35.

But then most manuals on marketing to generation x say they're more cynical than other groups, so it would seem that they wouldn't want advertisers trying to pull something over on them.

Absolutely. Listeners will know, of course, that an entire adsong is indeed an ad, because of the disclosures both before and after each airing.

What sort of criteria do stations use to decide whether to accept an adsong or not?

The quality of the music, the lyrics, and the revenue.

But adsongs aren't songs, they're commercials, and radio stations don't turn commercials down if they're bad.

Yes they do. It doesn't happen often with regular ads, but it will with adsongs. Stations view adsongs not as commercials, but as paid programming. They feel listeners will think the stations chose to play some particular adsong.

So stations view them as programming and listeners view them as commercials. Neat. How will you distribute adsong releases? Are you planning on working with the majors?

The releases are to be singles, distributed in traditional music channels, with the possibility of also being distributed with the advertised product or service.

One of the interesting points you make is that songs on the radio invariably promote something. A Hootie song is basically an ad for Hootie CDs, concerts, t-shirts, the Hootie lifestyle. That Rembrandts song is an ad for Friends and Coke and milk, like Friends is an ad for the Rembrandts.

Yes, all songs promote something, mostly good feelings.

If, hypothetically speaking, Epic Records pays a bunch of stations to play Silverchair, could that be considered an adsong?

Not by my definition, because paid promotion (using Fair Air Communications or a similar service) does not involve the Third Party, the product or service advertiser.

In other words, they can't just be selling music, they have to be selling something else, too. That way there's a third party to pay for the ad while your company makes money from music sales.

Yes. The other situation is simply a radio-infomercial style of a record company.

And adsongs also can't be retroactive, correct? If someone licensed the rights to "Nothing Compares 2U" and then created a fragrance called 2U, that wouldn't be an adsong.

No. What you describe is already being done. It would not be an adsong because the music was not written expressly for the ad.

Do you know a lot about music? What do you listen to?

I have a fair knowledge of past popular music, with an emphasis on the early rock era, the '70s and '80s. I try to constantly monitor various stations here in LA, and I also review the various charts.

You mention that adsongs are particularly appropriate for products that have intrinsic personalities, like clothes, fragrances, cars and amusement parks... How come pants have a personality and drinks don't?

Because pants and other clothing items are worn by one particular person (say, a Polo shirt worn by your friend Bob). Drinks and other food items, on the other hand, are not exclusive to one person but are seen with different people each day. This morning Bob may have a Coke, whereas this afternoon Mary will have one. This evening Tom will have one. But all the while, Bob is still wearing his Polo.

But one person consumes one Coke, just like one person wears the shirt and a billion people can wear the same shirt if they all shop at the Gap. What about tires?

It has nothing to do with how many different people use a product. It has instead to do with how many different people use a product that you know. Of the billion people that bought a champagne-colored Supernova-brand dress shirt, how many of them do you work with? Of all the people you know, who might you describe as a "jogging suit" type, or a "sweater" type, or a "Polo" type?

Well, zero, but I know some "yellow carbonated beverage" types and a few closet alcoholics... whatever... this sort of goes back to image advertising. Adsongs aren't supposed to talk about the product directly, right? It's more about promoting happy feelings. So if you're advertising a blender that crushes ice, has 19 speeds, a money-back guarantee, etc., the adsong wouldn't be about that stuff, it's be about, I dunno, all the great people you'd meet at parties.

You have the basic idea.

Thank you, Bryan.

Thank you.