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Music has always been an essential element in advertising but securing the ideal soundtrack is not as easy as it seems. Here’s where we come in.

Finding the Right Song

Whether you’re selling shoes or raising awareness about a noble cause, your choice of music can make or break a campaign. At Music Rights Clearance, finding the perfect song is a daily challenge that goes beyond licensing deals; it also implies curation work done with passion by true music fans.

Music is a matter of personal taste and in the world of advertising, which so often relies on mass appeal, it can seem daunting to find a song that can elevate the message. One of the best examples of the creative thinking at the heart of MRC’s ethos can be found in the campaign for Parkinson Canada, created by Toronto agency Broken Heart Love Affair.

Striking the Right Chord: Why Curation Matters

“We try to avoid the super obvious choices and in the case of the Parkinson Canada campaign, we worked off their tagline, which was “It’s not Parkinson’s, it’s swagger,” explains Katie Seline, MRC’s managing director. The ad is built around a man with Parkinson’s emulating John Travolta’s legendary sidewalk strut in Saturday Night Fever, so what we needed was a good groove,” according to Katie. Instead of doubling down by using a Bee Gees song, MRC landed on the irresistibly bouncy “Beercan,” by multiple Grammy winner Beck. A choice that might not have seemed obvious on paper, but one that MRC was confident would work. “We thought the song would fit in really well musically, but, more importantly, we also knew that Beck is the kind of artist who is very interested in social and humanitarian causes.” This is where MRC’s expertise really shines through, according to Katie: “Research is extremely important. In the beginning of the project, we tried to find artists who were directly affected by Parkinson’s, but ended up somewhere completely different.”

Cutting Through the Noise

The process that will lead to the perfect song is rarely a straight line. “In some cases, the client will rely on us to provide a shortlist of suitable songs, and in others, they may have a broader list which could span several genres and eras. In both cases, and what happened in this specific instance, we put in a lot of curation work; both in terms of budget and artistic direction. This is where our experience comes in. We know music but, more importantly, we know where to find it and how to make it work.”