Anyone working in sync knows that the holiday period provides ample opportunity for placements across film, television, and advertising in particular. With that in mind, we spoke to sync executives at five of our clients to learn about their festive licensing successes of 2018, and what this time of year means for their businesses.
Gary Miller – SVP, Creative Services, Spirit Music Group
How does the Spirit catalogue lend itself to the festive period with regards to sync?
Spirit Music Group actually has a number of great holiday songs in the catalog, which, we do send out in an e-blast, usually late July/early August, as a reminder as agencies start solidifying creative treatments for ads for the upcoming holiday season. Interestingly, we’ve had a number of songs licensed for holiday spots that aren’t necessarily a “holiday” song. Themes of “togetherness”, for instance, with the right sort of cover/creative treatment, can often work quite well within the context of a “holiday” spot. We had a great use by Walmart on Pete Townshend’s “Let My Love Open The Door” for a Holiday spot in 2017. Obviously something like The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping” is a recurring Holiday favorite for us, but not always necessarily for advertising.
Can you talk us through your holiday sync highlights of 2018 and how these came about?
This year probably the most notable was a use of “You Get What You Give”, co-written by Rick Nowels, used in a Sainsbury’s spot in the UK. This was a collaboration between Michelle Stoddart, who we have engaged to handle pitching for Spirit Music Group in the UK, and Jason Rezvan, who focuses on advertising here in the US out of our NYC office. We also had a great use in a Holiday spot for Nordstrom on a song called “Go, Go, Go” covered by Dean Martin.
Quarter 4 is a huge time for the music industry. How does this impact your business?
I think everyone in the music licensing business experiences that mad dash to the finish line, trying to wrap up as much business as possible before the fiscal books are closed on the year. We’re always hustling, so there really isn’t any different sort of impact. By the time the holidays roll around, we’re already looking a lot at projects that will be finalised in 2019.
Richard Thompson – Sync Manager, Silva Screen Records
How do you think the Silva Screen catalogue lends itself to the festive period with regards to sync?
We have several Christmas albums in our catalogue, including “A Swinging Big Band Christmas” and “The Greatest Christmas Choral Classics”, which get extensive use at this time of year, both on standalone projects and under blanket licences with UK broadcasters. In terms of individual copyrights, “Winter Wonderland” is one that gets requested a lot, and “Jingle Bells” is always a big favourite.
Can you talk us through your holiday sync highlights of 2018 and how these came about?
Our choral version of “Carol of the Bells” has recently been licensed for use in the Burberry 2018 Christmas campaign featuring Kristin Scott-Thomas, Naomi Campbell, MIA and Matt Smith. Commie McMullen of Cue Songs came to us with the brief and was instrumental in getting the deal over the line with the agency (thanks Commie!). We’ve also got our Crouch End Festival Chorus recording of “Little Drummer Boy” on the Sky Sports Christmas Football promo this year, which continues our relationship with them from last year’s campaign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG0zqaUDOEE
Quarter 4 is a huge time for the music industry. How does this impact your business?
We work very closely with the BBC on the physical and digital releases of a number of their programme soundtracks, for example Doctor Who and Blue Planet II in previous years, and this year we are releasing the soundtrack to Dynasties. The BBC’s Autumn schedule programmes are extremely popular and perform well for our soundtrack business.
What is your all time favourite holiday sync?
I’m going to go with this Irn Bru ad from 2006, because it really made me laugh the first time I saw it!
Lucy Bright – Director, Music Sales Creative
How do you think the Music Sales catalogue lends itself to the festive period with regards to sync?
We are lucky to have a number of classic festive songs in the catalogue, but “Walking in the Air” from The Snowman probably stands out as a song that remains meaningful to all generations.
Can you talk us through your holiday sync highlights of 2018 and how these came about?
“Twelve Days of Christmas” is a big one for us every year, not everyone knows it but the song is in copyright thanks to Frederic Austin’s arrangement of ‘Five gold rings’. There are always some funny lyric changes requested and this year was no different with Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, The Range and this adorable one for Picturehouse Cinemas with schoolchildren singing:
Quarter 4 is a huge time for the music industry. How does this impact your business?
There are two PRS distributions in Q4 (October and December) so the royalties department are always really busy processing that, a nice bumper end to the year. In terms of synch, once we are in Q4 we are really looking towards the next year, pitching for those spring and summer campaigns when it’s freezing outside.
What is your all time favourite holiday sync?
That’s so hard! I am always in tears watching Christmas ads, there are so many brilliant ones that capture all the emotion and nostalgia of the season. I do think the Heathrow Bears with Paul Young’s “Every Time You Go Away” is genius.
Craig Currier – VP, Director of Advertising Markets, peermusic
How do you think the peermusic catalogue lends itself to the festive period with regards to sync?
Peer has some great holiday classics such as ”Jolly Old St Nicholas”, “Jingle Jangle” and “The White World of Christmas” (most famous by Bing Crosby) but interestingly enough, the trend over the past few years has been towards ‘non-holiday’ songs that work well with holiday themed ads. A great example is the use of the peermusic classic “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You” (the Dean Martin version) being used in this year’s global holiday spot for Heineken. While not a holiday song, it brings a certain fun and festive attitude to the commercial which features an eclectic group of characters coming together for a family holiday get together. Other peer classics have found their way into holiday commercials – most notably the Jimmie Davis penned “You Are My Sunshine”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkAPaVVXAK8
In addition to peer’s catalogue songs, our signed writers and artists around the world are regularly writing new holiday themed songs or often doing new and unique covers of older holiday classics leading up to the holiday season. Often they are for release during the holidays but sometimes it’s specifically with holiday ‘syncs’ in mind knowing that our sync creatives around the globe get lots of requests to pitch these types of songs. Over the past few years we’ve had new holiday themed songs from indie artists used in commercials for Old Navy, T-Mobile, Nutella, Hyundai, Google, Betty Crocker, Victoria’s Secret and Lowes to name a few. Many times the brands end up using these songs for multiple holiday seasons which can be a nice ‘holiday bonus’ for the writer or artist.
Can you talk us through your holiday sync highlights of 2018 and how these came about?
The Heineken use was fun but also a bit challenging in that both the copyright and the Dean Martin master recording are fairly expensive to license. Holiday campaigns by their nature are short term uses so the budgets that brands allocate to them are often less than what’s needed to secure all the rights required. In this case, there were also multiple rights holders on the song side, the label/master owner as well as the Dean Martin estate…all who had to come to agreement. We actually started discussing the terms and potential fees 6 months out and at one point, they explored other less costly options. In the end the song and recording were a perfect match for the spot and we (as well as all other parties involved) just worked hard with the agency and brand to arrive at a deal that everyone felt comfortable with. I think what helped is that the creative was just so great that everyone wanted to see it happen.
We also just completed another fun holiday campaign for video service provider Altice using the song “Bring On The Holiday” by indie artist I Am ORFA. This came about as a traditional song search request by the agency in which we provided a playlist of options based on the brief provided by the agency music supervisor…something we’re really known for and do probably 20-30 times a week. While they instantly went for this song, as often is the case, they did a few more rounds of searches as well as asked for some tracks written specifically for the campaign (something else we offer up on a regular basis from our talented artist roster)…but again in the end, they stuck with their original selection…something I find happens more times than not.
Quarter 4 is a huge time for the music industry. How does this impact your business?
Given my role is specifically sync focused overseeing peer’s US Ad Markets division, I can’t speak to the impact of the 4thQ from the overall music publisher perspective. Strictly from the ad/sync side of things, I’d say the 4th Q isn’t necessarily any more important than the rest of the year. While over the past few years as brands wind down their campaigns for the year, we’ve seen a slight decrease in music search requests in November and December, there seems to be strong activity and campaigns looking to license existing songs pretty consistently throughout the entire year. It’s been exciting for us as we’re going on the 6th straight year of record growth in ad syncs in terms of our yearly projected goals and we’ve consistently entered the 4thQ ahead of our projections…which is obviously a great position to be in. With the incredible talent that peer continues to sign, our deep and varied catalogue of well-known songs combined with the continued growth in the need for music to fill content needs…it’s a trend we feel will continue.
What is your all time favourite holiday sync?
I think I’m like most folks in the industry in feeling that department store John Lewis out of the UK consistently delivers the absolute best holiday commercials. Year after year they execute holiday campaigns that set and raise the bar both in terms of the overall creative but equally important in their choice of music. Just when you thought it can’t get any better, they serve up their 2018 campaign featuring Elton John and the song that launched his career, “Your Song”…taking the viewer on a journey in backwards motion from Elton John today to Elton as a little boy and the gift of his first piano. It’s probably my fav to date given I am such a hugh Elton John fan…but this one seems to have generated a whole new level of buzz with my socials lighting up from every spot on the globe and from folks I thought never even paid attention to commercials.
Carter Armstrong – Senior Vice President of Film and TV, peermusic
How do you think the peermusic catalogue lends itself to the festive period with regards to sync?
Although there are particular areas of strength in the peermusic catalog like Latin and Country, the breadth of the catalog cannot be overstated; from classics like “You Are My Sunshine” to contemporary #1 hits like Ella Mai’s “Boo’d Up” or “In My Feelings” by Drake. We also have a strong selection of pop standards containing quite a few holiday perennials. Chief among these would have to be David Foster’s “My Grown Up Christmas List.” We’ve enjoyed licenses for this song every year since I arrived in 2016. There were plenty before that, and we anticipate more to come!
Can you talk us through your holiday sync highlights of 2018 and how these came about?
Our 2018 holiday highlight for Film & TV is probably Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of)” in The Grinch, which relies so heavily on a sample of Perez Prado’s “Mambo No. 5” that it’s right there in the title! It came about quite simply, as a brief from Universal looking for a song with that energy for a fantasy sequence from the point of view of the Grinch’s dog Max – they even called out “Mambo No. 5” as an example. We just leaned into it and made the business easy to land the sync. Super fun look!
Quarter 4 is a huge time for the music industry. How does this impact your business?
The 4th quarter has traditionally been a big deal for the music industry because of two things that I think are common to most industries; making your numbers for the year and relying on the gift-giving season to help you do that. Our department is focused on sync, so I don’t have any special insight on a more general publishing level. Casually, I’d say that the impact for a music publisher generally is similar to other industries. In the sync world, the number-making part is probably at the forefront of most publishers’ minds. Fortunately for us, sync at peermusic has enjoyed amazing growth over the last few years and pressure to hit numbers has not been an issue. We work hard all year to be a first-call publisher in the sync world and provide meaningful creative and business service to our clients. We never stop digging in and we’re passionate about helping to tell stories with music all year long. We love what we do.
What is your all time favourite holiday sync?
That’s a tough one. I’m gonna have to go with “Mambo No. 5” in The Grinch. A fantasy sequence for the Grinch’s dog? Have you seen that thing!? I dare you not to laugh.
David Leiman – Director, Licensing & Creative, Fox Music Publishing
How do you think the Fox Music catalogue lends itself to the festive period with regards to sync?
We have a long list of tracks from our film and TV catalog from over 80 years that speak to the holidays and sync opportunities. Some of our more popular cues/songs are “Ice Dance”, “Introduction (Titles)”, “The Grand Finale” and “The End” by Danny Elfman from Edward Scissorhands, John Williams’ score to Home Alone and in particular the “Home Alone Main Title (‘Somewhere In My Memory)” cue, Steve Van Zandt’s “All Alone On Christmas” sung by Darlene Love from Home Alone 2 and “Deck The Halls” by The Simpsons.
Can you talk us through your holiday sync highlights of 2018 and how these came about?
Our holiday sync highlight this year is an Aldi supermarket spot for the UK and Ireland that used the compositions “The Grand Finale” and “Introduction (Titles)” from Edward Scissorhands. This was a deal we worked on with our sub-publisher Sony/ATV in the UK and Dave Bartram from Band and Brand Association. The campaign started last season and this was an option pickup for this holiday season which we were thrilled to continue our relationship with Aldi.
Quarter 4 is a huge time for the music industry. How does this impact your business?
Our year is consistently busy with sync opportunities and licensing that we really do not have a quarter that appears busier than any other. It’s always non-stop. We have a very small but efficient licensing group that works very hard.
What is your all time favourite holiday sync?
I would say the Kevin the Carrot Aldi Christmas Commercial spot is my favourite.
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