Volvo, Sally Hansen & A Private Stephin Meritt Show: Adventures In Music Branding With The Rights Workshop
Team Rights Workshop is catching its collective breath after an eventful conference season that brought us to New York, Los Angeles and Austin and panels at the Game Developers Conference and South By Southwest in the span of a few short weeks. In response to your requests for more rock and roll, we are sending out this periodic newsletter to give you updates and, well, more rock and roll.
* Summer is coming to San Francisco, along with outdoor music festivals and many of the bands we love licensing for brands, like Jonsi (of Sigur Ros), MGMT and The XX.
* As of this writing, our creative coordinator Jenna is still somewhere in the desert at Coachella. Rumor has it she faked her own demise so she could join the Phoenix tour as a roadie.
* We’ve been cooking up soundtracks for a bunch of brand spots, including a beautifully shot piece from director Ruben Latres for Sally Hansen’s new cosmetic line and a dramatic, cinematic spot for the Volvo s60.
* ESPN Interactive continues to rock our world with their action sports webisodes. We’ve been breaking indie rock and electroclash bands in their profiles on young (and good-looking!) athletes like Mat Hoffman, Robbie Madison, Ken Block, Ed Templeton, Mike Escamilla and Maya Gabeira.
* Our managing director Brooke and licensing director Annie both recently spoke on panels that focused on the intersection of music licensing and emerging technologies, such as social gaming. In the name of “research”, the office got hooked on several Facebook apps which we won’t name here, but which involve virtual pets and farm animals.
* When ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners asked us to bring Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields to their office for a private show, we did so with the understanding that the man does wonderfully scandalous things with a ukelele. True to form, he made Brooke blush as she interviewed him on his licensing exploits (like the “wheels on the car” Volvo campaign).
* Our favorite redhead at the moment is John Mayer tourmate Brett Dennen, who headlined a Haiti benefit we put together for ad agency Pereira & O’Dell at their hidden downtown San Francisco speakeasy.
* We caught up with DJ Shadow‘s London-based manager, who was stranded in the US. However, it looks like we’ll also be missing out on several European visitors this week, including our friend Mike at Touch Music. We blame Iceland’s last wish to have its ashes scattered all over Europe.