Looking for desired mental and emotional outcomes? AI-powered music can help says Weber Shandwick SG creative director

Music is a great companion for creative industry practitioners. Whether they need to hit a deadline or relax at home, they can resort to various genres of music to help create or disconnect them from the world. Marketing magazine is working with JOOX to invite creative industry practitioners to talk about their music consumption habits, and how to better leverage music in marketing.

In our fifth interview for the Marketers’ Music Mind series, we talk to Uma Rudd Tan, creative director of Weber Shandwick Singapore.

Some of our previous interviewees from other creative agencies have a music background and Tan is no exception. When she was in university, she got an advanced diploma in contemporary music too, making her listen to music even when she had little interest at first.

“But music grows on me. I always love classic jazz. The bass plays a prominent role in classic jazz and it’s my favourite instrument. Now I love electronic dance music (EDM) and rock,” she says.

“The consistent drive and underlying beat give me an internal rhythm that sets my mind at peace. I also listen to Southern gospel music because I lead the singing in church and try to introduce new genres to my congregation,” she adds.

Having a strong background in music enables Tan to choose the right type of music when she is on a deadline or needs to relax. For example, when it comes to working, she listens to EDM by marshmello, as well as songs by Imagine Dragons, Sting, U2, Of Monsters and Men, Lenka and Muse.

Among those she mentioned, Of Monsters and Men and Muse are on Tan’s top 5 favourite music artists list. The other three of her top choices are John Mark McMillan, Mumford & Sons and Beyoncé.

Tan’s passion for music is not just about listening to it. When there is no electronic device, Tan plays the guitar or piano and sings. Moreover, Tan and her husband are musicians and were once part of Singapore’s largest acapella group.

But she is open to exploring more music. “I love how streaming platforms use algorithms to suggest new types of music to me. It exposes me to new artists I had never listened to and it gives me a more diverse music vocabulary, which helps guide and influence my marketing endeavours,” Tan says.

As a leading music streaming platform in Asia, JOOX leverages AI and machine learning to understand users’ music taste and predict the music they may be interested in. By deploying machine learning, not only can it offer customised recommendations to suit users’ tastes, but can also advertise content to targeted audiences. JOOX is able to offer customized music streaming experiences, including personalized playlist recommendations and in-app notifications. These offerings can help businesses build associations with music and entertainment content to reach specific audiences.

“I am a big fan of AI music as it has the potential and power to provide individual customisation at a neural level,” she comments.  

Tan also explains what AI-powered music can do, especially the outcomes that brands and marketers are happy to hear.

“AI-powered music can deliver not just the flavour of music that audiences prefer based on users’ playlists, it can now deliver the desired mental and emotional outcomes for your audiences at a deeper subconscious level. This is the miracle of deep tech and machine learning,” she says.

Looking forward, it’s expected that the music streaming industry will further make use of AI to vary melody, genre, tonal quality and songs’ harmonic rhythm to suit listeners’ body vitals and try to essentially “heal” them. It could be the next wave of personalising music through AI in the future.

Music streaming platforms can also offer business opportunities for artists and brands too. For example, during the pandemic, many brands have rolled out “stay home” or “vacation” playlists.

Speaking of her favourite promotional strategy that involves extraordinary use of music, Tan cites a Samsung campaign to explain. “To promote the Samsung Galaxy A, the brand adds three things that matter to them – an awesome screen, awesome camera and long-lasting battery life – into the lyrics of a song and part of a dance by working with K-pop girl group Blackpink in a social campaign,” she says.

The campaign #danceAwesome challenge garnered 4.7M videos from participants and 16 billion views.  

As K-pop is popular across Asian countries, JOOX has recently collaborated with YG Entertainment, BlackPink’s record label, to extend its song library with more fascinating K-pop content. JOOX users can now sing and dance with BlackPink’s big hits via the Karaoke feature within the app. Moreover, there will be some interesting campaigns happening in the future.

As music is conducive to launching successful marketing campaigns, Tan hopes to see JOOX offering more possibilities for brands in the future.

“JOOX provides extensive music content such as live streaming programmes and karaoke features to its users. It’ll be interesting to see how it utilises its abundant resources to explore more possibilities in advertising opportunities with brands,” she concludes.

JOOX will soon introduce an innovative advertising format powered by new technology, with endorsement from a well-known lifestyle brand. Stay tuned for more details about how the platform can help advertisers to curate engaging ad content and effectively reach out to target customers.

For each one of our Marketers' Music Mind features, Marketing is collaborating with JOOX to produce a bespoke playlist based on our interviewee’s answers for our readers. Scan the QR code to see what we made and enjoy!

https://api.joox.com/s/rd?k=GYcj

This content was sponsored by JOOX

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