Music Branded Content: The Video Clip as an Advertising Medium at the Service of Automotive Brands

Introduction

The emergence of video streaming and music platforms has brought about a major change in the way content is produced and distributed, and its consumption as well. Consumers turn to these platforms in search of entertainment, fleeing conventional media where advertising content is considered intrusive (Regueira, 2012) and a source of discomfort and dissatisfaction. In this scenario, television is the most adversely affected (Dix and Phau, 2010), as it competes with the Internet, dubbed “the new television”. As consumers have found ways to bypass advertising, brands have had to create new strategies in a non-intrusive way, through more subtle and innovative content that allows them to reach this fragmented audience, spread across a universe of products, channels, platforms and screens. For this reason, brands are forced to resort to novel practices and experiences to avoid the initial rejection that traditional advertising evokes in the consumer's mind. The capability of offering entertainment becomes an essential tool for stimulating and strengthening the emotional bond between the consumer and the brand itself. Even more so if the brand is able to generate engagement through storytelling (Del Pino-Romero & Castelló Martínez, 2015), that is, through stories and experiences that manage to connect emotionally with the target audience through a story. This new scenario is transforming the audio-visual sector, and the advertising ecosystem as well. In the field of music, two strategies stand out: the use of branded content; and brand placement. The latter has emerged as “an unconventional and distinctive advertising tool that allows the consumer to be reached in a subtle way” (Peralta et al., 2019: 74), by integrating the brand into entertaining audio-visual content where the product is part of the narrative (ibid.), which manages to connect with the values of its audience. In fact, a several authors have analysed the presence of brands in video clips (Pérez Rufi et al., 2014; Sánchez-Olmos et al., 2019; Sánchez-Olmos & Castelló-Martínez, 2020; Pérez-Rufi & Castro-Higueras, 2021). In this way, brands are adapting to consumers who are digital natives (Prensky, 2001), or in other words, young people who are increasingly demanding, informed and intelligent, and who are bored with traditional communication based on repetition and interruption (Regueira, 2012).

Advertising agencies, marketing professionals, and especially companies that pay for advertising have had to work harder to find ways to reinvent themselves and adapt to the new situation (Sánchez Olmos and Segarra Saavedra, 2018). It is not a matter of the brand or product being the protagonist, but of achieving a “process of integration” (Del Pino and Olivares, 2006), an example of which is creating connections with products of mass culture that are more closely linked to young audiences, such as video games, series, cinema, and music. Specifically, this chapter will focus on music, which is the artistic and cultural manifestation of most countries. Moreover, music is expressed in many ways and includes aesthetic values and roles. Thus, it has become one of the means by which an individual expresses their feelings or state of mind, and even constructs their identity (Hormigos and Martín Cabello, 2004). Music has great power in creating emotional states (Wells & Hakanen, 1991) and that it is a very important medium in people’s lives, both socially and cognitively (Greenberg & Rentfrow, 2017). Understandably, given the power of music, brands recognise the need to tell stories that go beyond the advantages offered by their products and turn to communication strategies that help create emotional bonds and build consumer loyalty through lyrics and video clips (Sánchez Olmos and Segarra Saavedra, 2018).