A while back, I read an interesting post by Mark Hadfield about Ultra-safe vs Mainstream vs Risky brands in which he makes a comparison with his ‘mainstream’ dedication to running. It caught my eye because this was something I used to experience frequently when working with venues on music policy.

Most businesses are pretty reluctant to move away from the mainstream in their profiles. This is a shame, because when you can confidently present a brand, by definition you can confidently present its sound – whether it’s Baroque chamber music or minimal electro and nu-soul.

I was working with a chain of high-end members clubs and spent a lot of time trying to fend off requests for a Hotel Costes sound (which you can hear in just about any style bar, restaurant or cafe in the city).  The error, though not particularly through our own doing, was involving the managers from the various venues – design by committee – as opposed to someone at the top communicating to us what they wanted, and it being confidently implemented.

Not helping matters was the fact that providing such vast quantities of music (20 hours a day, 7 days a week) means dilution of a core sound is very difficult to avoid. It’s a bit like saying to an agency choosing the track for an Absolut campaign, “We love that tune, now please find us another three thousand that communicate the same message. Oh, and after three months we’ll need new ones”. It starts to be about the fear of customers saying “I heard this yesterday, and maybe last Friday..” and the focus of the exercise shifts to providing the ‘new’ and the ‘different’.

Finding a solution to this has bugged me for a long time. My latest attempt is this;

• Live DJ sets as usual on weekends/special events – ticking the box for cutting edge and trends
• For everything else, chunks of music – a few hundred tracks each – strictly from one genre only, includes anything from Northern soul to 60s experimental electronica, which you change daily. You could theoretically get a rotation period of several months using this method. You’d be pretty sure that no customer’s going to claim they’re hearing repetition in any case.

Anyhow, back to the original point. It comes down to whether, as a manager, you’re content with catering to your perceived clientele’s exising tastes or you’re prepared instead to take the risk of introducing your regulars to new, weird and wonderful sounds.

So, here’s my version of Mark’s brand types:

Ultra-safe profile: Your sound can’t possibly offend anyone. It’s pleasant enough but will rarely evoke an actual emotion. You’ll probably never get a repetition complaint because everything sounds so similar. A purely physiological approach to profiling. Hotel Costes, Buddha Bar and by definition of the sound-type, Zero 7, Kings of Convenience etc.

Mainstream profile: You’re moving with the times – i.e. keeping up with the overarching trends in the music industry. The fact that these trends are controlled by a group of people smaller than your extended family doesn’t matter. Vampire Weekend, Jessie J.

Risky profile: You play tunes that your customers may never have heard before, thus leaving yourself open to criticism from anyone with stronger-than-meh feelings about what they’d like to listen to when out and about. On the other hand you could be giving yourself a truly unique sound brand, and opening your business up to new swathes of customers you never thought would or could be regulars. Tawiah? Social Network soundtrack? Bob Hope?

Mark Hadfield’s blog post Being Average