Musical Branding: An Interview with Sam Parvin - Part 1

“The way that advertising agencies, for example, are structured now is still based on the Mad Men era where only billboards and print existed. So we have an art director and a copywriter on every project, but we don't have a sound person, we don't have a sound director. And so much of the way that we interact with the world, or 'consume' content, is through audio. I think it's just about thinking about us as humans, and how we intake information and interact with external things in our world, and audio is just always there.” -- Sam Parvin

This episode's guest specializes in helping senior-level brand marketers use and strategically execute music to create a stronger brand that also creates value for their consumers. She's a globally-awarded music supervisor for brands like Coca-Cola, Maker's Mark, Corona, and GMC, and she's passionate about sharing her very specialized expertise in navigating the music licensing space to help people inspire the world with their marketing communications.

Her name is Sam Parvin, and if you’ve been wondering how you can use music to enhance what your brand offers to the world, this is going to be a discussion you'll definitely want to hear.

As always, if you have any questions for my guest, you’re welcome to reach out through the links in the show notes. If you have questions for me, just visit www.audiobrandingpodcast.com where you’ll find all sorts of ways to get in touch. Plus, subscribing to the newsletter (on the www.audiobrandingpodcast.com webpage) will let you know when the new podcasts are available.

Music Has Been My Path

The interview starts with a look back at the way sound shaped Sam’s earliest memories from the soothing lull of watching televised golf with her grandfather to the Bonnie Raitt concerts and her first job handing out band flyers in Atlanta. She remembers studying the business of art in college and how it connected her back to the music industry. “I didn't realize I was the person who always knew what I wanted to do,” Sam tells us, “but in retrospect, music has always been my path.”

Making an Impact

“My clients typically come to me and say ‘we've got this new project, here's what we're trying to achieve with it, we know we need music: help.’” Sam goes on to talk about how her early career led to a deeper appreciation for working directly with her clients and helping to perfect the audio identity for each one’s particular brand. “I saw an opportunity,” she recalls, “for brands to mainly structure the way that they handled music differently, to be more effective and also efficient.”

Emotional Beings

We go on to talk about the importance of sound and how deeply it influences people and emotionally connects us with them in ways that go beyond the marketing lingo. Sam tells us about the importance of knowing what the brand means to the world, and how she works with her clients to make sure that the right music is licensed, adapted, or even composed from scratch to fit their marketing needs and connect with their audience. “The people who are in charge of or own who the brand is for the world,” she tells us, “…should also be clear on what that looks like from a music and audio perspective.”

Audio is Always There

As the first half of our interview ends, Sam talks about how brands have their own personalities and, even without a jingle or slogan, sound plays a vital role in expressing that identity. We discuss the tools she uses to find a brand’s personality, from workshops and interviews to a worksheet you can download by following the link below. “Audio is always there,” she explains, “and music is very often, and so that's why it's always important to have music in production.”

Episode Summary

Sam’s early life and the sounds that have stayed with her
Helping clients find the right audio marketing for their brand
How Sam’s career has given her deeper insight into her clients’ needs
Using sound to engage an audience on an emotional level
Audio branding’s integral role and importance in our daily lives

Stay tuned next week for the second half of our interview as we talk about Sam’s process for putting together licensed and original music for her clients as well as some of her most recent success stories, and where she sees commercial music and sonic branding heading in the future.

Connect with the Guest

Website: www.parvin-music.com

Follow Sam Parvin on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/parvinmusicusmx

Connect with Sam Parvin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samparvin/

Follow Sam Parvin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/samparvinmusic

Click here to download Sam's “Choosing the Right Music for Your Brand” worksheet: https://voiceoversandvocals.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ParvinMusic_MusicPOVWorksheet_Blank.pdf

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