What if you could see the music? You can, in MUVI Lisboa!

What if you could see the music? This was the starting point for MUVI Lisboa, the first national film festival exclusively dedicated to music that will première tomorrow with sessions of short movies, movies, documentaries, music videos, live showcases, exhibitions and DJ sets.

Until September 7th you can head to one of Lisbon’s most traditional cinemas – S. Jorge Cinema – righ in the city’s downtown (Avenida da Liberdade) and enjoy a diverse program where what you hear matters just as much as what you see.

If you love cinema and music, this is the best of both worlds with very affordable tickets and cool extras. The festival agenda can be downloaded here.

Was 50 Cent and Intel partnership really thought through?

We are getting used to partnerships between tech companies and musical artists. In fact, the first post in this blog was about Samsung and Jay-Z bold move, more than a year ago. Now it’s time for Intel to team up with the rapper Curtis James Jackson III – aka 50 Cent – to present the SMS Audio BioSport In-Ear, a new headphone set that feature sensors to measure the wearer’s heart rate at all times.

From a branding perspective, when I look to these deals I have to ask myself: what could have been the rationale to choose this or that artist? Most of the times, the answer is simple: companies what to take a ride in the artists’ reputation and get under the skin of their fan communities. There’s nothing wrong with it and this strategy goes way back in all traditional “how-to marketing” books.

But being a decisive strategic decision, I sometimes fail to understand it from my spectator point of view. To take my share of responsibility on the flaw, I really don’t keep track on 50 Cent career and my artists’ perception is still stuck on the “gangster-style” video of Candy Shop.

It’s undeniable that he is a multi-millionaire business man but I can’t still relate him with the healthcare values, sports (does being a boxer businessman counts?) and healthy living on would expect from this type of gadget.

I still remember start seeing a few years ago Beats headphones in many soccer players from the biggest European teams and clearly think how cool and aspirational the brand was positioning itself. Can’t have the same feeling on the SMS Audio BioSport In-Ear yet but I’ll sure be expecting a smart marketing move from 50 Cent and Intel any time soon.  

New project: E2 Audio Branding Signature

This is my newest audio branding project, still a work in progress. E2 is a TV show broadcasted in a Portuguese national TV network and it’s celebrating its 10th anniversary. It’s entirely produced (planned, written, presented, directed, post-produced…) by students from the Higher School of Communication and Media Studies being a great experience booster in a demanding professional context that’s in fact the perfect link with the academic background they are inhaling.

While I can’t show the result of this work, I can surely tell you that the strategic rationale for the strategy was built upon the ideas of people, experiences and communication, as these are really the ground values of this innovative project. From a creative perspective it was held an amazing group experience with the E2 team members, which recorded themselves all the human elements of the new opening theme music, such as voices, claps and shouts.

Over the next few weeks I’ll keep you updated on this project that will air nationally late September or early October, still to be defined. Stay tuned!

“All great brands have a human touch (…) and music has the ability to change feelings”

"I think music amplifies the purpose and the personality of a brand". These are some of the statements of Mark Tutssel, Worldwide Chief Creative Officer of Leo Burnett Worldwide, on an Forbes interview on Audio Branding.

Hear the Sounds of Street View

Google street view is an amazing way to find places we are looking for or simply to make a virtual walk in a given destination. Now imagine if you could improve this experience, adding an additional sensorial layer of sound, making it somehow more immersive. This is Sounds of Street View, a project created by designers for the Manchester-based hearing aid specialists Amplifon UK.

For now, as it’s still an experimental project, we can only access to a sonic tour in three locations: Place du Palais in Monaco, Hapuna Beach in Hawaii and Balboa Park in San Diego. As we move around the map, it finds the angle at which a sound is lying at, from the user, to generate a stereophonic sound that reproduces the human ears reaction.

The project is opened for audio contributions. In their website, Amplifon UK explain how people can create their own sound maps and share them with the team to increase the locations covered by the project.

As I find it an amazing project, I would like these sonic landscapes to be as real as possible recurring only to high quality recorded audio from these specific places. As far as I could understand designers and other contributors can either record or source web sounds (?), what can ultimately result in a dishonest audio experience, sabotaging the project’s own DNA.

I’ll now take a walk in Monaco, enjoying the church bell sounds, the coffee house glass clinking, the sound of children playing and the music of the carousel. Have fun!

The Doors… by Mercedes

For the doors of sensorial perception, how can one translate a corporate brand DNA in each single sound of a long-term product experience? For Mercedes, especially for a high-end limousine like the S-Class, safety and sturdiness are among the brand top values.

Knowing how the functional sounds of a car can influence our perception of safety and strength is reason enough to invest time and Euros with consistent engineering research in order to evolve regarding materials, design and construction and also to get the best Mercedes “sonic door signature”.

The car industry is top-notch regarding the attention paid to functional sounds in the context of a global sensorial experience with the brand. Check out this Bloomberg article and this Audi Sound video. It’s a feast for our eyes (and ears)!