Tuning in to the heart of culture

MBM Records pioneers a fresh link between music and brand identity

BY SAM SPOKONY | Nothing has so clearly defined the rapid evolution of the 21st-century global marketplace as marketing itself — the ways in which consumers are induced to buy and support things that will create, in their minds, a unique sense of identity. The same can be said for music and its own shift into the digital world. As technology makes it easier for lines of communication to open and develop between fans and the industry, artists make their impact not by creating distant, untouchable icons but by embedding themselves more deeply into our cultural consciousness. Or at least that’s the way Yan Saquet sees it.

Saquet, 40, is the founder and president of Music Brand Management (MBM) Records — an independent subsidiary label of Universal Music Group. A slim and suave Parisian with flowing dark hair, a neatly trimmed beard and an unbeatable air of confidence, he considers his work with the company to be the manifestation of his personal vision. Today’s businesses want to connect directly with the roots of individual consumers’ identities, he says, and the key to making that connection is through music.

“Our job is to create the DNA of brands,” declared Saquet, as he lounged within the clear glass walls of the only conference room in the MBM office, which is on the fifth floor of 540 Broadway. “We’re taking the desires of a company, and of their customers, and we’re translating all of that into music.”

Catchy music has already become a ubiquitous element of television commercials for hip, high-level brands like Apple and Verizon — but MBM has blazed its own tonal trail and brought an entirely new marketing model to its clients. Instead of concentrating merely on enhancing a company’s advertisements, Saquet and his team work to develop a musical identity for the brand by creating a compilation album (complete with original cover design, artwork, liner notes and detailed booklet) that gives consumers a uniquely in-depth look at the culture of the business as it communicates its message to a broad audience. Since its inception in 2006 — after Saquet left his position as Marketing Director of Universal France, which he had held for ten years — MBM has produced albums for an incredibly diverse group of clients, including telecommunications giant Avaya, the United Nations Children’s Fund, Italian luxury trendsetter Bulgari and Café Noir (a small bar and restaurant on the corner of Grand and Thompson Streets). As varied as they are, none of the brands Saquet has set his sights on have been left wanting.

“They’ve all been really receptive, and they like the concept,” said Martin Gilman, MBM’s Vice President of Marketing. “The  fact that music can be integrated like this into just about any company gives us a more universal reach than anyone else who’d want to market for them. Styles and tastes change pretty rapidly, but we’re providing them a way to stay ahead of the curve by helping to carve out that unique image.”

While it might seem that putting together the perfect musical expression of a brand would be a subjective guessing game, Saquet finds it to be simple — a natural extension of his affinity for discerning what turns the minutest elements of style into true culture.

“It’s very simple,” he said, shrugging. “Café Noir, yes. The wall of Café Noir. It’s dark, it has a crazy atmosphere, and it smells like cigarettes, like good wine. There is a story behind this wall, and in music there is the same kind of energy. You feel it musically. It’s not techno, not dance, not rock, not hip-hop. The culture is something else, a mix.”

Saquet added that he ended up working with Café Noir’s house DJ to create a compilation centered around what he called “electronic world music,” and noted how important MBM’s association with Universal is in helping to select artists and tracks that will create a effectively eclectic mix. (According to Nielsen SoundScan, Universal led the major record labels in 2010 with a 31.4 percent international market share in albums). Still, Saquet acknowledged that, to him, the full catalogue of the world’s most powerful label usually isn’t enough.

“I can’t work only with that, because it’s too small,” Saquet said, as he left the conference room to return to his desk, which sits in the middle of the office suite. “We need to find the absolutely perfect music for the target, and that’s what can be difficult. But it works when you find it. We don’t all speak the same language, but we can all dance to the same rhythms.”

The desk doesn’t seem like that of a company president — it’s small, not separated in any way from the rest of the office and covered in haphazard piles of MBM’s compilations. He flips through them all happily, making clear his opinion that they look more attractive and complete than do most standard CDs, which represent the work of an individual artist — and they do, because they have to.

“As a customer, when you’re walking around the street and you see an H&M store, you want to go in and buy H&M stuff because you trust the brand. So you go in, you get your stuff and you like it, and then you get on line to pay for it. And if you see a CD called, say, ‘H&M Fashion Music,’ you might pick it up; it becomes an impulse buy.”

The more Saquet talks about culture and brand identity, the more excited he gets — and once he gets on a roll, he tends to create campaigns on the spot, finding new ways to express the same goal.

“Foot Locker has 3,800 stores in the U.S.,” he said emphatically. “What if each store sold five CDs per day, with a NIKE logo on the disc, with P. Diddy and Mary J. Blige in the mix? No promotion cost, no marketing cost. That’s how you save a brand.”

Camille Moussard, a marketing manager who is, like her boss, a native of France, is also a graduate of Boston’s Berklee College of Music — and she began working at MBM about two weeks ago. She’s a pop/soul singer who performs throughout New York City, but she’s convinced that Saquet’s vision — the seamless integration of music and marketing — has forever changed the way she understands and interprets music.

“You have to step outside of it and see it from that perspective,” Moussard said. “What does this music really convey? How do people relate to it? Where is the universal link between the message of that song and the customers who will absorb it?”

But can a singer ever get tired of listening to music with the ears of a marketing manager?

“No,” she said, laughing. “Not yet, at least.”