Global CD: Chloe Saintilan

“Music should be in the forefront [of a campaign]. Otherwise it’s a missed opportunity.”

- 5min 58sec

Award-winning Global Creative Director, Chloe Saintilan made an appearance on SoStereo’s, “What About the Music” podcast. I love this podcast from AdWeek & SoStereo. And this episode is particularly phenomenal because Chloe started out her career in Strategy before going into Creative. So I had a feeling that her perspective would stand out from other episodes.

In this episode, she talks about the research behind the best campaigns. Noting that, the best campaigns are “music-first,” and campaigns with intentionally chosen music often have the strongest brand recall.

Chloe explains that even when she was younger, she was always aware of music’s importance in ads. But, she confesses that once she got into advertising, music became an afterthought due to the concepting-first tunnel vision that creatives get into. Once she realized that this was becoming a trend, she wanted to start moving away from “cheesy stock music.” (thank you Chloe!)

Music-led Campaign: Women In Engineering

Chloe’s most proud of her work with Women In Engineering. She says that for those campaigns, music was very much central to the concept.

Australian Universities came to her agency with a gender problem. They wanted the agency’s help with reaching young girls and getting them excited about engineering.

What I loved most about the campaign that Chloe’s team put together, was that the concept came from the Strategy team! She says, “the strategy team came to us … and said ‘why don’t we take a different approach; speak to [young girls] through a channel where we wouldn’t normally reach them.’”

From research, Chloe understood that these girls were driven by music. So they partnered with a deejay duo that was very popular and famous with this age group. Serendipitously, this famous duo, Nervo, happened to study engineering while they were in school. For this campaign, they partnered Nervo with Universal Music for the release of their next single. Everything in the music video was created by female engineers! Hence: a hidden promo for engineering, and a music video that young fans were going to watch anyway. Absolutely genius!

Grammy Award-Winning Duo: Nervo. ”Having studied sound engineering ourselves, we want you to learn about how kick-ass engineers are behind a lot of the things you love. Discover more about how you can make your mark on the world at: madebyme.org.au”

Email to chloe: Music Strategy

Chloe talks about the several case studies released that have shown how impactful music-led campaigns are, and the approaches she wants to take to ensure that she always touches on this angle in her creative campaigns going forward. As a graduating Strategist with a music supervision background, I wanted to understand if there was a way that the Strategy team could help the creatives be more music-centric in their approach. I emailed Chloe with some ideas. For example, ‘If Strategists should included a music section to the creative brief, would that be valuable? Or should tacking on what the creatives came back with after the first briefing be better?’ Here’s her response:

“That's actually a super interesting thought - just had a long think about it. Ultimately, I think it depends on the brief... E.g. if it's a brief for a Nike ad about empowering female athletes, I think including a section in the brief about the type of music and artist would be an awesome thought starter for the creatives. E.g. - emerging female artist, anthemic vibe, etc. I guess for a more generic ad without a set 'theme' that music could support/reinforce, providing data and insights into what music and artists the target audience loves would also be super helpful.”

I loved this response! I’m going to reconsider every brief I’ve created, and ways to be more forward thinking in music approaches.

Final Notes to self:

As an aspiring Entertainment & Brand Strategist, here are my closing notes to myself in my career path:

1. Chloe talked about moments when she didn’t put the time into researching the right music and because of that, it put the sound house down the wrong path. She says that it also helps to include tracks that aren’t right.
   Note to self: As a person currently working at a sound house and going into strategy, think about how you can be helpful to the creatives.

2. She says she wishes she could have a continued conversations with SoStereo to learn about “what new artists there are," “what could they be great for,” and talk about where she could give [SoStero] a preview of what’s in the pipeline.
   Note to self: Blog ideas inspired from the music communities that I’m involved in such as 3 Theory Music artists, FMPWorld (female producers/engineers), NARIP artists, Durango Songwriters, etc. i.e. How can we talk about what they’re up to?

3. Chloe finds inspiration from Spotify playlists. For example new releases/new artists so she can be the first to use the song.
   Note to self: I really need to catchup on Spotify playlist making (make this a 2021 goal (1.5 months left!)).