Today we look at a fantastic campaign produced by VMLY&R for Brisbane Marketing, using a superb version of Powderfinger’s “My Happiness” – first time it’s been synced for advertising. But … we filmed this last year, so it’s very sad now, looking at this great piece of work amidst the devastation wrought by COVID.

Please contact us if you need help with music searches or licensing songs for advertising campaigns, or just want to chat about music and advertising. We would love to hear from you! About anything really.

See below for the full transcript:

Bruce:

March 22nd. Hi there. Well, I’ve had to record a whole new introduction to this music licensing for advertising video because as you’ll see, it was done on Clare’s birthday, which was back in November last year, and it’s now March 22nd, 2020, and the world has completely changed in the last couple of weeks.

Now, I don’t want you to think that we’ve done this music supervision video blog just as a knee-jerk reaction to Coronavirus. “Oh, let’s do a music licensing video blog.” It’s not like that at all actually. We’ve been recording episodes for ages. And as I said in the introduction, we just didn’t get around to posting them. It seemed like a lot of work and we never got to it, and now we have got a bit more time. That’s true. So now we’re posting.

But what I really wanted to say today is please spare a thought for all the tourism marketing companies out there. Nearly all of the tourism campaigns are beautiful, and now they’re all shut down and there’s so much flow on effect in the tourism industry. People just aren’t traveling. I can understand that, but I wish them all the best. Let’s hope we all get back on our feet soon. Thank you.

Good day. I’m Bruce.

Clare:

And I’m Clare, and we are from Music Mill, a music supervision company  in Australia.

Bruce:

Happy birthday, my love.

Clare:

Thank you.

Bruce:

45, isn’t it?

Clare:

Yes.

Bruce:

You don’t look a day over 40.

Clare:

Don’t look a day over 54.

Bruce:

Well, we’ve pulled off an absolute music licensing coup. We’ve licensed Powderfinger’s My Happiness for Brisbane Marketing. How about that?

Clare:

Very impressive.

Bruce:

It is. It’s a great spot. We worked with VMLY&R in Brisbane. Thank you to them for inviting us into a wonderful project. And I guess really, most of this music supervision project was about negotiation.

Clare:

Yep.

Bruce:

Powderfinger had never licensed My Happiness before, so it’s pretty special.

Clare:

Yeah, they’re pretty fussy too, as to who they let-

Bruce:

Well, they’re very fussy. They’ve only licensed it once for this.

Clare:

Yeah.

Bruce:

And I think there’s obviously some dancing around about money, but it’s not just a matter of ringing up Powderfinger and saying, “Hey, can we use your song?” That’s not what we do. We work through a chain of people. In this case, Breeze Abbott at Cobalt was very important, and I think it was Paul Pettico, the management team who look after Powderfinger, the guys from Secret Sounds. Everybody played their part. But as music supervisors for advertising, we have to go through this chain publisher to management, to writers in order to get permission, and everybody was very cooperative on this one. It was great.

Clare:

It was, and a great spot.

Bruce:

Now, I have to ask you, you are from South Africa.

Clare:

Yeah.

Bruce:

Had you even heard of Powderfinger before this?

Clare:

No.

Bruce:

Not at all. It’s funny, because we go out dancing and Clare knows most of the songs, but not all of them.

Clare:

No. When I see everybody bopping and singing to the songs, I know, “Okay, this is one of those Australian anthems, which I missed out on.”

Bruce:

Yeah, but you’re catching up now.

Clare:

Yeah, there’s not too many I don’t know anymore.

Bruce:

That’s right. You’re learning. The more we go out, the more you learn. The more music licensing we do, the more you hear them.

Clare:

That too.

Bruce:

Anyway, we will come back for another episode where we’ll talk about the music licensing for the  rerecord side of things. Because it’s not the original Powderfinger track, it’s a music rerecord, and we’ll talk about that in the next episode. But in the meantime, here it is a beautiful advertising spot, Beautiful Brisbane. Great song.

Clare:

Yeah.

Bruce:

See you later.

Clare:

If you like it, share it,

Bruce:

And if you want help with licensing songs, negotiating, music rerecord, whatever it may be, send us an email, please.

Clare:

See you later.

Bruce:

See you later again. Bye.

Clare:

Bye.

Bruce:

Done.

bruce at musicmill.com.au

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-tweedie-music-song-mill

Website: www.musicmill.com.au

Credit: the opening and closing sequences feature “Strong Hands” from Ben Catley:

The song: https://soundcloud.com/bencatley/strong-hands

About Ben: open.spotify.com/artist/66OGdUyXn2WSipn6ZYq7id

Disclaimer re copyright and fair use: https://www.musicmill.com.au/fair-use/