“Show me your top 100 music tracks and I’ll tell you where you buy your clothes, where you shop for food, which brand of beer you prefer and where you like to go on vacation.” – Maria Salzman CEO Havas PR North America.
I like to refer to music as an emotional product. It has a unique effect on our brain, it brings out feelings of happiness, anger, sadness, patriotism and can even trigger an action.
All around the world Advertisers use music streaming platforms to identify and collect data on trends and tastes, this data is then used to feed relevant ads to target audiences.
Music has always been an important marketing tool in Africa, product brands have historically backed top music acts and sponsored music events as a way to target younger audiences. Example BAT (British American Tobacco) and their sponsorship of small regional concert tours in Nigeria in the 1980’s all through to the 90’s.
Over the past 7 years the African music streaming industry have experienced significant growth with numerous players entering the market giving way to more content, more users, more data collected and more advertising.
It is important to mention that music streaming in Africa is not as established and advanced as it is in the West with some of the many challenges being; internet penetration, cost of Mobile phone data and the cost of smartphone devices amongst other factors. However this is changing as these barriers to entry are getting progressively lower with mobile internet costs and smartphones becoming cheaper and faster.
In this ever changing and progressive world of new technology, advertisers in Africa are constantly looking for the most effective way to identify and truly understand what their potential customers are truly passionate about. With the growing popularity of music streaming platforms and based on the sheer volume of user data generated by these platforms, companies and their advertising agencies have suddenly started to realise the power and opportunity of leveraging music tastes and trends as a targeting tool.
Using music and user generated data from streaming as a behavioural targeting tool gives brands the opportunity to tap into the emotions of an individual or group creating an opportunity for very accurate consumer targeting and allowing them to align their products and services alongside a music trend or taste.
In conclusion, people who are more likely to buy a specific product are more than likely to have the same tastes or needs and may also be bound by the same common characteristics. Of course companies in Africa are already using music event sponsorships and other music related activations as a way to reach their youthful or music loving audience. However, in order to effectively and accurately target their market, these companies and their advertising agencies should look beyond the traditional classifications of music according to genres and pay more attention to the link between music, personality traits and habits of the target audience or group.
Guest Writer – Chinasa Udeala. Chinasa is GM Songa Music at Radio Africa Group
