It’s time to look beyond mere sync deals and artist endorsements, because brands are ready to take onboard digital music technology to power up consumer comms. Think Converse’s Canvas Experiment with that shoe-based graphic equaliser. Or The Give In To Gü campaign featuring a drum-activated billboard. Not to mention Starbucks’ QR-code hunt with Lady Gaga… and 1001 different branded music apps.

But it’s not simply a question of a brand badging any piece of digital music wizardry and running with it. There has to be very good fit between what that particular piece of kit can actually do, and the marketing message the brand wants to deliver.

Plus there are a whole host of issues surrounding these partnerships:

Quality beats all. How do brands ensure they have the right music partner? How do artists find the right partner?

Sell-out or step-up. Just what’s in it for those music tech start-ups to get it together with brands?

Mobile, augmented reality, digital gizmo. How can brands find the tech that’s right for them and for their consumers?

Labels, brands, music-tech start-up, artist. Who owns what in these multi-party relationships?

Social media savvy. Who controls and manages the social web comms with consumers, and who really gets the benefits?

Which is why brand-e has joined forces with Music 4.5 to put on the Brand Discovery event in London on 28th September.

Schedule

14.00 Registration

14.30 Introduction - 2Pears + brand-e
Handing over to the chair of the day, Cliff Fluet, Lewis Silkin

14.40 The music-tech pitch - why brands and agencies should be keen to work with the music-tech startups, what can music-tech startups offer and what do they want?
Clare Crean, AudioFuel

15.00 New technologies and digital communication solutions for promotion, marketing, reaching and engaging with new or existing audiences.
Overview and Unilever/Lynx augmented reality case study
Susan Stone, Tonic

15.20 Shifting balance of power: a new relationship developing between brands such as Reebok and Adidas, majors, artists and music-tech companies
Daniel Cross, Record-Play

15.40 From the entertainment brand’s perspective: MTV and Viacom's be innovation unit
Viacom's be innovation unit fosters links with VC firms to find out about innovative tech companies and then matches them up with brands working with Viacom properties
Daniel Green, Viacom's be innovation unit

16.00 Coffee break

16.20 From the label's perspective: the labels negotiating in-between artists, brands and music-tech startups.
What are the new developments and the new ideas to break artists or reach new fans? What’s in it for artists and what does it deliver?
Matt Smith, AWAL

16.40 The brand challenge: convergence, retail and advertising, OR discovery, sharing and commerce...
“Interest Purchase” – integrating retail into entertainment and delivering music discovery via broadcast, social media and brands. Shazam case study with P&G, Starbucks, Old Navy and NBCUniversal
Will Mills, Shazam

17.00 Leveraging the social media relationship via mobile social commerce tools
Taking the fan-artist social media relationship further from the "follow" or "like", and driving engagement, downloads and revenue through mobile social commerce tools
Case studies: Integrated in the world's largest trance radio show, and Flowd with the biggest fan of Britney Spears
Wilhelm That, Flowd

17.20 Case study: mobileroadie
Stephen O'Reilly, mobileroadie

17.40 Panel discussion - how to get these deals away and where they fall over... an alarming number of them are falling over and/or floundering
Introducing the issues by Richard Kirstein and Cliff Fluet followed by panel discussion moderated by Cliff Fluet
Panellists include:
Ross Dines, Pizza Express
Richard Kirstein, Resilient Music
Eric Sheinkop, Music Dealers
Francis Rodino, Softwind Studio
Seth Jackson, PIAS Media

18.00 Show case - music tech startups pitching their ideas/uses to brands and agencies
Topspin - Jessie Scoullar
Synchtank - Rory Bernard
Aupeo! – Daniel Cox
Hitlantis – Timo Poijärv

18.30 Drinks and networking