Sony Music is betting on setting up its own creative organization internally. Sony hopes that the internal creative organization can integrate the previous independent marketing work of the company.
The 4th Floor Creative, headquartered in London, gathers the internal production studio of Sony Music UK, as well as the digital and brand partnership departments dedicated to television, film, data and analysis. According to Adam Cardu, the company's digital director, these departments were once independent, basically without any intersection, and difficult to integrate. Cardu is a member of the 15 member creative digital team on the 4th floor.
The brand did not cooperate with external institutions before, but chose to split the work through many departments. This is a strategy different from other brands. Most of these brands choose to transfer creative work from external institutions to internal ones. Of course, this is a growing trend: in the United States, according to ANA estimates, the number of brands with internal agents is growing significantly. 78% of brands have set up their own internal creative organizations to some extent, compared with 58% in 2013.
Since Sony launched its own internal agency, it has been working with some institutional partners representing the highest level of music, such as Columbia, RCA and Ministry of Sound, to produce official music videos for artists such as Little Mix, Tom Grannan, Paloma Faith and George Ezra. Of course, it also serves artists who want to do marketing for new albums or social marketing and online marketing.
"When we work in these departments in a more synchronous way," Cardu said, "we can make these artists' activities larger and attract more audiences." These services are mainly for British artists of Sony Music, but also for American artists of Sony Music.
Cardu said that the latest focus of the internal agency store is to establish an internal audio studio, so that the agency can personally record with artists and produce various products from dubbing to podcasting. One of its latest works is the "Alexa Tips" launched two weeks ago for Amazon's Alexa and the popular British pop band Little Mix. In the internal audio studio, the company can let the band record in person, record enough audio content, and promote the band's new album LM5 before it is released on November 16.
The decision to create a skill for the band was made because people realized that the band was one of the most popular artists on Amazon's Alexa website. The company said this was because it integrated all its different information sources under one of its organizations.
Cardu said that the audio studio was fully operational and several projects were under way. He said: "It enables us to provide more opportunities for our artists to connect with the audience. We can communicate with the audience in the era of streaming media."