With more small-scale consultancies launching by the day, how can one group stand out?
Josh Rabinowitz hopes the answer is music to clients’ ears.
The former EVP, director of music at Grey New York left that agency at the end of 2018 after more than 13 years and recently announced the launch of Brooklyn Music Experience, which promises to provide interested parties with “Access, Insight and Expertise from an acknowledged Global Music Leader schooled on the streets of Brooklyn.”
What does that mean, though?
As Rabinowitz puts it, his new service promises to connect brands with “future clients, collaborators and customers, and an opportunity to get insider connectivity.”
He also looks to advise clients on matters of overall music strategy (“How do I penetrate a specific market or demographic?”) execution (“How do I get music for my initiative legally and at a reasonable price?”), curation (“How should my brand sound and what music styles or composers should we use?”), ideation (“What should I use musically for my piece of content to make it great, effective and even artful?”), supervision (“Can you suggest, find, procure, negotiate and get a fair price for us?”), and straight-up production for parties who simply want a track made for them.
“My consultancy came about as I felt that I wanted to expand my client base and not only work with specific brands, but advise and collaborate with other brands, creative shops, publishers, labels, libraries, music tech companies, start-ups, VCs, A.I., aspiring musicians, speak publicly more and teach and mentor more,” Rabinowitz said.
He announced his departure from Grey in a December memo, writing, “Dear Comrades: I bid you farewell and wish you all a very Happy New Year! It’s been a distinct pleasure working with each and every one of you. After a solid 13+ year run, it’s time for me to try something different, which is looking to be really exciting, super challenging and hopefully fun as hell.”
The departing executive proceeded to share a Spotify playlist filled by the sorts of songs you might expect. One can never get enough of the Clash, we suppose.
“It seems that in the present advertising, marketing and music climate, the consultancy and/or the boutique is probably the way to go,” Rabinowitz continued. “The Big Agency Model, it seems, may be too big to succeed in this era … hopefully a music consultancy is too small to fail.”
This story sounds quite familiar.
“Also, although I’ve had a great deal of successes in the Big Agency Model, I wanted to try and explore my own thing rather than be a part of a company where music, although appreciated, isn’t the primary, secondary or even tertiary offering,” he said. “I wanted it to be Music First.”
The most appealing aspect of going rogue, though, was serving as his own boss.
Here’s a video from Rabinowitz talking music and marketing at Cannes in 2016, when he led the music jury. Around the 2:30 mark, he begins explaining how music and brands can work together, now more than ever. Plus some flute.