Do you think children these days go into see their careers advisor at school and say, "Well, what I really want to be when I grow up is a director of brand partnerships, you know, sync for a living"? Or, "well, I've been thinking about what I'm good at, and I think, on balance, I'm going to aim for a career that involves the direction of commercial innovation".
Well, if that is what the kids aspire to do these days, they should speak to Bob and Hannah to get some pointers. EMI announced a number of new appointments on its UK brand partnerships and synchronisation team yesterday.
Bob Workman, previously of music marketing and covermount agency Spin, has joined the major to become Senior Director Of Brand Partnerships Europe, while Hannah Partridge, who previously worked for marketing agency BD Ntwk doing music marketing nonsense for Coke, and was involved in the fizzy drink's short-living dabbling in the download market (yeah, you'd all forgotten about Mycokemusic.com hadn't you, it was big news for seventeen minutes), becomes Brand Partnerships Manager for the UK.
On the sync side of the table, EMI's UK sync rights team is to be expanded and split into two, with one bit handling contracts and the likes when people say they want to use a bit of EMI-owned music in their TV show or ad, the other bit going out there and persuading TV makers and advertisers that they really want to use Kajagoogoo's 'Too Shy' in their next film. Hywel Evans will head up the former pen-pushing team, Rich Robinson the latter pop-pushing one.
It's all part of EMI's attempts to boost its sync right revenues, and convince its artists they should be giving the major a cut of their brand partnership income as well as a share of the fifty two pounds you can make releasing an album these days.
Confirming the new appointments, EMI's VP of all things brandified, Rafael McDonnell, told CMU: "Our ability to grow and drive new revenues in brand partnerships, licensing and synchronisation, is dependent on us having people in place with the skills and understanding of how to operate in these complex and competitive areas. These changes and key appointments will enable us to deliver great service for both our customers and EMI's artists". You can't tell here, but in the TV version of today's CMU Daily I synced that quote with John Lennon's 'Imagine'. Or may be The Sex Pistols' 'Anarchy In The UK'.