Composing Entertainment: How Music Helps Ads Tell Blockbuster Stories

There’s few better feelings than being truly gripped by a story. It leaves you tantalised, negotiating with yourself as to how you can stay up late enough for one more chapter - or cursing a streaming company’s decision not to drop a series all in one go. 

With his musical supervision credits including The White Lotus, Don’t Look Up, and Ozark, MAS (Music and Strategy)’s Gabe Hilfer is perfectly familiar with that feeling. And he knows that it isn’t something which needs to be exclusive to the more traditional mediums of entertainment. Advertising, too, has the power to tell memorable stories and produce moments that stay with you. It’s there in his work for the likes of Nike, and it isn’t purely about narrative. It’s about music, too. 

So often, music is that secret sauce which elevates a good scene into a great one. So to find out what advertisers can learn from the art of music in film and TV, LBB’s Adam Bennett caught up with Gabe… 

LBB> Gabe, can you tell us how your experience in film and TV informs your approach to music in ads? 

Gabe> Ads don’t need to be these things that people have to sit through. They can be something that people actively tune into, too. I’ve spent time in advertising, TV, and film, and I can say that there is a lot of commonality between those mediums when it comes to music. 

Of course, there are specific nuances too. But taking the muscle memory that you’ve learned in, say, music supervision in film and applying it to advertising is a great way to make it feel grander, bigger, more epic, and bring a level of creative ambition that feels fleshed out and authentic. 

LBB> Is there a specific ad which springs to mind that you think really encapsulates what you’re talking about?

Gabe> Immediately my mind turned to Battlegrounds, which was a campaign for Nike. It was the first ad I ever did - in fact, it was the first thing I ever did. I was managing musicians and working with independent artists at the time in New York City. A friend of mine worked at a production company - RadicalMedia - and through them I learned that they were making this thing for Nike with Wieden+Kennedy. It was longform content, and they needed help with both finding and licensing music. 

So I got organically sucked into this project and learned about the job on-the-fly. But so much of what I learned in that process has stuck with me - even influencing my work in film and TV in return. It taught me the ropes, and probably crystalised this idea in my mind that the best ads are, in fact, entertainment. And they’re made in that mould. 

LBB> So what are the differences between music in ads and traditional TV or movies? Are there certain things that you know won’t work in an ad, for example? 

Gabe> The most fundamental thing to keep in mind with ads is that your music is in service of selling a product. So there are certain types of music, and certain tenets of music supervision, which do lend themselves to the world of advertising particularly well. For example, you’re never going to make an ad that leaves people feeling devastated or lost. Well maybe if you were being particularly avant garde… but it’s not something I’ve ever been part of! 

So you keep those emotional triggers in mind with the music you’re making or choosing. You want it to be generally positive and help the brand embody a positive attitude. Those things permeate your brain when you’re working on an ad, whereas in a film or TV you’re cognisant of a longform narrative and how your work fits into the language and style of the feature as a whole. 

With Ozark and White Lotus, for example, those are two shows which have a tone all of their own. So when you’re finding music for those shows you want to work within that - and, crucially, you have a longer road to travel down in terms of the narrative. In an ad, the amount of road open to you is very finite. You’re not going to be making a lot of stops, or twists and turns, along the way. In order for a song to be impactful it needs to take off from a short runway. 

The fundamentals of the job are the same, in that you’re framing a story and looking to achieve an emotional reaction. But the execution is very different. 

LBB> I’m interested in the idea that certain emotions are out of bounds for advertising. Is that even true in longer form branded content, would you say? 

Gabe> I’m not sure that’s the right way to look at it. I’m talking more about the amount of time available rather than whether it’s an ad or not. 

Think of it this way. If I’ve planned my whole evening to be spent at a fancy restaurant, I’m going to think about ordering the five course menu. I want to be taken to different places by each and every dish, hitting a new note each time. And maybe the chef has planned it out nicely so that each flavour is a kind of natural departure to the next. 

But if I’m at the same restaurant and I’m on my lunch break, I’d rather get one plate that could encompass everything I want to try. It’s going to give me similar flavours, but much more efficiently. 

LBB> So does that mean that eliciting an emotional response is always going to be more challenging with commercials than it is in film and TV? 

Gabe> It’s an art all of its own. You have one chance at saying what you want to say, and you need to tick multiple boxes in a short space of time. Nostalgia, aspiration, excitement, or whatever combination of all that. Finding one song to bridge all of these things - and be creatively cool and memorable - is a lot of pressure. 

LBB> But it can be done. That Feist ad for Apple still gets talked about now, twenty years down the line… 

Gabe> Exactly! Which goes to show how well it works when you get it right. Apple as a brand has a phenomenal track record when it comes to music - and it’s funny you mention that ad because I truly think it was a watershed moment in terms of how music in ads was perceived. It was a moment where everyone saw how ads could be these platforms where music broke out and became part of culture in a really authentic way. And that’s still true now. 

LBB> So, to wrap up, does the use of music in that way help a brand to become part of culture, too?  

Gabe> Music isn’t the only way to do that, but it is a super important part of the story. Music has a unique ability to communicate with people because of the connections we all have with songs. If you use one that’s beloved then it’s a way to, not ‘cheat’ per se, but immediately present your brand in a way that touches people emotionally. To borrow a baseball analogy, it helps you start off on second base. 

That’s ultimately why music is so powerful. Whether it be in ads, movies, or TV, it’s the ability to make those emotional connections. And, honestly, I don’t think there’s a better way to pull that trick than with music.