How Mushroom Group’s First-Ever Brand Campaign Is “Celebrating 50 Years of Making Noise”
Music is a gift. Music can make your day sunnier and your beers colder. It can make hard work easy and hard moments more palatable. It’s sweaty bodies dancing and screaming faces crying. It’s goosebumps and road trips. It makes houses, homes and friends, family. It’s euphoria and it’s sadness.
They say the music you’ll always love most is the music you hear in your teens. Deep down we will always be screaming over boybands, or discovering that your dads old records are actually pretty good. Or perhaps, laying on the floor of our bedrooms crying over the lyrics of a song, or going to our first concert and missing the ringing in our ears.
Mushroom Group Brand has been at the forefront of the music industry for the past 50 years. Founded by the late Michael Gudinski, They’ve celebrated Australian music with immense joy and pride. You’d be hard pressed to find an artist in the industry who hasn’t been involved with Mushroom in one way or another.
“50 Years of Making Noise” is the company's first ever brand content. It's a symphony that honours the legacy of this world renowned house hold name.
LBB> Happy 50th! It’s quite the milestone - beyond the campaign, can you tell us what kind of plans you have to celebrate?
Tom> There is a heap of activity planned throughout the year, some of which will be unveiled later, including a big end of year concert event. For now, we’ve just released the first in a Mushroom 50 singles series which features artists covering classic Mushroom songs. This week it’s The Temper Trap covering Under the Milky Way by the Church and in coming weeks you’ll have new releases by acts like Paul Kelly, Missy Higgins, and Bliss n Eso with many more to come throughout the year.
LBB> This star-studded film is part of Mushroom Group’s first-ever brand campaign. Why had you not gone down this route before, and why was now the right moment to start telling your story in this way?
Tom> For the most part, at Mushroom we are mainly focused on our artists, events and other projects relevant to each individual company. It isn’t easy to find the time for a project like the Mushroom 50 brand campaign, so we do it very sparingly and a milestone like this definitely justified - taking a minute to acknowledge the huge achievement.
LBB> And can you tell us why these voices - Ed Sheeran, Jimmy Barnes, Briggs, Mark Seymour, Chris Cheney, Missy Higgins and Jack River - were right for the job?
Tom> It was important for us to have a well-rounded cast in the video, not only showcasing the different generations of our artists, but also feature artists across our record labels, publishing company, live division and so on. A bit of star power from the acts featured also doesn’t go astray!
What were the logistics of putting this together? It can't have been easy to coordinate these many legends?
This video has been in development for half a year or so, of which we’ve been shooting and editing for about three months. The coordination of capturing those artists and moments has been pretty complex, but I think the end result has shown it was worth it.
LBB> The campaign has been described as a “love letter to the Australian music industry”. For our international readers, can you describe what makes the Aussie industry so special?
Tom> For a country with a population of our size, we certainly punch above our weight in terms of the global music scene. We are immensely proud of the specific artists and diverse music culture we have created in Australia. I’m not sure if it’s better than the music culture in any other countries but it is ours and we love it.
LBB> And if we asked you to sum up Mushroom Group’s legacy in just a few sentences, what would you say?
Tom> I think it’s safe to say one of the major legacies of Mushroom is highlighting the amazing local talent we produce in this part of the world and giving them the resources to produce amazing art. We are an artist-first company and it is why musicians love working with us – it has been part of the fabric of Mushroom since day one.
LBB> In this business, fifty years is an extraordinarily long time to be at the top of your game. What is it about Mushroom Group that has allowed you to have been so consistent over all that time?
Tom> Firstly, since day one we have been surrounded by incredible staff and amazing artists, and that is absolutely critical to our success.
We were quite far ahead of the curve as far as diversification within the industry, not just existing as a record label but also having publishing, artist management, bookings, merchandise, touring – you name it. That has been critical to riding some of the bumps the industry regularly throws at you, whether it be pandemics or constant changes to music formats.
LBB> Finally, an impossible question. There’ve been some enormous transformations in the music business over the past half-century. How do you think people are going to be listening to music 50 years from now!?
Tom> While the format for listening to music will surely change another thousand times, it is comforting knowing that in fifty years we will still be loving music and experiencing it in real life. I think the pandemic has showed that while there is a place for digital experiences and live streaming, nothing comes close to experiencing music in the flesh and connecting with real people.
