May 2022
Marcel Alexander Wiebenga (Rotterdam 1978) is a former drummer and percussionist who conquered a modest place in music history during the mid-nineties and early 2000s. He recorded and toured the globe with bands such as Oil and Das Oath, in his downtime organizing various dance events as LLIK in his then hometown of Rotterdam.
Marcel joined the Amsterdam-based music agency Sizzer in 2008 as employee number 1 and quickly became Strategy Director and Partner to grow the company to a 20+ person venture with satellite offices in Berlin and NY. As Strategy Director, he oversaw music production and licensing of 1000+ commercials for Heinkenen, Martini, Diesel, Audi, and Mercedes, winning over 50 international advertising awards.
In 2018 Marcel left Sizzer to focus on new endeavours. In 2021 together with old bandmate and former Sizzer Managing Director Nicholas van den Doel, Marcel launched Howl, a music agency focusing on strategy and meaningful music usage for brands. Marcel and Nicholas also founded Ringo, a data-first, tech-driven platform that simplifies the music licensing processes.
Marcel…
MASA: So after a number of very successful years at Sizzer, you moved and launched Howl and Ringo, with Nicholas van den Doel. How are your new adventures progressing?
MARCEL: Yes, things have been progressing, albeit slowly. Then again, patience is not my biggest virtue, so, to me, most things are slow!
After leaving Sizzer, after building that company for ten years, I needed a well-deserved break, so I spent most of 2018 traveling the globe. I know that this is not the platform for any travel tips, but if any readers are looking for recommendations on where to eat, sleep, and relax in New Zealand, Fiji, or the mysterious island group, Vanuatu, do give me a shout!
During Covid, my co-founder Nicholas van den Doel, the former MD at Sizzer, and I mainly focussed on our start-up, Ringo! Nicholas and I have been working together since we were sixteen, but we quickly found that building a scalable tech company and dealing with investors is something very different from running a DIY-punk band like we did in the early 2000s or running a service-oriented music company like Sizzer in the 2010s.
All things considered, we really didn’t start our music agency 2.0, Howl, until the summer of 2021, after we got approached by our friends in HALAL to help out on a campaign for mobility reimagined brand Lynk & Co. We consequently realized how much fun we have connecting context, music, and communication and how well it combines with what we are building with Ringo.
MASA: How do you manage to stand out from the competition and how do you help agencies and brands decide what music is right for them?
MARCEL: Already for years we felt that something was missing in how the industry approaches music regarding brand communication. Our industry tends to look at music purely from its functional perspective: a track sounds good/energetic, uplifting, or any other emotional generalization, so we'll use that. This often results in outcomes that miss the mark. For example, Nina Simone's ‘I Got Life’, a song entrenched with the pain of African American history, with slavery, promotes anything from Alp Yoghurt to orange juice because its second part sounds so uplifting and sings about ‘life’.
We, however, and maybe this has something to do with our punk background, strongly feel that music at all times has meaning, and if we approach music ‘meaning first’ and find ways to include that meaning when we aim to communicate, we can have more meaningful communication.
This ‘meaning first’ way of looking at music is what we call, for lack of a better description, Creative Music Strategy and during a Creative Music Strategy phase, we do three things:
1. Expand music's perspective to its relation to the society and culture it created and consumed to understand the meaning of music and understand why a track feels good/emotional/uplifting/intense.
2. Use these insights to create a shared language and facilitate better conversations about music.
3. Build exciting concepts and ideas around these insights and with this shared language before crafting or sourcing the perfect track.
Or, as we like to one-line it. Before music becomes a craft, music should be a creative strategy.
MASA: Well, with such an in-depth approach it’s clear why you do indeed stand out! Can you give us a behind-the-scenes insight on any of your recent projects that you’re particularly proud of?
MARCEL: The formentioned project we did for Lynk & Co was a great example; after the agency fell short with a craft-oriented approach, we did a thorough strategy session with both the agency and the client.
Lynk & Co has a ‘lifestyle first’ way of communicating, so during our strategy sessions, we looked for ways to make that insightful by curating playlists based on the playlists certain DJs could make and how these playlists would resonate with the targeted lifestyle group.
We ended up licensing Moondog's ‘Birds Lament’, a track most supervisors have pitched, but that never makes the cut because it is pretty out there. Because of the context provided during strategy, not only the agency from a creative standpoint but also the entire international marketing team at the client was able to understand why this was the perfect, dare I say logical, choice.
During a more recent project, we actually suggested silence as a viable option. It's strange to do that because, well, we make our money with music and sound, but as a strategist, I felt compelled to put it out there (and a part of me still thinks it would have been a great direction for the film).
MASA: Can you tell us what you are working on currently?
MARCEL: We have a few projects in the works. I'm incredibly excited about this thing we're doing together with an outstanding Dutch Ad Agency called Superheroes, for a ginormous tech company, where the current challenge is to bring together a group of people with a wide variety of cultural backgrounds and facilitate their communication about music.
MASA: Roughly, what tends to be the split between commissioned, original music; existing tracks; and re-records?
MARCEL: Too soon to call for us. Currently, the projects we've been working on are more long-term due to our strategy-first approach.
Having said that, I do feel that creatively, this industry would benefit from more licensing. Granted, some films need to be scored, and that is fine. Most of the time, however, we as an industry opt for bespoke tracks because we haven't figured out how to find the right existing songs at scale or get caught up navigating the tricky process of licensing a track.
MASA: What new / emerging artists / bands are you listening to at the moment?
MARCEL: Here's an unpopular opinion…! I don't really listen to new and emerging artists that much, and I'm still discovering 70+ years of pop music, jazz, and hundreds of years of classical music. On top of that, I tend to listen to what I know and like, especially in my personal time. I'm currently in Berlin, where I was supposed to go and see a reunion show of my favorite all-time band, Rocket From The Crypt; if only they wouldn't have canceled :-(
Also, I'm currently 43 years old. Emerging artists, in general, are two decades younger than I am, and they put out music that needs to resonate with their generation, not mine, not with me. Professionally, we, of course, work with people in touch with all that is new and up and coming.
MASA: Tell us more about your music tech start-up, Ringo…
MARCEL: With Nicholas and I collectively working in the B2B music industry for over two decades, we were constantly amazed by the inefficiencies of music licensing for moving images and saw that as an exciting problem to fix.
We found that the biggest problem with music licensing is that the various pieces of the information puzzle are scattered all over the internet and beyond. Hence, we conceived Ringo to: ‘streamline the sync eco-system by operating as the world's first independent sync meta-data access point, creating a more straightforward, transparent music licensing experience while saving on sync cost overhead.’ When we say Meta-data we refer to data like:
- Pricing (we have an excellent algorithm for that).
- Contact info on who to reach out to.
- A history of where a song has been used before.
- Something we call marketing metrics of both the artist and the song to feed the need of many decision-making marketing directors.
We just got accepted at the prestigious Wallifornia Music Tech accelerator, so in between doing Creative Music Strategy, and getting the Hipgnosis catalog out there, Nicholas and I are back in school. Exciting times all around!
MASA: Extremely exciting! Next question… how do you think a competition like The Music+Sound Awards impacts the industry?
MARCEL: Everyone in the creative industry agrees that music is essential when you're communicating. However, at the same time, music is still an afterthought, a balancing item, and a second-rate category at various other awards. The Music and Sound Awards are a great way to celebrate and emphasize the importance of music and the people behind it, so kudos on that.
MASA: And lastly, what will you be looking for when judging? What makes a piece of work worthy of a Music+Sound Award?
MARCEL: I like to answer this question with a short clip of Joe Strummer > https://youtu.be/djJTIUmNUQU?t=70
MASA: What a complete pleasure to hear from you Marcel. It’s so great to have your insight on the panel this year. And readers, make sure you click on the Joe Strummer link. Goosebumps.
