What: Miami-based music production company Animal Music has expanded its presence with a new studio in Los Angeles, California.
Why It Matters: Advertisers and marketers looking to connect with young Multicultural audiences are looking for new creative vendors to add flavor and authenticity to their campaigns. We spoke to Animal Music’s Executive Producer Alberto Farinas and Creative Producer Agustin Mas about how West Coast agencies are experimenting as they work hard to connect with Multicultural audiences.
Multicultural Vendors in Demand at West Coast Agencies
As Multicultural Millennials become the hot target, agencies across the US are struggling to inject authentic diversity into their Total Market campaigns. As a result, some creative production houses are finding an opportunity for growth in Los Angeles, where agencies are particularly open to experimentation.
Production house Animal Music, which offers customized commercial composition, sound design, audio post-production, and full music supervision and third party licensing services, was originally launched in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1986, successfully entering the U.S market through opening a Miami office in 2000. Now, they enter new territory again as they open their first office in Los Angeles to meet the growing need for Multicultural-inspired content.
Animal’s team of composers and producers, the majority of which are of Latin American descent, has worked with a broad range of global clients like Saatchi & Saatchi LA, BBH LA, Designory, BBDO NY, Ogilvy Mexico, LatinWorks, Dieste, and Zubi. They have traditionally focused is on providing music for creative productions, collaborating mostly with agency creatives and producers.
But around 2015, Executive Producer at Animal Alberto Farinas remembered noticing a shift beginning to occur in the advertising industry: “Some of the agencies we had been working with were hiring talent from Hispanic agencies, taking productions abroad, filming with multi-media production companies, and we noticed that the Total Market approach was taking off.” By the beginning of 2016, Farinas started to notice “actual movement” at agencies.
Today, the multicultural consumer has gradually taken center stage as America’s demographics began to shift, and consumers are starting to expect and embrace more diverse depictions of American life. With such deep roots in Latin culture, production houses like Animal are uniquely equipped to take on this growing need for Multicultural collaborators in the advertising world.
LA a Breeding Ground for Digital Experimentation
Animal’s decision to open a studio in Miami in 2000 proved to be smart: business started booming as they found that having operations in two timezones and international networks of talent allowed music to “keep up to the beat of our clients,” Farinas explained.
As Animal now enters a third time zone with LA, they feel confident that their hybrid approach, infused with a “less produced” South American sound, will satisfy what Farinas described as agencies desire for a “different flavor.”
While Animal has traditionally focused on music, West Coast agencies today are turning to collaborators like them to help infuse all aspects of their campaigns with Multicultural authenticity. This way, production houses like Animal Music are now able to transition from providing mainly music-related services to participating in the more general creative strategy: “Now they see us not only as a music house but a creative house, and music just happens to be how we communicate it,” Mas explained.
The growing influence of the Multicultural Millennial is intimidating to many marketers who feel that they do not have the resources or backgrounds to connect effectively with this diverse demographic. Mas and Farinas insist that in their case, all they had to do was be themselves (they do happen to be Multicultural Millennials themselves, which doesn’t hurt), and in return, the agencies have demonstrated complete trust in their visions. “The Multicultural approach that we have had is very organic and was never forced,” Mas said.
Mas added that while most of their staff was trained at similar US institutions like Berklee School of Music, they originally come from all over Latin America and infuse their own culturally-driven backgrounds into their work. That kind of authenticity is priceless to agencies today.
LA’s ‘Open Artistic Community’ is the ‘Perfect Storm’ for Creatives
In Los Angeles, traditional advertising models like 30-60-second commercials are being pushed aside as agencies are encouraging production houses like Animal to break paradigms through digital experimentation. For example, Mas explained that when they worked with Walton Isaacson for a Lexus campaign, they were blown away by the way that Lexus “let us jump on board, go to the shoots — things that we would never get to do if we followed a different, less collaborative model.”
The city has proven to be a breeding ground for experimentation that creative producers like those at Animal are diving into. “There are so many angles from which to attack a production in Los Angeles,” Mas said. “We were used to a method of procedure where the agency contacts vendors and gets it done, but here it comes from everywhere.”
“People here love to exchange ideas and play,” Mas continued. “It’s an open artistic community.” For creative professionals with a unique and authentic vision, it is the perfect storm,” Mas said.
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