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Welcome to Shallow DeepDive, where we take
a deep-ish dive into the shallow world of
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branding, advertising and creative.
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I'm Joe Qualls.
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Today, we're covering the new Apple Music
identity, and why a brand that gave up its
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colour may have ended up with something
better.
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Here's what happened.
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This week, Apple Music released its first
new identity since the service launched in
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2015.
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It was made with TBWA Media Arts Lab, the
producer Fred again, and the sound
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designers NEST Acoustics, and Apple's line
for the whole thing is "made by
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" The new look starts showing up in Apple
Music's own shows and events now, and
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arrives on everyone's phone with the next
software update.
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The phrase is meant literally.
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The team broke music down into single
notes and played them through a
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small device that turns an audio signal
into vibration.
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The transducer sat in a shallow bath of
mineral oil.
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Acrylic versions of the music note and the
wordmark sat in the oil, and as the sound
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moved through it, the surface rippled and
the light bent around the shapes.
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They filmed it, in camera.
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That footage is the raw material for the
logo animation and the wider look.
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Fred again and NEST wrote a short piece of
music that drives it, which is also the
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brand's new sound.
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There's a behind-the-scenes film on
YouTube that walks through the whole
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and it's worth a minute and a half of
anyone's time.
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Around that sits a new wordmark, the Apple
symbol next to a bold, lowercase "music"
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set in a custom version of Apple's own
typeface.
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It was quietly road-tested last month on
the signage for Apple Music Hall, the new
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six-hundred-seat venue at Battersea Power
Station in London.
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It looks less like a software label and
more like the masthead of a music
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And the app icon, the red one, is going
black and white.
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That's the part people noticed.
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When the monochrome icon turned up in a
beta last week, the response was mostly
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unhappy.
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People missed the red.
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A few said they'd move to Spotify over it,
which we doubt.
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It's a fair reaction.
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Colour is usually the first thing people
recognise a brand by, and Apple Music just
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set its colour down.
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We'd make the case it was the right call,
and the reason is in the category.
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Spotify owns green.
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YouTube Music is red too, a red circle on
a phone screen a swipe away from Apple's
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red square.
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In music streaming, red was never really
Apple's.
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It was a colour Apple was using.
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Compare that with Coca-Cola, which we
covered two episodes ago.
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Coke kept every asset it had because every
one of them was unmistakably Coke's.
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Apple Music looked at its most
recognisable asset, decided it wasn't
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replaced it with something that is.
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Which brings us to the idea underneath
this.
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Most identities are made to represent what
a company does.
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A designer draws a shape that stands for
music, or speed, or care.
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This one is made from what the company
does.
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The visuals aren't a picture of sound.
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They're a by-product of it.
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That matters more than it sounds, because
a picture of something can be copied by
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anyone with the same software.
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A by-product can only be copied by doing
the same work.
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If a competitor wanted this look, they'd
need a composer, a transducer, a tray of
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oil and a few months.
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And even then it would look like their
music, not Apple's.
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There's a second asset in here that gets
less attention, and it's the sound itself.
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Most brands we meet have a logo, a palette
and a typeface, and no sound at all.
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Yet nearly everything they publish now
makes a noise.
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The video on the homepage, the social
clip, the podcast, the reel, the message
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hear on hold.
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Apple has now done this twice in a year.
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Last year Apple TV got a short sonic
signature written by Finneas.
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Now Apple Music has one written by Fred
again.
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There's some evidence this is worth doing.
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An Ipsos study back in 2020 found that
video ads using a brand's own sound cues
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far more likely
Load full transcript
to perform well than ads
without them, and also found that sound
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made up only a small sliver of the brand
assets companies actually use.
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We'd hold the exact multiple loosely, the
way we'd hold any single study.
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The direction we believe, because people
don't always watch.
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They hear.
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I learned that making political ads in New
York.
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You'd spend days on a thirty-second spot
for a city council race, every frame
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over, and then you'd remember that a lot
of people meet a TV ad from the next room.
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The kettle's on.
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The kids are loud.
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They hear it and they don't see it.
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The spots that worked were the ones you
could follow with your eyes shut.
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That never stopped being true.
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It just moved from the living room to the
phone in someone's pocket with the screen
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off.
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Now the caution, because there are two.
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The first is that a behind-the-scenes film
is also marketing.
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Showing the process has become a genre of
its own, and Apple is very good at it.
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Last year the Apple TV identity was shot
with real glass and coloured light, and
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agency said craft should be felt, not
faked.
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At a time when anyone can generate a slick
image in seconds, "we made it for real"
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is a selling point, and Apple knows it.
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The process only earns its keep if the
result holds up without the story
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On a phone, at the size of a fingernail,
nobody is watching the documentary.
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They're looking at an icon.
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The second caution is about the colour.
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Dropping a recognisable asset is a real
cost, and Apple can afford it because the
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logo next to the word "music" does most of
the recognising.
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A smaller brand that drops its colour
doesn't have a fruit to fall back on.
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So if you're going to give something up,
be sure what you're putting in its place
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more yours than what you're losing, not
just newer or tidier.
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So what does this look like for a business
that isn't Apple?
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Start by looking for the material only you
have.
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For a builder, that might be the site
drawings.
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For a winemaker, the soil.
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For an engineering firm, the survey data
nobody outside the office ever sees.
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An identity that grows out of that
material is harder to copy than one drawn
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stand for it.
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Then give your brand a sound before you
need one, because you're already making
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things that people hear.
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A few seconds that open your videos and
your podcast, used every time, is cheaper
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than a new logo and works when nobody is
looking.
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And before you let go of something people
recognise you by, ask whether it was ever
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really yours, or whether you were just the
one using it.
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The phrase Apple chose is "made by
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" The idea worth keeping is smaller and
more useful than that.
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The best brand assets aren't drawn to look
like the work.
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They come out of it.
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Thank you for indulging us in today's
Shallow DeepDive.
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We hope you'll join us for the next one.
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Until then, take care.