How Yamaha Corporation and monopo Are Able to Realize Creative Solutions Together: “We’re musicians”
YAMAHA × monopo
Yamaha Corporation, one of the world’s leading music companies, is always striving to challenge itself while protecting the tradition that has been a core of its foundation since 1887. The VKB-100 released in 2017 is a prime example — a Vocaloid keyboard which, through a dedicated application on the user’s phone, can transfer lyrics into the instrument and have the Vocaloid sing the song as you play on the keyboard. Moreover, their DTX402 Series electric drum models are capable of emulating the feeling of playing on real drums while also allowing the musician to experiment with different variations and sounds. Kensuke Tanaka, a producer at monopo and also an active musician outside the office, was responsible for producing the branding videos and website design for the Yamaha instruments. For this particular project, he worked with Rintaro Kane and Minako Shintake from Yamaha, and I have asked them to reflect on their work together this past year.
June 2017. Mr. Kane visited the Cannes Lions International Creative Festival to see what the world’s best creatives were currently working on. There, he bumped into monopo COO Shun Okada. The two immediately bonded over their shared interest in music, and left their conversation with the promise to meet up again in Tokyo. Keeping his promise, several days later Mr. Kane dropped by the monopo office to discuss working together to renew the website for their electric guitar REVSTAR as well as the video branding for the Vocaloid keyboard VKB-100. That’s when Mr. Tanaka stepped in, and was assigned to lead this project.
ー Among the many companies you could’ve worked with, why did you choose to work with monopo?
Kane: To put it simply, their team truly understands music and can comprehend it on a deeper level. Mr. Tanaka of course, but when I discovered monopo CEO Mr. Sasaki was also in a band, well, then the choice became obvious.
Tanaka: I agree, the fact that we shared a common language was probably an important point. Because there are definitely things that only musicians can understand.
Kane: In addition, the fact that the monopo team is very international and globally-minded was big. 70% of Yamaha’s sales are overseas, so it’s no good if the production team can only understand the Japanese market. Their ideas addressed this concern and they quickly proposed a concise plan, so I was able to give them the task with confidence.
A product which transforms singing into an instrument — how do you come up with a branding video when there are no precedents to draw ideas off of?
ーEspecially the VKB-100, there are no past instruments like it. How did you go about video production?
Kane: To start, I gave the team a basic orientation of our product, and then gave a bit of direction on what kind of concept and target we were hoping for. Then I gave them the actual keyboard and told them, “Just try playing around with it”.
Tanaka: For this project I was given the chance to experiment with it, and because it was an instrument I’ve never touched before, it was actually a lot of fun. Based on that feeling I got, I gave them a typically non traditional proposal to showcase the product. I was actually a bit surprised when the two didn’t oppose my idea and was instead very open about trying it.
— As Yamaha, was your team hoping to experiment with different modes of expression?
Shintake: Yes, in particular with the VKB-100. There was no instrument in the world that would play in a Vocaloid voice. The reason why we even developed this product is because Yamaha values challenging new ways of expressing music. That’s why I believed that the branding video would have to be unique too, to match the instrument.
— The completed video was done in one continuous shot, and it almost feels as if we are watching a music video.
Tanaka: The goal was to have the musicians perform with the instrument, rather than to demonstrate “Please use the instrument like this”. We felt that it would be better to create something that would make the viewer imagine, “Wow, it might be pretty fun if I tried playing around with it in this way”. That’s why we tried to present it in as many possible scenarios as possible. Show that it’s fun to just play at home, but you can also use it in a live performance if you want. But if you try to demonstrate these different scenarios in a bunch of small clips, it’s going to feel like a tutorial video. We really wanted to avoid that, so we decided to film it in one continuous shot.
Tanaka: Also, the main thing we wanted to stress was the Vocaloid part of the instrument, but if we focused too much on that it would be become a video about Vocaloid, rather than the VKB-100 instrument. That’s why we were careful to have the instrument be the heart of the performance. The musicians in the video are actually old friends of mine, and they really enjoyed playing around with this new keyboard.
Kane: As Mr. Tanaka said, we didn’t want to show the answer, but we wanted to present the possibilities. In fact, I think that this instrument which is capable of singing can connect itself to the musician. There are musicians in this world who don’t have the confidence to sing. In this way, it would be nice to have the VKB-100 be an instrument that these individuals can enjoy as well.
Visualizing the impulse of a young boy who wants to become a musician.
Starting with this VKB-100 branding video project, monopo and Yamaha were able to build an important trust with each other, and in 2018 worked together on another big project — this was the branding of the DTX402 SERIES.
— What kind of process was behind the branding production for the DTX402 SERIES?
Kane: To begin, we introduced to Mr. Tanaka the kind of branding image we were going for with our project.
Tanaka: We decided together that there would need to be a video, as well as a website for the product. We also determined that a guideline and tutorial would be necessary for this product, and I remember agreeing that content like this is part of the branding as well.
Kane: That was right. And so we brought up, “So who is a beginner drummer in the first place?”. We discussed in-depth what it means to be a beginner musician, and came to the conclusion that if you really think about it, a beginner drummer is someone who has already started playing drums. But with the DTX402 SERIES we wanted to make it available to an audience that has never even touched a drum set before. So to do this, it became clear that we had to showcase drums in general as cool, not just our instrument in particular.
Tanaka: So based off that, I did a bit of research on what was popular with young, western audiences abroad, and constructed a mood board.
Kane: Using that, we held a discussion within Yamaha, and came to the conclusion that “Popular music these days, they really don’t have the sound of drums in them anymore do they?”. With that in mind, we decided to shift our point of appeal.
Tanaka: I was very intentional about not focusing on functionality. Musical instrument advertisements tend to focus on things like “It sounds beautiful like this” or “It is able to do this”, but for someone who has never even touched an instrument, these sorts of qualities would probably be lost on them. Rather, I wanted to focus on creating a message that would make someone think to themself, “I want to play drums”.
Kane: That is something that we had to be careful about. As the manufacturer, the tendency is to want to talk about function and how the sound quality is different. But for this project, we made a big effort to look beyond these tendencies and focus on what the customer is looking for.
Tanaka: So for the video, we decided to start with a boy who was impulsively slamming down on an imaginary drum set. Everyone who thinks about wanting to start an instrument does this. It’s like how someone might use a broom to pretend playing a guitar.
— I would say that insight like that only emerges because you are a musician yourself and understand what it’s like to love music.
Kane: In addition, one of my favorite parts is when the boy does a little smirk at the end of the video. The video is primarily used to draw in a young demographic interested in music, but once we get them to visit the website, we were careful in making sure that we appealed to the functionality of the instrument. In the end, the ones buying the instrument are the parents, and they will probably be checking for this information.
— The assembly instruction video and functionality introduction video is also very sophisticated and well-made.
Tanaka: Many people on the team did not want to make another simple how-to video.
Shintake: Because many people look up videos on musical instruments, we wanted to create something that would be fun to watch, and not something that would make them bored and click out of. Also, because it’s a video introducing a musical instrument, it’s quite obvious to talk about sound quality, but our team also wanted to deliver interesting information beyond that. I think we were able to effectively deliver our key appeal points by taking advantage of the video medium.
In addition to these videos, monopo was also responsible for producing the creative guidelines for the DTX402 SERIES. This demonstrates Yamaha’s ambition to deliver their instruments in a unified, global context.
Kane: Up until now, there was a tendency for Yamaha to leave the advertising of a product to a regional team, and have the domestic firm develop a strategy. But as we strengthened our marketing department, we have begun to change our strategy so that our instruments are marketed as a global product, and not particular to a certain market.
Shintake: Currently, it’s not just video searches that are becoming more common, but also image searches. Our team realized that it was important to have the first product images that a customer will look at be aesthetically connected in some way, or else our value as a brand would look subpar. The fact that we were able to establish these aesthetic rules in time of our launch was a great accomplishment.
Tanaka: This project in particular, even the people of monopo thought it was really amazing. To be given the opportunity to start from constructing the creative guidelines is pretty rare.
To unite Yamaha and monopo, and one day earn a Cannes Lions Award together.
— Across this past year, I feel as though the relationship between these two companies has really deepened. I hope that these two teams will continue to work together on various projects in the future.
Tanaka: This year, we’ve worked together on a lot of projects involved in the light music genre, but I’m actually interested in classical music too these days.
Kane: I see. I think that’d be really interesting. Just that when it comes to classics, I feel like the mode is a bit different.
Shintake: Kane is incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to classical music, so I think he’d become very serious.
Tanaka: I see. Maybe I shouldn’t then.
(Everyone laughs)
Kane: But I would like to challenge different kinds of projects with monopo in the future. Our company is manufacturing-based, so we can’t help but think in terms of product functionality. I’ve always talked about with Shintake how we’d like to move away from that, and express the value of our instruments in terms of music. Like, if you can’t play the piano, to you it would just be this big black box. But the moment someone sits down and starts playing, the atmosphere of the room completely transforms. I would like for our story to be more about “how instruments can bring inspiration through performance”.
Tanaka: This might be a bit off-topic, but if you’re interested in trying to showcase music as a mode of inspiration, one suggestion is to do some live performances rather than focus on production.
Kane: I completely agree. This is a bit of an extreme suggestion, but I think it might be good to just do a live performance, record the sound from the event, take some photos, and that would be enough to express the value of our instruments.
Tanaka: Personally, I would really like to collaborate with Yamaha on a project and aim for a Cannes Lions. In fact, I recently attended a seminar that discussed the theme of “What does it take to earn a Cannes Lions?”, and the lecturer there spoke that “it’s very important to have chemistry with the client and develop a common sense of purpose”. I feel like to work on that level of understanding, it’s a pretty difficult thing to accomplish. However, I feel like that is something that could be realized with Yamaha.
Kane: You’re right. It would be excessive to say that I don’t consider us to have an agency-client relationship, but I definitely believe our collaboration together is more than that. I don’t even like the term ‘client’ really, because business together is not as simple as us shelling out some money and asking them to do some work for us. I think it’s vital that we work together as one team.
Shintake: In that sense, I think it’s good that we can communicate on a relatively flat basis. It’s not like either Mr. Tanaka or us are always agreeing to every idea that comes up. If we feel that something is not quite right, we feel comfortable enough to speak up. Being able to discuss our opinions in that way, by working together I think we could come up with something really amazing.
Yamaha and monopo, a team which has been able to co-produce multiple successful projects throughout the year. Their relationship together is now closer than ever, but this bond would not have been possible without Mr. Kane and Ms. Shintake’s trust. I hope that this team will work together on more projects this coming year, and win a Cannes Lions for themselves in the future.
