Smart Branding, Varied Styles

Smart Branding, Varied Styles

Keeping it real. It’s a mantra of the creative class, and often judged mutually exclusive from commercial success. But what if a creative company’s success stemmed from keeping it real – its ability to connect with people on a personal level?  For someone such as Expansion Team creative director Alex Moulton, it is the best of both worlds.
 
In 2001, Moulton recognized a demand for authenticity in the way music was created for advertising and television. He also realized that the changing landscape in the recording industry would force musicians to consider new ways of making money from their music. The revelation led to his founding of Expansion Team, his vision for what a music company could be.

“I saw that smart brands needed an effective way to tie real music and artists to their campaigns if they really wanted to speak directly to their target audiences,” said Moulton. “At the same time, intelligent recording artists needed to diversify and generate income outside the typical avenues, like album sales, publishing and touring. The timing was good and the two met perfectly in between, and we created a company to support both.”

Moulton was in a unique position at the time, working as a live-action director and editor for creative design studio Eyeball and deejaying in New York City clubs and making music on the side. It was while directing a series of shorts for Showtime Networks about young DJs, the network asked him to supervise the music for networks new channel, ShoNEXT.

“We called a lot of bands, deejays and producers together and recorded an album’s worth of material,” remembers Moulton. “Showtime was happy to get real, authentic music and the artists were happy to get paid. A light bulb went off in my head, and the idea for Expansion Team was born.”

Beginning with five composers on its roster, including Moulton, the company now has more than 20 – a collection of accomplished musicians offering a range of styles that a traditional music house would seem hard-pressed to match. From Beck and AIR keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr. to Groove Collective founder Genji Siraisi to Grammy-winning writer of Santana’s “Smooth” and Maxwell’s “Ascension” Itaal Shur, the varied styles allow Expansion Team to provide its clients access to a vast range of contemporary compositions that are more than just re-workings of the current hit singles.

“The difference you get with Expansion Team is that their artists are legit,” said Josh Kahn, a creative at Boathouse Group, the Boston-based advertising company that hired Expansion Team on the recent New Balance Zip campaign. “They're immersed in the scene, so what you come away with is a sound that's actually fresh and relevant, as opposed to something that's dripping with that awful corporate sheen.”

Moulton believes the process is the key – taking the time to immerse the company in a brand and finding a sound that works, one that is going to convey a brand’s image in the most powerful and effective way. To that end, he thinks Expansion Team’s thorough understanding of different music genres has been a major factor in its success. It also can’t hurt that the company has built up strong relationships within the industry, which has allowed it to incorporate a licensing division with a library of more than 10,000 songs, including artists as diverse as Fatboy Slim and 50 Cent.

“Choosing the right talent is the most important part of creating original music,” said Moulton. “Or if we’re moving toward a licensed track, we’ll know quickly what tracks might be right, or what relationship we may need to call on to make a deal happen. I think it’s our ability to be able to consider all of the solutions, whether original or licensing or something in between, and seamlessly execute on those ideas, that makes us unique.”

“We recently worked with Team Detroit on the Ford/Microsoft Sync campaign. The best creative solution for what they needed ended up involving every aspect of what we do to tie it all together – detailed sound design, big licensed tracks, an unknown licensed track and original music. It would have been difficult to foresee that all of these elements would have been involved, but it just made the most sense for the campaign.”

Moulton’s enthusiasm shines through when talking about music. So it’s not surprising he added a label, Expansion Team Records, to his company’s mix in 2007, an addition he hopes will only add to what the Expansion Team can offer its clients, who increasingly want to hear new music before anyone else. He sees the company evolving over time, possibly growing to incorporate its own recording studios. But it’s Moulton’s love of music and breadth of experience that will be the driving force behind Expansion Team’s evolution.

“My favorite parts of the day are when I get to talk music and swap stories with the artists,” said Moulton. “But I’ve also realized that I have a skill for using my background as a director, editor and DP to help me communicate well with clients, and my experience as a musician, composer, DJ and all-around music nerd to communicate with artists. Since music is so hard to articulate most times, this ability to translate effectively is what makes me good at what I do.”