A lot of serious branding thought went into Metallica's latest album, Death Magnetic. Brand Identitymiesters Turner Duckworth were roped in to package the album CD and apparently, they were even allowed the freedom to choose the title of the album. As David Turner says, "At the point of our very first meeting with the band they hadn't settled on an album title or finished all the songs. I always tell clients that you start with the product and then create a name and that's the theme you build your marketing around. But they couldn't decide between four potential album names. I spoke to James (Hetfield), who writes all the lyrics, and got him to talk a bit about each song. And when he'd gone through them all I immediately saw that one of their titles tied them all together. Many of the songs were about death, not just the negative side of it but the strange attraction death has and also the theme of life, redemption and something more than death. So there was attraction and repulsion, and life and death, all contradictory things. One of the titles they were playing around with was Death Magnetic and I thought it was perfect because it really seemed to tie the songs together." For more on this topic, visit Creativity Online.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
How Metallica were attracted to Death Magnetic
A lot of serious branding thought went into Metallica's latest album, Death Magnetic. Brand Identitymiesters Turner Duckworth were roped in to package the album CD and apparently, they were even allowed the freedom to choose the title of the album. As David Turner says, "At the point of our very first meeting with the band they hadn't settled on an album title or finished all the songs. I always tell clients that you start with the product and then create a name and that's the theme you build your marketing around. But they couldn't decide between four potential album names. I spoke to James (Hetfield), who writes all the lyrics, and got him to talk a bit about each song. And when he'd gone through them all I immediately saw that one of their titles tied them all together. Many of the songs were about death, not just the negative side of it but the strange attraction death has and also the theme of life, redemption and something more than death. So there was attraction and repulsion, and life and death, all contradictory things. One of the titles they were playing around with was Death Magnetic and I thought it was perfect because it really seemed to tie the songs together." For more on this topic, visit Creativity Online.
