VIDEO: Mark Ronson and James Eadie on Coca-Cola's 'Move to the beat' campaign

By Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith, marketingmagazine.co.uk, Friday, 17 February 2012 01:25PM

Marketing talks to music producer and DJ Mark Ronson and James Eadie, Olympic portfolio director at Coca-Cola GB, about about music, the brand, and engaging teens.

Mark Ronson: stars in Coca-Cola Olympic ad

At a Coca-Cola press launch yesterday, Eadie said that music is a "fantastic passion for Londoners and teens in particular".

"This is a great opportunity for us, it’s not just about London but about our global campaign that will take music and fuse it with sport in an innovative way that will go out there and engage with teens around the world."

Ronson told Marketing he was "taken aback" when chosen by Coca-Cola to produce the track. He said it doesn’t matter whether artists make music through brands or record labels: "At first it’s easy to be cynical and say that it’s a branding thing, but I think all that stuff went out the window five or six years ago when The Clash finally licensed ‘London’s Calling’.

"I just was part of this documentary called the ‘Music Regeneration Project’ where it was myself, Skrillex, DJ Premier and a couple of other people, and we got to go out and make music in different genres. It was backed by Hyundai but at the end of the day, who else was going to foot the bill for me to go down to New Orleans and make a song with Erykah Badu?

Ronson added that recording and releasing a track through Coca-Cola is no different to recording with a record label: "As long as the music that you make is good and you’re not compromising the level of the material, who cares whether you’re making it for Columbia, Universal or Coca-Cola?"

This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk