Making music in advertising: Lindani Ntsibande from Music and Innovation

Music and Innovation founders Mpumelelo Mtetwa, Lindani Ntsibande and Sipho Zondo

The documentary incorporates the brand story of Music and Innovation - a 100% Black-owned music and design company that specialises in composing original music, sound design and audio design for all advertising and media formats. Among other work, they produce jingles for activations and radio and background sound and music for TV and digital content.

We spoke to cofounder Lindani Ntsibande about Music and Innovation, Music in Ads and what a music career in advertising really means…

Music in marketing

Creative entrepreneur, musician, songwriter and cofounder of Music and Innovation, Ntsibande is steadfast in the creative industry. “I’ve always gravitated towards the creative field,” he said. “But I didn’t know about this particular industry - it’s not something that I grew up knowing about. It was something I discovered along the way.”

Doing promotions and being a promoter not only introduced him to the industry, but lead Ntsibande to the conclusion that communicating effectively with consumers needs a language that resonated with them. It’s a powerful tool - integrating music and marketing - because music is a language that everybody speaks.

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“With music that we do for advertising, it’s really about the brand. You need to step outside of yourself as opposed to when you’re making music for yourself,” Ntsibande said. “It’s about the brand and making sure that we translate everything that the client wants.”

Essentially, it means being able to step out of your comfort zone and speak to what audiences want, not what you would like to do as a musician.

“It can be a bit of a challenge,” said Ntsibande. “You have to try and be very creative in making sure you [fit the brief]. There’s so much to interweave; the rhythm, the style, and putting together the lyrics.”

Educating musicians

The aim of the Music in Ads documentary is to get the story of Music and Innovation out there. As a Black-owned company, they have had their fair share of challenges in the industry - and want to make sure it is known that there is a space for musicians who come from the same background know they have many avenues to follow.

Beyond this, Music in Ads looks at how making music for advertising is a deeply creative industry to work in.

“It explores the role of music in advertising - it explores the entire music in advertising space,” Ntsiande said. “It also incorporates our story as guys who come from the township - our journey and our story really shaped our purpose and our purpose is to inspire others to use the little that they have to start.”

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“It’s to use music and sound as a way to look beyond the challenges of where we come from because we believe that the most powerful thing that you can do for someone is to show them that it’s possible,” he concluded.

Music in Ads is a way of making this purpose come alive. Beyond the actual work that they do, the documentary is meant to position Music and Innovation as inspiration for how other creatives can make this space their own.