Marketing Lessons from the Symphony | Robert Emery - Part 1

Award-winning conductor, pianist, and entrepreneur Robert Emery joins Beverly as they talk about the world of music, creativity, and marketing. From performing with the Ukraine Philharmonic to working with legendary film scores, Robert shares how classical music—and bold branding—can move people in unexpected ways. Discover how early curiosity, storytelling, and purpose fueled Robert’s career, and how marketers can learn to orchestrate unforgettable experiences too.

Three Key Topics Discussed:

1. Music as a Memory Anchor: Robert and Beverly explore how music connects us to emotions, memories, and moments—and how marketers can use that sensory power in brand storytelling.
2. Making Classical Music Accessible: Robert shares how he’s transforming the image of classical music from stuffy to fun, and why it’s all about how we market the experience.
3. The Story That Changed a Life: Hear how one spontaneous invitation during a concert brought a young autistic boy out of his shell—and why generosity is a powerful brand strategy.

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Transcript

Beverly: 0:09

Did you know that classical music has been shown to increase brain function, boost your productivity, and even enhance creativity? But despite those incredible benefits, classical music is often misunderstood and overlooked in today's world. Welcome to another musical episode of the Spark Ending Night Year Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, founder and fairy godmother of brand clarity at Wickedly Branded. I have over 25 years of experience helping hundreds of purpose-driven entrepreneurs awaken their brand magic and boldly bring it to life so that they can magnify their impact on the world. Joining us today is the incredibly talented Robert Emery, an award-winning conductor. Pianist and entrepreneur who has performed with some of the world's most renowned orchestras and musicians. Robert has dedicated his career to making classical music more accessible, engaging, and I can even say it. Fun, which is amazing. He is the mastermind behind Classical Connections, the world's largest musical instrument resource. Ted's list and oral meditations. The first meditation music recorded with a full symphony orchestra. Robert, welcome to the show.

Robert: 1:25

Thanks, Beverly. Lovely to be on.

Beverly: 1:27

I'm excited to talk to you.'cause my husband and I are former band geeks. I played piano, played flute. I tried the oboe into my mother's chagrin. She was like, no, you need to take that back.

Robert: 1:38

Yeah. The oboe is a special instrument.

Beverly: 1:39

Especially for someone who never did a read instrument. It was a whole nother level. Yeah. And my father plays the guitar. My husband's mother plays the piano like we do music appreciation Saturdays at our house. So we will listen to everything from like Les Mis to the Gypsy Kings to drop kick Murphy's. We often take our kids to the symphony. The symphony is our favorite date, or musical theater, probably, our two favorite places. But we have taken our kids to like the eighties done by a orchestra or Star Wars done by the orchestra. We think it's so important for our kids to understand and appreciate orchestra music and all the different sounds and the way they blend and all of that. We are like, we love it. But we are clearly not as talented as you are. We can appreciate it when I was talented as you are. So talk about how you got into this space particularly, and you even started performing and. Touring at the age of 10.

Robert: 2:36

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I started playing the piano at the age of seven. And it was an accident. Here in the uk there was a television program on a Friday night called Top of the Pops, and I'm sure you have someone the same in the States. It was a chart topping program. And it would say back in the back in the eighties for me, or early, late eighties, early nineties, what was number one that week. And I would used to listen to whatever was number one. And if I liked it, I would then go to the family piano, which was my grandmother's that was in our house, and I would just go and start playing it. And as a 7-year-old kid, the nice thing about that, it's. You don't think of it as anything special or unusual or different or slightly freaky. You just go ahead and do it. And after about a year of doing this and just being able to play stuff, my mom went, okay, I think I need to get your lessons now. So I had lessons with a local teacher and after about a year, so I was eight by then, she said I can't do anything more for you. You need more specialist tuition. So then I went to a dedicated music school which I joined when I was nine. And then I went to the Royal College of Music when I was 17 in London and did four years there and graduated when I was 21. But it was always piano. That was my instrument. That's what I was put on this earth to do originally is play piano. And the nice thing about being a young kid and playing the piano is everybody thinks it's cute and awesome. And so you can go out on tour and a bit of money. So I started doing that when I was 10. And I had a bit of fun with it. And I guess when I was at the Royal College I came to the realization that piano was far too much hard work and too big a risks to try and make money out of it. And so I should expand my remit and I should go into the world of musical theater. You mentioned Les Mis I've worked with Claude Michelle Schomberg, who wrote Miz. Yes. You mentioned the Gypsy Kings. I worked with the Gypsy Kings on a show called Zoro here in London's West End. So I branched out to musical theater as well. Love doing that. And then you mentioned star Wars. One of my last gigs that I was doing was touring Europe and with the music of John Williams which of course includes Star Wars and ET

Beverly: 4:45

I total fan girl over John Williams.

Robert: 4:47

He's a living legend. He's really a genius. And that's, a real word for him. And and that was with the Ukraine Philharmonic. We managed to get the Ukraine Philharmonic out of Ukraine. It took them 47 hours to get out of Ukraine on a coach. And get into Europe. We met them in Belgium and then toured Belgium, Germany, France, Switzerland and performed with them all this amazing film, music conducting the orchestra. Music is wonderful. We all listen to it. It's all in our everyday lives. It's all really important to us whether we realize it or not. If you've ever tried to see Star Wars, there's a great clip on YouTube. If you Google star Wars without music, there's a fantastic scene that they put in there. Removed all the music and you just have Chewbacca and everybody else on there making silly noises. And it looks like some sort of amateur dramatic society gone wrong. It's really bad. And, but then you throw the amazing John Williams score underneath it and all of a sudden it's like this epic thing that's happening on his screen. And that's the power of music. So it doesn't matter if it's musical theater, if it's film music, if it's Beethoven, down the symphony it's all phenomenal and it all stems from the same place. And I guess that's what I realized is that I don't want to just play piano. I'd like to cover much more of a musical world and do different things. So that's what I set out to do.

Beverly: 6:10

Once I saw the eighties music from the symphony, I told my husband, I never wanna listen to Non Symphony eighties music again. It's so good. Like it's so rich and there's so many tones and sounds and

Robert: 6:22

Yeah. Having the eye of the tiger played right we with a 60 piece symphony orchestra and a rock band. It's fantastic. I love it.

Beverly: 6:29

We get really excited. So our kids, when we took them, it was a family friendly show, which is amazing. We are from Detroit, so it was through the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and they encouraged the kids to dance and stuff. And even my younger one, elder son, he is 19 now, but he loves eighties music and he played the trumpet, he was in musical theater. All the things. I think that those kinds of experiences can really impact their love of music in a way that you didn't even know was possible. My dad played the guitar growing up and he was in a cover band for The Beatles when he was in school. So he was Paul and he played all these Beatles tunes and everything. And he graduated in 1970. Yeah, 70. Super fun and I think of growing up, but he played the guitar all the time, and I just think of music as literally the soundtrack of my youth. Like I can associate music and different things associated with different times in my life. It's such a powerful sensory experience that there's actually memories embedded in the music that I hear now. And really being in musical theater from like 14 to 18. Even those scores they are part of my soundtrack to my youth, right? So when I hear oh, stuff from Brigadoon or I'll hear something from, we did a show called Runaways. We did Wizard of Oz, we did all these different ones that are so powerful. When I hear them it takes me back too. So music is so incredibly powerful and I can't imagine life without it. Like you said, like the scene of Chewbacca, even our lives, how boring they would be without music.

Robert: 8:07

Yeah. Completely agree.

Beverly: 8:09

Being in this industry, I'm sure there's some things that frustrate you,

Robert: 8:13

It's a nightmare.

Beverly: 8:14

If you could change one thing about how classical music is perceived or marketed or something that you've done, what would it be?

Robert: 8:21

Classical music. And when I say the word classical I mean it in a wider sense of anything that is. Symphonic or anything that is written essentially either a long time ago or is very niche symphonic now. So it's a wide term to use when you say classical music. And I think the problem I have is it is a complicated art form. There's no doubt about it. You listen to an Ed Sheeran song for two and a half minutes and then you put on a Beethoven Symphony for 40 minutes. Of course, the Beethoven Symphony is gonna be more challenging to listen to. Yeah. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's less rewarding. It just means you have to put in a bit of extra patience and a bit of extra work. But also that's a bit like saying if you're gonna drive a car, you should only drive a Formula One car or a nascar. Because you know you need to drive 150 miles an hour. No, you don't. You could easily drive a car 20 miles an hour. And so with classical music, you don't have to go straight into a Beethoven Symphony. You could just go to a symphonic concert of John Williams, like we've talked about or eighties to start you off. There's some really wonderful, accessible music which is in verte classical music. We all know Beethoven's fifth it's probably the most famous notes ever written. If that's at your local symphony, go and see it. You'll be blown away by what you hear. Just go with an open mind and my biggest bug bear about classical music as a genre. It has this this image of being old, stuffy, complicated, scary, inaccessible. And do you know what? It's not the audience's fault. They think that it's our fault. And when I say our, I mean my fault and all my fellow musicians and all the people who are working in this industry. Because when you are marketing something, you are giving an impression to everybody else what that product is? In my field, the product is classical music and everybody's giving the impression it's difficult and scary and boring. And I try and I. Desperately fight against that. And so I created this series called Classical Connections. They're short YouTubes, three to five minutes long each. I play a bit of music. I talk about a bit of an interesting story to do with the composer who made the music. Most of the music is famous. And then I do a bit of dressing up as a composer as well. So I try and make it fun, lighthearted. And it's the idea that you can dip your toe into this, and if you like it, then you can go and investigate a little bit more. And so I try my best to change an angle on classical music, but I alone, I'm not gonna achieve that. We all need to do that. And so one of my things is being on podcasts like this, telling the world how classical music can be and is amazing. And everybody who's listening to this should just be brave. Go to a concert. If you don't like it, you can always leave halfway in the interval. It's 45 minutes of your life, but I guarantee you won't regret it.

Beverly: 11:18

Agreed. We just went to a performance, it was called the Knights, and it was Andrew Lloyd Weber sir Elton John. And, who was the other one? Oh, Paul McCartney. Sir. Paul McCartney. And it was all done Orchestra, symphony arrangements. And again, like surprising the classical music, they still played some of that during the performance. They played, I think one or two classical pieces that were older, and then they played the knights. And so this idea of it can be both. It doesn't have to be one or the other. It doesn't have to be old or even new. And I guess probably for you and I was born in 75 but for us, even like Sir Paul McCartney is probably a little old. Yeah, he's no vintage, right? He's not classical, he is vintage. But I think about that even the crossover from those three men who created music, how beautiful and how they wove that into a performance and how wonderful it was. So I agree with you. Just go look at your symphonies, what they have coming, and I'll bet you they'll have something modern. They'll have something classical, they'll have something. There's a one that's coming up now that's just percussion. It's more about percussion. And my son, he's nine and wants to play the drums. That's like his thing. We're probably gonna go to that particular thing. There's something for everyone essentially is what I think is great about it. So you'll find one show I'm sure that you'll be interested in. My husband loves Metallica and they did a whole orchestral Metallica performance. Cool. And loved it. Were you part of that? Don't tell me you were part of that.

Robert: 12:50

No, I wasn't actually, sadly not, but I think that's an excellent idea. I love that idea. I worked with Meatloaf bad Outta Hell, Jim Steinman. We did a an orchestral thing of him and we did a piece of musical theater as well, which in fact, we bought to Broadway bad Outta Hell on Broadway. So yeah, they're all amazing people to work with.

Beverly: 13:07

He's brilliant. Just brilliant musicians. You can take anything and you can add this element, extra element of a full symphony to it. That's it's beautiful. I wanna hear your story about how you affect people, but I went to a corporate function on team building that was ran by a conductor of a symphony, and he had the band the band member sit all throughout the place the venue separate from each other and not on stage. So sat in the audience and all of us were. To choose to sit next to one of them. And I sat next to a cellist and he asked us to do several things during the presentation. So the first thing he did is he said, okay, I want you guys to play the music that you learned or whatever.'cause they had practiced a couple times. That's it. He made a call and they all came and they practiced a couple times before this particular thing. And they did. And they were kinda like, you could tell, like they were trying to find their collectiveness together as this new group. And then he proceeded to talk about how these were the kids that were stuck in their rooms practicing hours and hours while you were outside playing, and that they were essentially athletes. And he said, watch their body as they play. And he made us like, pick apart, like he picked apart the entire performance essentially, and made us appreciate all that goes into being a musician, but also how you have to work together and how you have to follow people and how one small change can make it a funeral march versus a parade of cheer. And like all these different things and how it can be affected and essentially as a corporate person. If you're not working together or you don't have the same goal, or you don't have the same thing, you're not gonna get the result you want, is essentially what he was coming to at the end of it. But it was one of the most profound ways to talk about teams and to talk about how a piece is created and how important a leader is versus even a leader of a section like the violin section. And how important it's that, that we knew that the person who's playing the instrument does the work too, practices and all the things. And it was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. And again, a totally different perspective of how a symphony works together and how magical that whole process is from the athleticism to the dedication to the team that works together to create this beautiful thing at the end of the day. And what a gift you give to the audience. It was beautiful. So tell me a story of how a client or working with a specific group has really helped them, and what's the transformation been like for them? What did it look like?

Robert: 16:52

Music as we all know, has strange and unusual magical powers, and sometimes you can never quite predict what's going to happen. And I think this is a great lesson in life actually, I think we all are so busy in this modern age and we are also focus on our screens and what we do. We tend to have this tunnel and we see what we see and we blinker out everything else around us, which can be a really useful skill to focus of course. But I think we were at a danger point of missing out a lot of other opportunities that could come to us if we don't open wide our eyes a little bit more. And I'll give you an example. It's not a group of people, it's just one individual. I was at a concert on New Year's Eve in London at the Barkin I was conducting. And in the front row I saw this, I don't know, 12 14-year-old kid who was having the time of his life, he was conducting in his own little way. In the seat. And at the very end of the concert, it was the last concert of the year. I grabbed the microphone, I went down into the audience, everybody looked a bit confused, and I went and stood next to this young chap, this 12-year-old kid. And I said would you like to come on stage and stand with me on the podium? Awesome for the oncall. And I can see you there mimicking my movements and pretending to conduct. Would you like to come on stage? And and you can have a bit of fun on the podium. And the audience, four and a half thousand people in the audience went crazy. Took him up on stage onto the podium. And we did actually it was a bit of funny, it was the John Williams theme from Superman. It was the on call. So we played that. He was there conducting the way. I thought nothing more of it. I thought it was a nice thing to do. It was a nice thing to finish off the evening and the year, in fact the audience loved it. There are tricks to getting an audience on your side, just like when you're in a business meeting. There are tricks to negotiating and getting people to do what you need them to do. It's the same with performing games. It's exactly the same. People like Taylor Swift up there in a stadium. She knows exactly how to get the audience on her side. It's all a skill. I thought nothing more of this until I had an email the next morning from the parents saying thank you so much for inviting. This young boy, I'm not gonna mention his name on stage he has severe autism. And this is the first ever concert he's been to. And he rarely talks. He rarely makes any noise whatsoever, and he's normally very insular and he doesn't smile. Since that concert, he hasn't stopped talking. He hasn't stopped smiling, and he's decided he wants to learn the piano, and we getting him a piano next week and it genuinely has changed his life. Now, I didn't plan that and I'm certainly not taking credit for it because it was just happenstance that I saw him there. I thought it might be a nice thing for him to do, but it shows you not only the power of music, because obviously that's my field, but on a wider sense, you just don't know in life. When you walk into that meeting and you've got one plan and one goal, you just don't know where that road is going to take you. So I think it's always a clever idea just to always have 20% of your mind just open to different ideas, open to different thoughts and opinions. And just to be a bit malleable and flexible because you just never know what's gonna happen.

Beverly: 20:24

It is a beautiful story. It gave me chills. It's beautiful. The power of music is just incredible for those kinds of situations. One of my dear friends, his daughter has a brain development disorder and through music. She has learned to speak in syllables, like beats almost. Oh, really? And it's because of music that she's been able to find a way to communicate with her family. And it was all like you said, like by happenstance. Like they were listening to some things and Benji plays the guitar and some other things. And his episode is actually on the podcast, if you're listening. I think he's probably podcast number two or three. But his story is really powerful about how he and his daughter found a way to communicate through the power of music. And I think when you really look at those kinds of base things like how music can really affect you, it's pretty powerful. My grandfather, he unfortunately had a heart attack and had to be resuscitated when he was 68 years old and he was considered brain dead. And my grandmother was playing music. He loved Patsy Klein and Johnny Cash and all from those eras and. His foot tapped and he was brain dead, but the body still remembered. It's so powerful. I love that story so much. It gave me chills that you, that's crazy. This young man has now been forever influenced and yeah. Changed from that experience.

Robert: 21:44

Your podcast, your tagline is your marketing and obviously marketing is something that surround us in the world. All the time. Everywhere we look there is marketing in some way. And I think one of the most powerful techniques I ever learned about marketing is simply called the power of reciprocation. And it's as simple as you, if you want something from somebody, give them something beforehand. And they will feel obliged to give something back to you. Yeah. Now I use it on stage, want that audience to, to go away going, wow, that was just the best concert I ever went to. I gotta go and see this Robert Emery guy again. He was amazing. That's of course my musical ego going, that's what I need to happen. And I knew the trick of if I invited the kid onto stage with me, I knew the audience would love it. They would fall for it. I didn't know the result of it. Yeah. But of course that was the power of reciprocation. That was me saying to the audience I'm gonna do this for you and in return, I hope that you are gonna go home and Google me and you are gonna join my mailing list. Go to robert emery.com. And then you'll come to other concept that I do is that power of reciprocation. I'm on stage, I'm marketing myself. I'm marketing the symphony. I'm marketing classical music. It's what I do day in, day out. It's why I'm here. And it's all about the power of reciprocation. So I think it's just the most useful thing to know. And the second thing that, the second tip that I can give, which is just so common sense, it's crazy and so many people don't know it. It's that you mimic the person that you are working with or that you're negotiating with, or that you're talking to. And you mimic them. It makes them feel comfortable. So if they're talking loud and they and excited and and animated, then you talk like that. If they're very chilled and laid back and quiet and slow, then you'd be like that too. You help them, you get yourself onto their wavelength. And it's such a obvious simple persona. Element to use, and it's amazing that most people don't know about this. And that goes for your marketing. You've got your own audience. Maybe it's, I dunno, 18 to 20 year olds. They're probably gonna be more energetic than your 60 to 70 year olds, so make sure that you are reflecting that. But if your audience is 60 to 70 year olds make sure you're reflecting that too. None of it is rocket science. None of it is complicated. It's just about trying to remember to use all these techniques. I do that on stage every day. Other people do it in a meeting. It's the same thing.

Beverly: 24:09

It's a pretty grand meeting that you have when you are in front of an orchestra.

Robert: 24:12

That is true. I'm lucky.

Beverly: 24:14

Yeah. I think the orchestra and the performance side of it is such a give and take and experience with an audience. Like you need the audience to be with you. And there's something about that for sure. And in marketing, you need your audience with you, otherwise your message is gonna land flat. Totally. Yeah. The concept of mirroring is so powerful when you talk about. Understanding where your audience is from especially in person when you meet them? When I was first starting out in sales and marketing a long time ago when I worked for Chrysler Advertising I was taught that philosophy and I did not drink coffee, but I always accepted coffee if they drank coffee.

Robert: 24:48

Yes.

Beverly: 24:49

And I would just like, not even sip, but just put it to my mouth.

Robert: 24:52

Yeah.

Beverly: 24:52

Because it was an immediate way for them to say, oh, she's like me.

Robert: 24:55

Yeah, exactly.

Beverly: 24:56

So there's a lot of that you can do that just make people feel more comfortable with you. Yeah. A lot of it, I just worry. I never wanna be inauthentic, so I was like I moved a little bit away from some of that, but I certainly, when someone leans forward, you lean forward. When someone leans back, you can lean back. There's a lot of that can happen in communication that's really powerful. I would agree with you completely on that. So as an entrepreneur. Which you have such a unique side of things in the music industry, I feel is like probably a really challenging industry.

Robert: 25:23

Yeah.

Beverly: 25:24

What has been the biggest challenge of your career and how have you overcome it?

Robert: 25:28

Had two, two or three real big sort of themes of challenging.

Beverly: 25:32

Hey there, you've just finished part one of the Sparking Night, your marketing episode. How are you feeling? Excited, inspired, but we're just getting started. Next Tuesday we're dropping part two, and you won't wanna miss it. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, so you'll be the first to know when it goes live. Until then, take a breather, let those ideas simmer, and we'll see you next week.