Kaleidovision - Digital Ideas For Retail Spaces

Kaleidovision's music team has provided music consultation and direction for the multi award-winning Varsity brand for a number of years.

Strong working relationships between the Barracuda Group and Kaleidovision's music team, coupled with a genuine knowledge of the student market drives Varsity's brand to stand-out on the high street, and significantly adds to the appeal of the venues.

The brand management team realises how important music is to students, and therefore to Varsity's offer. They require Kaleidovision to create an outstanding music experience in the venues, so that Varsity is in fact famous with students for its music.

To ensure they can deliver this for Varsity, Kaleidovision's music team need to be completely up to date with the shifts and turns of contemporary student culture and music taste, which can have a major impact on the music requirements for Varsity.

For example, since 2005 there has been a major change in the way students consume music - a whole new student generation has grown up with i-tunes. The internet today enables students to access a huge range of music - making its consumption extremely easy. Students are therefore much more knowledgeable about, and accepting of a significantly wider range of music than they were five or six years ago.

This wider and deeper knowledge of music provides opportunities, as well as challenges, to a brand like Varsity. Whereas previously its music profiling was largely directed by the mainstream charts and one or two other Alternative music genres, today, although the charts still do play a part in students' repertoire, it is very much the music that surrounds that popular sound that provides the venue's ‘signature' music experience. The opportunity is in the ability to play interesting tracks from an eclectic range of musical sub-genres.

A good example of the sudden rise of one of these sub-genres was the progressive student demand for specific vintage sounds from acts including Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and early Velvet Underground releases. This was noted through the course of 2008, and itself was fuelled by a thriving urban band culture. Once the trend was discernible, Kaleidovision started profiling certain vintage tracks in selected Varsity venues, in order to judge the reaction. Once the initial feedback was very positive, Kaleidovision agreed with Varsity to network this new sound across the whole estate. For Varsity, the ability to transfer new music trends from bigger cities to Varsity bars in smaller working towns is very important, as it means that Varsity bars in small towns are often the first bars in their area to play a new sound. This becomes a real selling point for the local town bars - their customers can hear big city sounds locally.

Conversely, skillful profiling is required to ensure these more diverse playlists don't lead to the brand having a confused audio identity.

As a multi-award winning brand, Varsity's aim is to become an integral part of the student lifestyle. It sets out to be a brand that students really feel they can relate to and partly ‘own'; the brand management team go a long way to ensure the brand reflects their lifestyle and attitudes. Kaleidovision plays a pivotal role in allowing Varsity to talk to students through music.

Alongside the music, plasma screens run Varsity's marketing channel, which is produced by Kaleidovision's studio.