When we think of Newcastle, music is often what comes to mind. The home of Silverchair and The Screaming Jets might have a few new stars in the works after their leading customer-owned bank, Newcastle Permanent, unveiled a unique new scheme to help local young musicians.
Thanks to a linkup between Newcastle Permanent and a local charity, Musicians Making a Difference (MMAD), those on-hold with the bank’s call centre will now be played a song written by local youth and performed by Australia’s Got Talent winner Fletcher Pilon.
“It’s a challenging time, and we’ve been looking at how we can help through what we do day to day,” said Newcastle Permanent chief customer and product officer James Cudmore.
“We’re a customer-owned bank, and are very community minded. We’ve got a big charitable foundation that does a lot of great work.”
“We noticed that there had been a movement around the country in supporting the Australian music industry, particularly local artists that are struggling given the lack of audiences at the moment. We saw an opportunity to connect the dots.”
“Our call centre is all local, and we found an opportunity to collaborate with one of our charitable foundation’s local grant recipients and offer them the chance to change our on-hold music, across our whole telephony network, to be local artists.”
“That partner is called Musicians Making A Difference – they help young people be the best versions of themselves, and particularly young people who may be facing challenges with their mental health or home situation. Through music, they help young people to gain confidence and give them opportunities.”
“They will be on our on-hold music for customers: it’s a song called For the First Time, produced by a group of young artists and performed by Fletcher Pilon, who won 2016 Australia’s Got Talent.”
“It’s a great story and, while we don’t love our customers being on-hold, and they shouldn’t be on-hold for long, at least now they’ll be able to listen to some great local music!”
“Newcastle Permanent will be covering the licencing fees, so any revenues that come off the back of the song being heard will be going straight back into MMAD and their charitable foundation.”
