There are maybe a dozen brands in the world that use music like they actually mean it. Palace is one. Aimé Leon Dore is another. Guinness - for sure. Burberry had its moment back in the Christopher Bailey days.
What do they have in common? None of them started with a brief that said "music." They started with a culture, and the music was already there when they arrived. That's the distinction that almost never shows up in a deck, and almost always shows up in the finished work.
The pattern is pretty consistent. The brands that get music right tend to have people inside who genuinely care about it - not people who "oversee creative," but people who are actually listening. Who know why a specific track exists. Who understand the difference between a reference and a recommendation. Who have spent time thinking not only about the look of a logo or the look of a package, but the sound of the brand holistically.
We've seen it happen on campaigns with serious money behind them - beautiful photography, a great director, and a track that is beige af and could have been generated by an algorithm with access to the right references. And then there are campaigns with a third of the budget that make you want to know the artist's name before the film is even over.
The difference isn't budget. It's whether someone in the room actually cared about the music. That's probably the most useful place to start before writing a brief.
Do we care? I hope so.