Empowering your brand with music and sound

Scroll down

Is the music more powerful to a brand than we have ever realised?

Sound and music have the power to evoke an emotion, whether hearing the song you played for the first dance that makes you smile and reminisce or a sad song from a challenging time in our lives . Music can be either contextually or personally relevant and gets lodged as an emotional memory.

However the sounds you hear that you don’t pay attention too are just as important. In a recent study during a point of sale campaign selling German and French wine, on day 1 the team played French music quietly in the background, the French wine outsold the German wine and when asked, the consumer had not even realised there was French music playing – when the study was repeated playing German music, the same happened! The subconscious took over and promoted buyer behaviour without the consumer even realising.

Sound is becoming more emotive and brands are now taking the bull by the horns and investing in this area of marketing. Every year we eagerly await the release of the John Lewis Christmas advert where the emotive story that is always present sits alongside a cleverly chosen piece of music that evokes tears, laughter and a sense of family and community no matter how you choose to interpret. This is proof that we should never underestimate the power of sound to bring us along on a journey. You don’t need to have had a piano for Christmas as a child to feel and sense the joy of the spirit behind a longed for gift. This is where John Lewis excel!

Hearing is a passive process and listening is an active process you filter and decide what’s important as you can never do both at the same time – the power of the spoken word, almost like a poem behind and cleverly selected piece of music allows you to hear what you need to from the prose and take your message from it, which is different for everyone.

During this challenging time, we are relying on comforts like we never have before, and tech is powering many of these – seeing you family members over a Zoom call or listening to a piece of music that brings you back to a happier time.

Next time you hear/listen to an advert think about how impactful it would be without the sounds associated to it – would you remember it without music? I am inclined to think it would just get lost in all of the other noise around us, but what do you think?