 Never a dull moment in marketing… Just when it seems that marketers have recognized that consumer purchases needed to become more weighted towards emotional attributes over functional benefits, it is becoming increasingly apparent that a changing social climate is now demanding brands be assessed by their integrity and genuine commitment to communicating honestly about who they are, what they do, and what they represent.
“There is a shift creating a significant change among stakeholders (customers, employees, shareholders, and suppliers) who are looking to brands to help define their role within society and for a purchase to count for something more than just an acquisition.“ .
Whilst music is a powerful medium that can help bring the emotional qualities of products and services to life, more significantly, it can distil a complex social message to its essence. It also has the innate ability to connect at a profound and human level with an honesty that cannot be contrived. Responsible brands are beginning to recognize that there is a difference between just using music in their communications and understanding how music is resonating with consumers, which is demanding a new level of music literacy.
Music is more personal than you thought…
“From the pulse and rhythm found in our heartbeat, breathing and movement, to the melody that is created in our laughing, crying, screaming or singing, music is such an intrinsic part of who we are. The whole range of our emotions can be held and expressed within the rhythms and harmonies of our personal different musical styles and idioms. These intimate connections with music can remain despite disability or illness, and are not dependent on a musical training or background.” (Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy website)
Nordoff Robbins is a charitable organization supported by the Music Industry and works with people who are autistic, have senile dementia, or are in coma; they, in fact, work with any and all extreme conditions of mental and subsequent social isolation, where all other forms of communication have failed. The Nordoff Robbins therapists understand that music has the capability to reach into an individual at a profound level, which is different and unique for each one of their patients.
And whilst there are certain elements of music that are primal and connect with people regardless of culture and geography, the very gifted therapists at Nordoff Robbins know at an experiential level, that every human being has their own musicality, a DNA that means that each and everyone of us respond in very different ways to the music we hear.
What Music?
The expression “music soundtrack of my life” is a phrase that is often used to describe the music that forms the punctuation marks or signposts in a person’s life. We all intuitively understand the deeper context of this expression, but do we actually understand how or why this happens and what causes the similarities and differences? The challenge with music is that it is ubiquitous. We are literally bombarded with external melodies, rhythms, and lyrics all-day and everyday. So why are some songs more important to us than others; why can we remember every lyric to a particular artist and not others; cry to some songs without even knowing consciously that we are listening, or simply want to just get up and dance as the opening notes reveal themselves?
Are there any clues in genre—specific music where the rhythms, instrumentation, etc. all share similarities? On the surface it would appear that social groups, peer pressure, and networks are the primary influencers. Recent findings by Drs. Rentfrow and Gosling (Music Preferences and Social Perceptions 2005) found that “music provides unique information about personality unavailable through other clues.” The role of individuals within a community and how the dynamic of how they affect/effect change may hold other indications.
If music evokes emotion, understanding emotion and the ways that each and every one of us experiences the “same” emotion is almost as complex as the ranges of emotion that make up the individual and their personality. We may begin to find some of the answers to the above questions if we start to break it down in the following way:
Music and Physiology
Whilst on the surface it would appear that the human body is built on a similar template, just by looking around tells us that there are infinite variations of this physical formula. For a start, we all look different. The physiology of a human being is a complex interactive and interwoven balance of internal chemical actions. Similarly under the surface we all have the same basic sequence of chemical reactions for breathing, digestion, and so on. Quite simply, given the identical chemicals in a particular environment, we all respond the same with the same chemical reaction but with subtle levels of difference. Some people eat and get heartburn when they eat certain foods whilst others seem to have cast iron stomachs; some metabolise food very quickly; others almost just have to look at food to put on weight.
These sensitive and individual chemical reactions equally operate in the process that also affects mood. The fine balance between what makes us feel good and what makes us want to sleep or run and hide is different for each and every one of us.
What it boils down to is that we are all a fine cocktail of thousands of these chemicals, stimulated physically or by more subtle stimuli like touch or a look or a sound. We are the walking result of various combinations that affect who we are and how we behave. But how and can does music play a role in eliciting those chemical changes that affect mood and behaviour? And what is it about the music itself that actually changes the mood?
Following the logic: -
- The world is made up of very different personalities because of the way that each individual balances and regulates his/her chemical reactions.
- Chemical reactions that affect mood can be triggered by a music stimulus,
- If we can change/moderate mood with music maybe some people need more and some less of the same music—a bit like how much seasoning we each need to get the full flavor of food.
There are four basic stages when we listen to music…
- As the music plays, we hear something and on a basic level recognize that there is a sound.
- If we are still within the vicinity of that sound, we move from hearing to listening. Within a few seconds the brain starts to look for values and events that we associate with similar experiences of those sounds—markers that we know and have experienced before.
- It is in that moment, when we make a connection to those markers that we start to respond—we exhibit an emotional response.
- When the triggers are familiar the emotional response is intensified and if that is powerful enough we will start to experience a physicality to the sounds; hairs stand up on the back of our neck, we get up, we tap our feet, we dance.
The whole process takes nanoseconds. Great music producers understand this and give us the distinctive markers to hang on to so that when we hear that track again, we respond like Pavlov’s dogs to a particular hook, rift, or mnemonic. It would appear that the more we hear the marker, the faster the response time. Equally, if we associate that track with a negative marker which could be something completely unrelated to the music but that happened simultaneously with music or similar music in another moment, then that music will have a whole lot more hurdles to overcome (to create a positive impression) when we hear it in the future.
If building brand loyalty is about positively reminding consumers of the values of their products, then using music that has positive markers becomes more critical. When a brand consistently uses music that truly resonates and is congruent with all other positive aspects and values of their branding and also makes their customers feel good, they have a head start in beginning to build real value from their music investments. Of course not all music needs to be “anthemic and uplifting” but appreciating and understanding how the impactful, well-executed use of even sad music could have on consumers will enable brands to influence consumers more gainfully.
It is extraordinary that without any formal music training most people “understand” how certain instruments evoke certain emotions. Somehow over the years we just “know” that by adding strings the arranger can bring romance to the piece; change the key from major to minor and even the most musically illiterate sense the sadness. Listen to a great BB King guitar rift and even if we have no idea of the complexity of the virtuoso, the music seems to reach into our very souls and pluck at our feelings.
How does this happen?
But the real conundrum is why some of us intellectually recognize the intended mood of music but don’t make that emotional bridge to actually feel that emotion? In other words we can hear and understand the intention of the music but it has absolutely no effect on us as individuals. It simply doesn’t touch the triggers that stimulate and moderate our particular mood and behavior.
Who is currently using this music and emotion approach?
Recently London Transport started to play classical music at their stations at night where they were experiencing social disorder. The idea was to calm those who were hanging around and affecting the atmosphere at the stations. Not all “classical” music soothes the soul and so repertoire selection played an important part. Of course there is an argument that says the actual target market itself was socially conditioned to dislike this type of music so much that they simply upped and left. But this in itself would of course raise other issues. If people feel forced to do something that they don’t want to do, they could become even more hostile. But this was not the case; for those who stayed, the stations just became a nicer place to be.
Similarly the supermarkets have found that certain genres of music at different times of the day will affect the speed at which people navigate the shop floor—literally chosen to reflect the pace that they want us to move around the supermarket.
Interestingly, the use of music by many brands at other customer touch points like call holding is inconsistent. Whilst Brands intuitively understand that callers to their companies need to be managed, the Music Societies that licence this facility recognize that many companies just use almost any “royalty free” music to still fill the dead on hold space.
Research by Dr. Adrian North (‘Music and On Hold Waiting Time’ University of Leicester1999) found that not only was there is a difference in the mood of the caller when certain music was being played, but callers who were listening to that music stayed on hold 20% longer than callers who were just exposed to simple verbal messages. He also was able to ascertain that callers will also wait even longer if they hear music that “fits” their expectation of the company’s style image and corporate message.
Similarly, Image Generators conducted a USA Business Telephone Survey earlier this year with 30,000 people regarding how music changes the perception of time. They discovered that when callers were presented with silence on hold, 52% got fed up and hung up with over 48% estimating that they had held on over 1 minute. When met with just music, the hang-up rate was only 13% with 56% estimating the time on the line as less than a minute. Further, 85% agreed that they actually liked to hear interesting messages with the music background and 10% acknowledged that they had actually bought as a result of hearing about additional services and products.
The Significance to Brands
Current market research techniques mainly examine how values affect taste and what factors are affected by that taste, which is of course of infinite fascination to marketers who want us to buy their product. Brands are reputed to be spending US$ 10billion a year on market research at a global level and music is still acknowledged as being at least 50% of the stimulus in a commercial film (John Hegarty Creative Director of BBH). Yet modern market research about music is still generally limited to how likes and dislikes, memorability, and brand recall are linked to the sophisticated segmentation of target markets.
Yet we continue to analyze areas of choice, the areas where we feel we have the most control. But what if we don’t actually have control? What if music is something where we only pretend that we have control, but in actuality our innate emotional triggers simply can’t lie? What questions do we ask then?
When a consumer remembers a brand because they hate the track or what has been done with it—is measuring the dissonance as well as the resonance of the music with the consumer’s response to the product relevant?
Music, Branding, and the Future
With the ongoing fragmentation of the market, brands have the opportunity to talk to smaller and more relevant audiences which may mean that we have to start to look at our consumers from the bottom up, i.e. as an individual behaving within the dynamic of a group rather than top down where we look at the group as a whole.
New research (not yet published) by Dr. Rentfrow indicates that there are music age watersheds in an individual’s life; times when we are finally honest with our internal musicality. Times when we rise above peer pressure and social conditioning and we turn to the music that we really like, because it actually resonates with our own physiology. Is this the level of perception and understanding that we as marketers need to strive for? Maybe it is here where we will begin to understand the triggers that will connect to real customer buy-in and loyalty.
The science of this area of research is young but the potential is huge. Understanding the way consumers authentically and genuinely interact with music, and applying that knowledge in our communication platforms, may be the way forward to music playing a real and more useful role in marketing, better ROIs, and ultimately happier FDs. Now that’s something to get emotional about.
(Source: Interbrand)
|
