Japanese people are much more sophisticated than us. You would not want to experience the embarrassment of the person next door hearing what you are up to, right? That is why the Japanese toilet has a built-in sound effect of water flushing. Smart, huh?
Sorry for the silence. We did some recordings of fun and interesting sound and music experiences this week in Tokyo. First out our own little pachinko experience. So is this the market place of tomorrow? How do you wake them up? More movies coming up this week.
When in Tokyo I recommend a visit to a ‘Pachinko hall’. It’s a type of game hall with vending machines and a games called ‘Pachinko’. The sound wave when entering is shocking - your senses are literally bombarded by flashing lights, spinning wheels and hysteric techno music. What fascinates me is that the people don’t pay any attention to all the noise and flashing lights anymore but just sit quietly playing their game. They have become numb and have learnt how to screen out all the messages and focus on their interest.
The Pachinko halls work as a metaphor for today’s market place. More and more brands compete for our attention but we pay less attention to them. Statistics show that more than 20 000 new brands are launched every year but only a few survive the two first years. Research tells us that we are confronted with more than 2500 advertising messages on a daily basis, but only remember around 8% of them. An ANC Nielsen study shows that we only remember in an average of two of the advertisements we’ve seen in a day.
In a reality that increasingly resembles Tokyo, the need to differentiate your brand and take a unique and exclusive position in the mind of your audience is more important then ever. Sound and music here play a great role especially as a tool to create consistency in how the brand sounds on the different platforms of contact with the customer. A sonic identity can be created (an audio version of the graphic identity) that defines how the brand sounds and this is then activated as a sound logotype, in-store music program, presentations and hold music. In this way you can hold the customers’ attention also when they are not looking your way and create a more unique brand experience and exclusivity.
There is of course a reason why Coca-cola has worked with sonic branding for more than 20 years, and everyone recognises McDonalds ‘Da da da da dah, I’m loving it‘. Research from Dr Adrian North of Leicester University shows that it’s working; brands with music in their brand identity are 96% more likely to be recalled then those without (or non-fitting music).
Be sure to check out this year’s European advertising festival Eurobest in Amsterdam 25-27 November. Many interesting speakers, seminars and people. Heartbeats International will host an exclusive workshop on the 25th, outlining the principles of music branding and the future to come. See you there?
More details about the workshop:
In this year’s best global brands ranking by Interbrand, brand experience is profiled as one of the key factors for success. The concept of an experience economy was coined ten years ago by authors Pine and Gilmore when they published the book ‘The Experience Economy’. The authors argued that we are now facing a new important step in the processing of economic value, where companies sell memorable experiences rather than just products and services.
In today’s digital age people look for authentic experiences that they can engage with emotionally. To be successful a brand you need to offer a multi-sensory experience that touches all five senses. In order to command a higher price, build strong loyalty and ultimately create value for the customer, companies need to understand that there is more to a brand than what meets the eye. It’s not what we see, but what we hear, feel, smell and taste that is becoming more important.
According to the Sounds Like Branding survey, hearing is ranked as the second most important sense when building a strong brand today. An experience cannot exist without music. Just think of a movie, event or nightclub without music. To be successful today companies need to define how their brand sounds and what music means to their customers. Based on this understanding they can create experiences that go way beyond muzak in-store and background music in TV-commercials. They can create meaningful and memorable experiences (such as these) that are needed in order to stay on top of the competition today.
People are sick of advertising. A recent conducted survey by the SIFO Institute showed that 75% of people actively avoid advertising, whether it’s on TV, Internet or radio. New technology has set the customer in charge of the remote control.
In order to reach out to customers today you have to deserve their attention. To deserve their attention you need to engage them. If you engage them they will pass on your message, creating word-of-mouth which has always been marketing’s strongest tool (ranked as having seven times
as much impact as traditional advertising).
People love music. A survey from Millward Brown showed that music is the media that people would least like to live without (before Internet and TV). Another survey conducted by EMR (Entertainment Media Research) showed also that music is the main reason why people spend so much time on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace. Music engages people in dialogue and conversation, whether it’s online or in ‘real life’.
The reason why a market leader such as Coca-Cola puts music at the heart of its marketing mix is that they understand that music engages people, that marketing today is conversation, and that when music is free it is one of the most important social media to start-up and nourish conversations around the brand and its products. In this way they can create not only consumers but friends, and in the long run, true fans of the brand.
A purchase decision takes around 2.5 seconds and is anything but rational. Many of the most important decisions we make in our life are based on feelings. A feeling is subjective and often irrational and impulsive. We experience this when we fall in love as well as when we shop.
We consume, love and relate to products both with our hearts and our minds. But in today’s market where supply has long surpassed demand and products are more and more similar, the emotional aspect is the differentiating factor. Emotions, unlike products, cannot be copied or produced cheaply in China.
Music is distilled emotion. People listen to music to set themselves in certain types of moods. It is a companion through life and is ranked as the media they would least like to live without (that is before Internet and mobile phones). Music is the most powerful way of building a more emotional bond with the brand. It circumvents the rational mind and speaks directly to our feelings. Brands that understand the implications of music will be the market leaders of tomorrow.
Many of us who studied marketing are familiar with McCarthys marketing mix. How his four Ps and the right ingredients of product, price, placement and promotion help to position a brand on the market. Fifty years later and still many marketing departments follow a model that was meant for a world before branding, new technology and hyper competition changed everything. Don’t get me wrong, the four Ps still work great for products but in today’s world where a company selling experiences, association and lifestyles more and more, this model is long since outdated.
Branding today is about positioning a company in the mind of the target group. Companies today focus on building a more emotional and exclusive brand that offers an experience that engages their audience. This is what I named the four Es in brand communication. Just as in McCarthy’s model, each brand needs its own unique recipe. How these ingredients are to be mixed depends on what type of brand it is and in which segment it’s active. For a brand with retail stores the experience is probably more important than for an Internet brand where perhaps engagement is in focus.
In the following four posts I will present how the four Es model works in music branding. How the right music mix helps a brand to be more emotional, engaging, experience based and exclusive. I will start next week with the first post on emotions.