HOW DOES MUSIC MEET BRANDING IN ADVERTISING?
Branding and advertising at the crossroads of psychology and art
Branding and advertising are not part of the scientific area(arena), yet they are an ensemble of techniques and skills that indicate a good knowledge of human psychology in the field of consumption. Advertisers know for instance that the human mind is not totally rational and that reason is not always what the human mind is favoring(mind favors), in a purchasing process. Actually, emotion plays a great role in any buying process.
Students in marketing, generally raised, like everyone, with a traditional view of the mind coming from Plato, are not always conscious of the mechanisms that are really in action, in such situations. Researchers in neuroscience found that people can feel emotions a certain time before deciding on and taking an action. And it is only well after they took the action that they can explain why they acted like they did. What does it mean? Just that humans do not really like to think in a rational and independent way. Most of the time, they take emotional, unconscious and automatic decisions.
Musical cues to reinforce the advertising
Besides these generalities, psychological theories of advertising are various. They include systems like the information processing model, the Yale reinforcement approach or the dual process model. The last system put the information given in advertising in two categories: on one hand, messages and arguments; on the other hand, heuristic cues. The potential customer is evaluating the line of argument. Cues, that can be anything from colors to music and sound and are not integral parts of the message, are also evaluated. When the elements of the two categories are evaluated in a positive way, the prospect will be inclined to give a chance to a product.
In advertising, the choice of a specific piece of music is not made to create the message. It is an element that intends to influence feelings, to create associations and to evoke emotions. It is said to be part of the priming paradigm, a psychological concept explaining that implicit associations made by the human memory between different stimuli can lead to quicker identification. What does it mean, musically speaking? That a piece of music bearing the emotional core values of a brand will invite listeners that are part of the target audience to feel what the advertisers want them to feel when in contact with the message explaining what a product can do for them.
Marketeers talk about a sonic signature, that takes into account the properties of a piece of music, the positive values of the brand and the target audience. That is why a high number of brands want to align the music they select with the culture of their company. Is the product family oriented, mainstream, serious, niche, sophisticated? According to the answer, the choice of the music will be different.