Is your advertising striking the right chord with consumers?

Music is a powerful tool in advertising with its history going back to the era of the travelling salesman. Its role as a vehicle for capturing attention in a busy media landscape, establishing brand associations and invoking meaning about the product. The ability of music to promote memorability and evoke emotions has long been recognised by the advertising industry.

The power of music to influence choice and purchase behaviour has also been demonstrated many times. In one experiment, supermarket shoppers were played “recognisably” French or German music. When the French music was played, French wine outsold German by five to one. When the German music was heard, German wines achieved double the sales of their French rivals. David Ogilvy himself summed it up best when discussing the power of music to persuade – “if you have nothing to say, sing it.”

While music is used extensively in advertising, the effects of music on the listener are complicated. Factors such as the perceived fit of the music to the product and/or brand, personal feelings about the song, the extent to which background music affects the main message and even the consumer’s gender can all impact how a particular piece of music will influence their future purchase behaviour towards the product.

How do you know whether you have picked the right music for the creative concept and brand? We can help with that using our cutting-edge neuroscience solutions, including Facial Coding and Intuitive Associations and our world-renowned Creative Development suite (LINK^TM). We can tap into the power of neuroscience to uncover people’s implicit, spontaneous responses to your ads and obtain a more direct measure of the feelings and emotions they evoke. Our full suite of LINK^TM solutions allows testing at any stage in the creative development process, from storyboards through to fully realised ads.

Colmar Brunton can tap into the power of neuroscience to uncover how your choice of music can impact on consumers choice of your brand.