Use and Effectiveness of Musical Cues in Advertising
An alternative to traditional prompted advertising research techniques is the use of musical cues to elicit responses from consumers. Music can play a major part in advertising effectiveness. Songs and jingles can cut-through to achieve reach, and increase the longevity of a campaign by residing in the consumer’s mind. Renowned author and strategist Max Sutherland comments that ‘the inclusion in an ad of a tune that is already well known can help to get attention as well as set the appropriate mood and act as a memory jogger
A specific song or tune, can also create cohesion for different campaigns over time, such as the “Oh what a feeling – Toyota” jingle which has created an audio-based brand message for Toyota cars. Music definitely has a unique roll as an advertising tool, justifying its high presence within the advertising environment today. Sutherland suggests music is unique because it is processed differently to spoken messages, and somehow takes the edge off the ‘buy it’ push.
In a recent survey from the Journal of Advertising Research[2], consumers’ responses to advertising campaigns were investigated with approximately 3000 subjects with a split of musical and verbal cues. Results showed that 62% of respondents recalled seeing an advertisement for a particular product when given a verbal cue, compared to 83% of the respondents who were given a 10-second musical cue.
[1] Sutherland M & Sylvester A, (2000), Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer
St Leonards, Allen & Unwin
[1] Stewart D, Farmer K & Stannard C, (1990), Music as a recognition cue in advertising-tracking studies
Journal of Advertising Research, Aug-Sep v30 n4 p39
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Bring Back Jingles, All is Forgiven.
Why Innovation Shouldn’t Make Us Forget Those Catchy Tunes.
Keith Syron, February 1, 2003
How often have you found an advertising tune buzzing relentlessly round your brain? “The Warehouse, The Warehouse, where everyone gets a bargain” or “Kiwi kids are Weetbix kids”. Love ’em or hate ’em, you remember ’em.
But in these days of fragmented marketing, ambient/street media and new kinds of ads that try to not look like ads (like Saatchi & Saatchi’s recent Axis-winning Women’s Refuge campaign), it seems ad writers have forgotten about the good old jingle.
Between the 1950s and the 1980s no self-respecting television or radio ad was complete without its signature jingle or mnemonic (spoken, rather than sung, phrase about a brand).
Jingles were part of the advertising conspiracy: ad agencies and marketers planting brands in your mind so deeply and subconsciously that you didn’t even notice them going in. But it worked. Concepts delivered in jingles are processed in a different way to straightforward claims made in an advertisement, explains advertising guru Dr Max Sutherland (a psychologist and professor of the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, now consultant for Australian and Californian corporates) in his book Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer. Traditional ad claims (“Kids love Weetbix” for example) are processed in our “true-false” processing capacity, he says, whereas musically delivered brand statements tend to slip past our critical analysis capacity and go straight into our emotional/entertainment mind. We recall and feel attached to music in a way we are not attached to news items.
Take giant US biscuit-maker Nabisco. While Sutherland was tracking the impact of Nabisco’s advertising, a simple change was made to the jingle that traditionally sung the brand name at the end of the ad. A “ping” at the end of the “Na …bis …co” was removed to make way for a temporary promotional tag. Sutherland’s tracking revealed “an amazing thing … the ads did not cut through as much. They lost a lot of their ability to link the execution in people’s minds with the Nabisco brand.”
Sutherland’s findings are reinforced by another study “Music as a recognition cue in advertising-tracking studies”, reported in the Journal of Advertising Research (1990). This study looked at the responses of 3000 consumers to advertising campaigns — split into those with traditionally spoken cues and those with musical cues such as jingles. The study showed 62% of the consumers correctly recalled seeing an ad and associated it with the advertised product when given a verbal cue. For the musical cue ads, the correct recall level was 83%.
Taylor Nelson Sofres, one of the largest market research companies in Europe, ran another comparison between musical and visual brand cues in 2000. Participants who were exposed to visual advertising cues achieved only 49% correct recall of the ads and associated brands. The group that was exposed to advertising musical cues (with the words removed) achieved 70% correct recall.
Convinced? Here are five key rules from US advertising testing company The Pretesting Company:
1. Develop a unique brand-identifying tune or accent (“Weetbix kids …” or “Speights. Pride of the south for over 100 years”).
2. Incorporate the brand name into the jingle or mnemonic phrase — it’s about imprinting your brand into the primal part of the consumers’ brains.
3. Incorporate your brand essence into the jingle (“Red Bull gives you wings” or “McDonald’s, every time a great time”).