Who’s Watching Your Back?
I recently did a ring around to client side marketing managers, branding agencies and full service/integrated advertising agencies to find out how and why they use sound in their marketing communications.
All noted the well known fact that sound and music has an immediate and powerful impact on emotions and subsequently brand perception and consumer behaviour.
So I was very surprised to find that no-one, none, zip, zilch, zero dedicated any resources and time to monitoring the impact, continuity and implementation of sound and music across brand touch-points.
This translates to:
- Music on hold messages that for some inexplicable reason have disappeared with out anyone realising.
- A lack of continuity across touch points during a “campaign”. Eg: Television commercials, in-store and digital.
- The random and inconsistent use of musical styles and voice over artists which are the consequence of “creative decisions” being dictated by content producers rather than brand values.
In short the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, resulting in
- diluted and confused messages
- negative and inconsistent brand experiences
- me-tooism that often promotes competing products and services
So what’s the solution?
Before The Campaign:
Pull together your different specialist agencies and/or integrated agency’s
departments and decide why, what and how sound will be used. And stick to it.
During The Campaign:
Conduct regular touch-point audits to make sure that every thing is still working.
Eg: music on hold, podcasts, in-store music.
Observe and evaluate the responses of customers and prospects.
If you do have to make modifications make sure they are consistent, co-ordinated across all your touch-points and still on message.
After The Campaign:
There is no “After The Campaign”.