Music can be a mighty marketing force. When used strategically, it has the potential to energize, captivate, and influence consumer behavior. It can whip your buyers into a frenzy, making them pay attention, buy more, or view your brand more favorably. 

Music can also be a weapon. In some settings, music has been used as a form of psychological warfare. The military has used blaring heavy metal as a part of interrogations, and played hard rock to get Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to surrender.

So music is powerful. However, most businesses don’t want to weaponize their brands, interrogate their buyers, or get their customers to surrender. The first article in this series showed how music can drive retail sales. But how can other companies and organizations use music?

Music in Ads

If you’re creating a video advertisement, you’ll need music. Yes 一 need.

Consider the most watched YouTube videos of all time. Although some were viral videos, such as the famous Evolution of Dance and Charlie Bit My Finger, you’ll notice that it’s music videos that consistently topped the charts.

Chances are you know at least some of these songs. That’s because music has the power to get stuck in your subconscious. 

For advertisers, that’s good news. Using music, you can plant your brand into your buyer’s minds so that they’ll remember you at pivotal moments in their buying journey. This can take the form of:

• Jingles
• Company anthems
• Ad soundtracks

Jingles and Anthems

Let’s focus on jingles for a second because they are notorious for being catchy 一 but also hold the threat of being irritating when used incorrectly.

Good jingles are memorable. Consider classics like KitKat’s Give Me a Break or  State Farm’s Like a Good Neighbor. 

The most memorable jingles span all industries but have one thing in common — their message is simple. Nuance doesn’t work. Neither do lengthy diatribes. It’s about dilating onto the most important benefit you want to promote, and then infusing it with emotion and action words to make it stand out. 

Politicians have mastered simplifying messages by using phrases like “Yes We Can!” and “Make America Great Again.” By reducing the message down to the most basic elements, slogans and jingles become stickier in people’s minds.

Soundtracks

There are many reasons your company would want to use video aside from advertising. Video marketing, on social media or on your website, can be used to:

• demonstrate how your product is used or how your service works
• give a behind-the-scenes look at your company
• give educational content or take a position on a hot industry topic
• stay relevant with updates on social media

Your choice of music matters. So how do you decide which music to use?

First a legal note. Copyrighted music is not free to use unless you pay royalties. Royalty-free music is the safest choice for a background soundtrack for your video.

When scanning through royalty-free music, it’s important to find the emotion you’re trying to create. It might seem obvious that sad music inspires sadness, aggressive music agitates the listener, and happy music makes people feel good, the emotional response is often overlooked. That’s because many business owners opt for the type of music they like. 

There’s plenty of time to listen to good music 一 but in marketing, the music is there to spark an emotion. To help keep the guardrails up when choosing a song for your video marketing, think about what you’re choosing through the lens of a movie soundtrack. You’re setting the scene and want the underlying music to tell the viewers how to feel as they watch. As evidence, listen to John Williams, the composer of the Jurassic Park soundtrack, conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in playing the score.

You don’t have to have seen the movie to know that this music sets the scene for fear, childish wonder, amazement, and drama. You can feel it when you listen.

In your marketing, you’ll want the same.

• Sharing a proud moment? Choose celebratory music.
• Dramatizing or memorializing something? Use emotional music.
• Getting people excited? Use pump-up music.

A word of caution as you explore which type of music to play. It’s not just about the emotion; it’s also about what the music represents.

In one famous example, Geico chose Midnight Rider by the Allman Brothers as their video background music for motorcycle insurance.

The problem wasn’t that the music elicited the wrong emotion. It was that the two founding band members died in a motorcycle accident, creating an unintended message and unwanted embarrassment for the brand.

What About Hold Music?

Hold music is one of those pesky necessities. Most people are annoyed by hold music, likely because waiting for anything feels like torture. 

Should you pick upbeat hold music to keep callers happy while they wait? Slow here. Picking the right hold music requires you to consider a few crucial elements.

Your Industry

Understanding the purpose of the call will direct you to the type of music you should choose for your hold music. For example, a funeral home should not play fast-paced hip hop, knowing that the caller is likely grieving at the time of their call. Choose a tempo and style that exemplifies your industry and offers.

Timeframe

What are your business’s hold times like? If your customers spend a lot of time on hold, you may want to opt for something more subdued and relaxed. Rock music can create the perception of longer wait times.

Music Quality

The phone’s speaker often garbles the music you’re playing. Complex music with multiple instruments will sound more jumbled than a simple tune with a single guitarist or pianist. 

Once you’ve chosen your hold music, keep it at just that — music. Using hold time to extol your company’s services, when the caller might be angry or annoyed, is a bad idea. 

So, What’s the Right Music for You?

When listening to your music or background tracks, think through your audience’s emotions. Then, align those emotions with your brand image and company’s offerings. When the two mesh well, you’ll create a memorable soundtrack for your brand, allowing your company to capture attention and stick in consumers’ minds so they think of your business when it’s time to buy.

 

This is part 2 in a two-part series about music and marketing. The first article discussed how to use the power of music to drive sales in a retail environment. This article shows how music can be used in other marketing applications, including ads, jingles, and soundtracks. See all the posts in this series here.