Musical Branding Effects in Our Economy.
By Stephen Hoshaw
Neither, please.
While music has many jobs in the media landscape, one may fly under your radar.
Muzak is most commonly known as elevator music, it plays in the background of many department stores and is meant to give us something to listen to while we shop.
Right?
Wrong.
Branding
In this EST article, muzak is described as “scientifically engineered sound – functional music rather than entertainment.” This “functional” element of muzak is the aspect that leads to its psychological effect on people.
A piece from the blog History is made at night details the real subconscious effects as motivational to office workers, relaxing for patients and delivering a “less hurried” shopping experience for customers.
However, these effects do not only apply to the inside of a store, office or restaurant. The practice of engineering sound to produce a desired effect has become a popular marketing practice in our media culture.
Many corporations have used “audio identifiers” in tandem with a product. This could be the jingle that plays with the 20th Century Fox logo at the beginning of a film, or the McDonald’s tune heard on all of their television advertisements.
Why does your brand need a sound?
Corporations have found new ways to turn what was once thought of as a secondary element (to visual portions), into a more powerful marketing tool.
An article from Post Magazine reported many techniques that corporations use to maximize the effect of this tool. Most businesses focus on the structure of the song to create a stronger emotional connection with the consumer, while simultaneously concern themselves with the context of the advertisement the tune will appear in.
When used in this way, the “music” that is created is referred to as a Sonic Brand.
Corporate Use
Most businesses that run advertisement campaigns utilize Sonic Branding, however, not all of them use nameless instrumentals, as many jingles appear.
The WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) is a great illustration of this.
In 2008, the WWE was pushing hard for artists to start looking to them for a branding experience. Wrestlers came out to specific
Well this looks like a wholesome image the teenage American shopaholic, right?
songs, thus promoting the artist and spreading awareness. Usually, the WWE would try to time this kind of promotion with the release of the album said song was on.
Other companies use musical branding to sell the image of the artist to consumers.
Iconix is a brand group dedicated to getting the brands it owns into retailers and department stores nationwide.
More importantly, they are the firm behind the recent Britney Spears endorsed Candies sponsorship (available in the Kohls store near you).
This is a perfect example of how most corporations view a musical celebrity. Iconix is using Britney Spears’ appeal to the youthful women to sell Candies clothes to that very demographic.
Their video shows the direct partnerships they share with some of America’s biggest corporate department stores, displaying the depth they can achieve with through this kind of branding.
Artist Use
While the popularity of musical branding is growing in the corporate world, both through the audio that corporations employ in advertisments/in store and through the images they sell, artists have also picked up on the power behind branding.
In an article by Constantine Roussos (of musicmusic.com), he describes the changing brand environment the musical world faces.
In his view the amount of time and money big labels are spending on branding isn’t working, “Spending thousands of dollars does not buy you as much attention and the reality is, the major labels have to work harder and more transparently to gain the exposure they once enjoyed.”
While this may spell trouble for the big time record labels, this ultimately leads to an increase of power in the hands of the
Apparently these guys are really into this musical branding thing.
independent artist. Artists now have the opportunity to make an image of their own and gain a following of fans who can support them.
Some artists have recognized the power of branding, and have seen how its use has hurt their own brand. Case and point, Nine Inch Nails.
Apparently, our government likes to use Nine Inch Nails’ powerful sound to improve the effectiveness of interrogations at Guantanamo Bay. In this article, the government’s tactics are outlined and described in detail regarding this use of music to cause a psychotic feeling in the victims of the interrogations they conduct at Guantanamo.
While branding becomes more and more important for artists, it is clear that selling power may lie in correctly branding the artists sound.
Branding is and always will be an important element in our culture’s use of music. Whether its creating a song that will sell a product, using an artist’s image to sell a commodity or to sell an album, musical branding will be in full effect.
Sources:
Music Inc. 