Brands are missing an opportunity to tap into the power of audio, says Joe Sauer, neuromarketer, researcher and founder of EmotiSphere Insights. Here, he explains why sound deserves greater attention and shares practical steps to unlock audio’s influence for your brand.

Why does audio matter? 

Audio can be one of the most effective ways to create emotion and improve brand memorability: it has a huge impact on shaping perceptions and preferences. Use the same visual treatment but layer on different pieces of music and it will produce a fundamentally different emotional response–transforming it potentially from a euphoric, joyous, positive reaction to a distressing, stressful one. 

Data suggests that the audio element of a traditional TV ad accounts for somewhere between 45% and 65% of the overall behavioural impact, and yet musical decisions typically come after the rest of the creative. In most cases, an advert or video will already have been filmed before the soundtrack is considered and a music supervisor is brought in to curate a list of potential options. It’s typically subjective, rushed, and not researched. 

“[T]he audio element of a traditional TV ad accounts for somewhere between 45% and 65% of the overall behavioural impact.”

What is it about audio that makes it so powerful at influencing human behaviour? Is it as important as visuals? 

Auditory stimulus is processed by our brains at least three-tenths of a second faster than visual imagery. That’s because of how visual images are processed by the brain: it breaks down elements of image, colour, shape and movement, then those signals travel separately to the visual cortex. Sound waves, on the other hand, are instantaneously transmitted to the auditory cortex as a single sound wave–the brain doesn’t break down pitch, timber, instrumentation, interval. 

This speed means audio triggers an emotional response well in advance of an implicit response or conscious interpretation of the music. Sound editors who work on films know from trial and error that sound is processed more quickly so they actually introduce a brief delay to synchronise picture and sound in viewers’ minds. Imagine you have a big car explosion scene. If the image and sound of the explosion happen at the same time, it’s jarring because it feels as if you hear the explosion before you see it.

But auditory stimulus doesn’t just influence our perceptions in the moment. It’s well established that our visual memories are not accurate recordings but more like reconstructions of events. Added to that, the longer it is between the encoding event and the recall, the less accurate the visual memory. Our sound memory is much more durable. A recent study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev shows that, although the incidence of perfect musical pitch in the natural population is estimated to be one in every 10,000, close to half of people can hum or sing a piece of music or jingle they were exposed to many years ago. Three quarters can reproduce it within half a semitone. So, auditory memories are far more of a recording than a reconstruction–pun only partially intended! 

“Our sound memory
is much more durable.”

Research also shows that when music triggers a memory retrieval, it will bring the visual element with it more accurately, and that when sound is used purposefully alongside visual imagery, it yields superior business outcomes compared to visuals alone.

What can people do within their own organisation to make the case for investing in sound?

Everything we do now is testable, so get the data to prove audio’s valuable role in amplifying creative ideas. The predominant theory of motivation suggests that there are four pillars of advertising effectiveness:

Attention. Does your ad grab and maintain attention for the full duration of the spot?

Affect. Does it produce an emotional response increasing the likelihood that it will encode deeply in long term memory?

Memorability. Does it encode deeply in long-term memory? Does it help activate associations that are consistent with the brand architecture?

Action. Does it change attitudes towards the brand, making people more likely to love it and buy it?

Purposefully designed audio increases attention, deepens emotional responses, and enhances brand memorability AND desirability. So, look at your ads through the lens of each of these four pillars. With neuro techniques, particularly implicit association testing, neurometric and biometric techniques, we can now gain conscious and subconscious data which can be formed into a single predictive construct. This construct, when it incorporates both explicit and implicit, rational and irrational, conscious and subconscious information, mirrors the way our brains naturally function–offering a much fuller understanding of consumer behaviour.

Just 4% of advertising budgets are spent on music, dialogue and sonic logos: imagine the benefit for your brand if you focused on it more than competitors. 

If you’re looking to amplify your brand’s impact, get in touch to find out more about the science of neuromarketing and shaping consumer decisions.