Romantic Ads Review: How music makes us fall in love with brands?
It’s Valentine’s day, and as Wet Wet Wet famously sang in 1994*, “I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes, Love is all around me…" Perhaps the 15 weeks this song spent at no.1 in the UK charts is a testament to how much we love Love Songs.
In the spirit of this romantic season, we at amp have been reflecting on the ways romance has been used to make you fall in love with your favorite brands.
Music is a powerful thing - it is able to subconsciously influence our moods, sense of brightness, and even our purchasing decisions. Adding music to visuals has been shown to significantly increase our emotional response to them - something you may have noticed when you find yourself feeling emotional about a supermarket ad! Listening to music can release the hormone Oxytocin - the very same hormone which is released when we feel love. It helps us feel connected and can also build feelings of trust. Audio branding can therefore help consumers feel more comfortable with the purchasing journey and allows them to unconsciously connect with products.
Love is an incredibly powerful emotion, so it follows that love songs, in particular, can organically tap into and enhance these emotional connections – something brands know very well. Often brands will simply license a popular emotional song in the hope that it will engage consumers - but how many other brands have had the same idea about the same song? You are risking confusing loyalties, or even strengthening connections with another brand whose ads used the same track!
Of course, there might be any number of people with bad memories of that song too, and you might be inadvertently associating your brand with these negative emotions. When a brand gets its music choices right, it can significantly strengthen brand equity, but the wrong music can have the opposite effect. Considering the importance of music, it is surprising that so few brands have sonic guidelines to help them use music more effectively.
So, what is the solution?
Your brand wants consumers to feel the love, whilst maintaining originality and brand equity. The best way to do this is by using your own love song, through original, branded music, using the same sonic ingredients as the love songs we relate to. To investigate these sonic ingredients, we ran some classic love songs through our AI-based Sonic Check Tool.
What actually makes a love song? The lyrics? The rhythm? The instrumentation? And how can brands use this to make better sonic decisions? We break it down for you in Episode 2 of our new Holiday Ads series. Happy Valentine’s Day, and happy watching!