Welcome to the Sound In Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Jeanna Isham, owner and founder of Dreamr Productions and Sound in Marketing learning. I create, consult and educate individuals and brands on the power of sound in marketing. This season will be a culmination of thoughts and theories and musings that I formed over my years of experience in sonic branding and sound marketing. If the content in these episodes inspire actionable ideas for your company, don't hesitate to give me a call.
This is what I do. This is what I know. I make sound on purpose. Now on to the show. This episode we'll be talking about 3D audio and how our ears naturally follow sound. For this episode, listening through headphones will give you the best listening experience. However, as we'll discuss, headphones are not the all ends, all. My seven year old daughter experienced a 3D soundscape for the first time. I put the headphones on and she listened to an ad produced by SXM Media's Studio Resonate team.
The biggest smile crept over her face. I'm following the sound was what she told me. Music and narration isn't the only thing we hear in audio ads. The experience also lies in the everyday sound effects of life. We experience an ad alongside the sound of cars driving by. The coffee maker turning on. And the air conditioner amping up. Good or bad.
All of these invisible sounds play a part in our emotional connection to an ad, creating harmony amongst the music and narration and sound effects is a tricky thing. Studio resonate, in particular, has learned how to artfully harness these by using a technique known as 3D audio. Tanvi Phadke, Associate Creative Director for SXM Media, defines 3D audio as an art form of the brain, not of the ears. When we experience 3D audio, we hear it from all angles. Left, right, up, down and all around.
Our brain takes over at this point, telling us what the sound is as well as where it is coming from. You automatically start to create that mental picture in your mind, and that's what we really want listeners to imagine. We just don't want them to listen to the ad and be like, okay, I heard an ad - cool - the more sound effects you use. The more you're harnessing the theater of the mind to paint a picture.
My daughter's experience was designed specifically for her to be transported into the forest by baking the sound design purposefully into the story narrative. 3D audio harnessed the power of her imagination to tell a more compelling and familiar story. While forest sounds in general are relatable and recognizable. Each person hears these sounds differently, with their own mental pictures and personal familiarity attached. By harnessing the power of 3D audio.
The brand can create purposefully designed sound that engages with not only the individual, but the entire targeted audience as a whole. This kind of immersive experience is how brands can truly engage with their audience in a more human way. When you give that power of imagination to people, people bring their own personal experiences into it. If I just play you like a simple forest soundscape, you start attaching personal experiences to those sound effects. That's the power of 3D.
audio. It puts the listener in control, and it's subjective and it can be experienced in many different ways. Right? Like it means something to you. It means something else to me, means something else to the next person. Directly relating to an audience through this immersive experience is a huge brand opportunity. When we think of immersive experiences, we can't help but think of the senses. How else could my daughter follow the sound?
That's not physically possible, as sound is everywhere, but what she perceives and understands is what her brain tells her and what her brain was telling her excited her to the point that she's asked to hear that Add again and again. And when she asks for it, she can describe it thoroughly. 3D audio is just one of the ways brands can harness the effectiveness of sensory marketing. It's not just about words.
There's this hesitation that if I don't use words in my copy, I cannot explain what my brand is. It's frankly the opposite, because when you use more sound effects, you're actually painting your brand's world and what it sounds like and what it's meant to do in the minds of the listener. And that rarely happens with words.
I mean, how much is our attention span and how much are we going to listen to when someone is talking to us, rather than when you're actually in the scene and you're experiencing this world that your brand is trying to create without sound effects, there is no immersion. And without immersion, there is no 3D audio. Put the idea first and tell your story with sound effects and telling them with words. We really believe in putting the idea in the brand first and creating that sound for the brand.
What is the sound for that brand? What do we want the listeners to walk away with? With our attention span shrinking quickly brands need to find faster connection points to their consumers. Our eyes have been overstimulated with visual information, and so our minds wander and check out due to sensory overload. Sound is a passive form of engagement. All it asks is for someone not to cover their ears and to let their imaginations take over.
How much more effective would branding be if the audience were asked to relax and be transported into a scene of their own mental creation? Say you want to put the listener into a beach scene. (sound design playing) I can paint that picture with words but it's going to lose interest very soon. If I actually put you in the middle of a beach with sound, without explaining what it is, that's going to be more powerful.
Studio resonate has been working with 3D audio ads for quite a while now, and their understanding of how to utilize immersive sound is top notch. They know that the creative of the ad always comes first with careful thought process and planning. 3D audio can be used as a beautiful enhancement to the story. 3D audio is more like an art form of the brain.
because at the end you're just tricking your brain to believe where these sounds are coming from, or believe which direction the sound is coming from, or how far and near it is from you. How it makes you feel when you're listening to this particular sounds. Tanvi goes on to explain - Everybody knows human hearing. They realize it, but they don't really understand the power of it. Utilizing 3D audio is a technique to harness that power in a subtle but incredibly effective way.
Studio resonate has grown and learned how to best use these immersive sound techniques. However, in the end, it's about the story. The most important thing in telling the story is strong copywriting. How can we make a story really stand out for this immersive experience? It's told like a scene. There's an imagination that comes into play, and that's how we started working. We started to develop scripts that were specifically meant for 3D audio, and that's what we preach today as well.
The story has to be your hero, and what 3D audio will eventually do is just bring that story alive in a very immersive way and be a supporting actor to that strong script, to that strong idea. If the creative doesn't call for it, then it may not be necessary. Whether we know it or not, an immersive experience is what we want out of our entertainment. Even in our advertisements, we want it because it's been delivered to us that way for years. We just haven't necessarily been aware.
People think it's this fancy new term, and it's complex and it's difficult to achieve, but it's not. It's been there for so many decades, you just didn't know it existed because it was so seamlessly in the stuff that you listen to and what you consume. Think of the last Marvel movie you watched. Was it just about the script? Absolutely not. It was about the fancy computer graphics, the surround sound, and anything else they added to dazzle your eyes and senses.
You don't just watch it. You feel it. (anthemic instrumental music playing) We're not just listening. We're experiencing. The way sensory marketing works is that it employs the listener's perception and empathy to further develop the creative design of the brand's unique identity. What one person perceives about a slice of chocolate cake is different from another. Even when both love chocolate cake, neither is wrong, but both are defined uniquely.
Defining identity solely through words can be limiting. When you use words to describe a slice of chocolate cake, like rich or moist, you may be alienating. Chocolate cake aficionados that don't relate to those descriptions. But if you use sound effects, you widen the net of understanding. Now everyone can relate in their own way. These sound images allow for individual interpretation as well as a mass audience appeal.
When you only have a 32nd spot, potentially less to tell your story within streaming music, every second matters. Sound and experience supports the words and drives the message home into our hearts and subconscious, where we can revisit it again and again. Let's follow the sound to create a stronger, more memorable brand. Thank you to Tanvi Phadke of SiriusXM media for your great insights.
I'm sure a big thanks to the team at Studio Resonate for doing some pretty, incredible work in the field of 3D audio advertising, and for the specific examples used in this episode. If you're interested in learning more about 3D audio and how best to implement it, check out Studio Resonate for more information. Thank you to Pixabay sound Effects for the sprinkles of sound assistance. The movie music example was a little something from me to you.
Love the idea of sound in marketing in general, but don't know where to start. I've got you covered. Come on over to Sound in marketing.com. I've got tons of resources, courses, ebooks and connections for you to connect yourselves with. I also offer sound strategy consulting and sonic branding sound design through my company Dreamr Productions. All links will be provided in the show. Notes. Let's make this world of sound more intriguing, more unique, and more and more on brand.