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. The Sound In Marketing Podcast exists as a resource for those wanting to up their marketing gain exponentially by simply thinking a little differently.
My real heart is focusing on my fellow small to medium sized businesses and the potential sound strategy has for their brand marketing. Sound can give that extra boost needed to effectively compete with bigger business competitors, especially within the newness of sensorial marketing. Everyone will figure this out eventually. Hopefully this podcast helps you get ahead of the crowd. If the content in these episodes inspire ideas for your company, don't hesitate to give me a call.
Dreamr productions helps brands make sound on purpose. We'd love to help you too. Now onto the show. In this episode, we'll be talking about sound. What is it? Why is it so powerful? And why are big brands turning to it? To create a powerhouse of branding genius. What is sound and why is it so important to a brand? It's what I am constantly thinking about researching and educating clients about. Ultimately, we are sound. Sound is caused by vibrations which are caused by motion.
Everyone and everything is in motion. So ultimately, we are sound. If all things make sound in one way or another, then so do our brands and products. It is our responsibility to represent our brands sound sincerely and honestly. You wouldn't let your logo design be determined by how a paint splatters on a piece of paper would you? Or would you tell Midjourney to create something with pretty colors and take it as is, without any kind of manipulation and personal creativity? I sure hope not.
We design our visual branding so that it tells the message we want it to tell. Same goes with sound. You don't just leave sound to its own devices, especially if the sound happens to be creating the wrong experience or breaking brand messaging. We at the Pillow Factory care how well you sleep at night. We know that a good and peaceful experience is just the ticket to a healthier life, and we are committed to bringing you the most premium experience possible.
Sound has this incredible power to make up your mind about one thing or another in seconds, seconds, to a positive experience, or potentially. We know that a good and peaceful experience is just the ticket to a healthier life, and we are committed.. a negative one and we all know that a negative opinion is near impossible to reverse. So save yourself the trouble and make sound on purpose.
Here are eight ways that sound influences the consumer right now and why sound strategy must be considered alongside traditional visual branding. Sound is responsive. Sound requires action. This may be as big as a physical movement or as small as thought. Interpreting what is being heard. By implementing sound into your marketing, you're actively engaging your audience. They can't just close their eyes or look away their ears actively. Are hearing your messaging.
Using sound and smart technology is even more reactionary. Or at least it can be. Audio advertising will have a call to action and ask you to take initiative at a later time. But responsive voice ads require a response in the moment and more importantly, when you are most interested. For example, voice responsive ads require immediate action. Want to hear more about Stan’s Fans? Say, Alexa, tell me more. To hear our latest discounts.
Sound can cause an immediate response that could mean an immediate sale. Sound is persuasive. Audio can actually change our buying habits. In the 80s, Ronald E Milliman conducted a study that found that playing slower music in grocery stores increased sales by 38%. This theory was later proven by scientists in 2011. The slower pace of the music subconsciously slows people down and helps them to create more mindful decisions in purchases.
Millman was quoted as saying, it is possible to influence behavior with music, but this influence can either contribute to the process of achieving business objectives or interfere with it. Fast forwarding to today, these findings still apply. According to a report from September to October 2020 by Veritonic, voice ads had 27% higher purchase intent than the audio ad benchmarks. For those who engaged the ad. Sound can make or break an experience. Sound is more than just music.
A lot of people go to the default of songs and music when thinking about Sonic branding. But Sonic branding is so much more. Sonic means sound, and sound covers a whole lot more consumer touchpoints than music does or could. Welcome. You've got mail. (Functional Sounds playing) Goodbye. Those audio touchpoints are different depending on industry, platform and market. These outlets are growing exponentially with every new innovation that comes along.
Identifying sonic branding as sound rather than just music gives us an incredibly large palette to paint on. This is a good thing. Sound is global. Not a single person on this earth can't relate to sound. Even the deaf can understand vibration, which again is also sound. Sound is diverse and multicultural by nature as everyone on this planet experiences and lives sound. Not always true of music, but sound is most definitely relatable everywhere.
According to a study done by the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, two thirds of the world's languages were found to use or avoid the same sounds for common objects and ideas. Researchers found that a considerable amount of 100 basic vocabulary items associate strongly with specific kinds of human speech sounds. These are from unrelated languages and from largely diverse geographical locations.
Although we may not understand all the specific words in any given language, we can understand context through sound, inflection, timbre, and rhythm. Sound is nostalgic. Sounds can take us back. Again, not talking about music necessarily, but that is generally the easiest way to think about it. I love this quote from Social Media Week back in 2015. More messages, more alerts, more photos, more videos, and more advertisements are thrown in our faces than ever before.
And when we see or hear something that connects with our past lives, we just seem to freeze, take it in and transcend back to that moment in time. It's not quite like an ordinary advertisement or piece of content that we can easily ignore and watch it fly by. Nostalgic content is completely different. It's emotional.
The fact that sound can make us stop and think and listen, when we've never been busier and bombarded by more and more information hit at us constantly and all at once is absolutely amazing. Sound is efficient. According to a research study published in Saudi Journal of Sports Medicine in 2014. Auditory stimuli takes 8 to 10, miliseconds to reach the brain. Visual stimuli take 20 to 40 milliseconds through the act of repetition, rhythms and patterns.
Sound can train our brain to remember its message in the short term, and in the long term. Sound plays into both short term and long term memory models. In 2019, Pandora analyzed the best placement of a brand mentioned in a 32nd AD spot. They found that listeners were 7% more likely to remember a brand's name if it was presented in the first three seconds of the ad. Think back on the last TV commercial you listened to. Did they mention the brand's name right away, or at the very end?
Was the mention buried in the middle somewhere, or was it even mentioned at all? Do you even remember the last TV commercial you watched? Sound is a breath of fresh air. Through the pandemic, we all learned to use zoom in the same vernacular as Google, but most of us are over it now. Video conferencing, although super helpful in that season, is tiring on our bodies and eyes. What if we could stay connected without engaging anything other than our ears and perhaps our voice?
Although clubhouse isn't quite as popular as it was in 2021, I don't think it's a coincidence that it became a hit. And I know it won't be the last audio only platform. With the importance of sound on TikTok, the next audio only app will hit a lot more nails on the head. Because of Clubhouse's trailblazing influence and accolades. I interviewed a few people from mindshare a few years back. Mindshare is a global media and marketing services company.
In 2018, they had a short video series that they put together called The Media Dystopia. Their episode Sound as the Savior was specifically noteworthy. Their example that they presented was of a world where people got so addicted to their machines that they had to untether. Sound familiar? They pitched the idea of sound being a savior, that it called to us in a very primitive way, as storytelling of the mind has existed far beyond video and even books.
According to neuroscientists, it has been proven that when you listen to audio content, your brain triggers something called self visualization. A personal experience in your own imagination. Further studies found that audio has the ability to evoke even more emotion than video content. There's that word again emotion. Sound is evolving in real time. Voice first and voice only is here to stay. And as we watch it develop and evolve in real time. New audio touchpoints are popping up constantly.
With these amazing creators and products comes innovation, and with innovation, we must respond in kind. We have to be creative and be aware of what's going on. We can't just respond to how people are using audio currently. We need to try and think ahead and see the potential of what sound could be in the future. Voice tech is moving fast, and those that don't run with it now are going to have a hard time catching up.
Here's just a few statistics to leave you with on the emergence of the sound revolution. According to Think with Google in 2017, 72% of people who own a voice activated speaker say that their devices are often used as part of their daily routine. In 2018, headphones outsold smartphones. In the US. More people subscribe to podcasts than to Netflix. Also in 2018, Pandora bought Sirius XM for $3.5 billion. In 2019, Spotify bought Anchor and Gimlet for $340 million.
In 2020, Sirius XM bought Stitcher for $325 million. Also in 2020, Spotify bought megaphone, a podcast producing and marketing company, for $235 million. Spotify also bought The Joe Rogan Podcast in 2020 for $100 million. Compare that to Howard Stern, who signed his 2025 year deal with Sirius XM for that much per year, and that's pretty impressive. As of December 2020, more than 55% of U.S. adults have either a smart home device or a smart speaker. Sound matters.
Sound matters because it is a part of us. It is how we function and process information. It helps us to relate to one another and our environment. It makes us feel things and it creates action. It is how we make decisions on what to buy and what not to buy. Sound is influential to our brand and bottom line, whether you like it or not, your brand will sound one way or another. Are you in control of that sound? Are you using it to your best advantage? What does your brand sound like?
Thank you to Pixabay and Art list for some great sound effects fillers. I also created and slipped in a few of my own. Please note there are no Stan’s Fans or the Pillow Factory. I made them up for demonstration purposes. Did you like what you heard? Great! Leave a review, tell a friend and spread the word. More people should know about this stuff. I know you know that now. Want to explore your sound strategy further? I'd love to help.
Send me an email at [email protected] and we can continue this off platform. For further resources, learning and content, check out Sound in Marketing Learning for your one stop sound shop. 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.