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 first episode of the Sound In Marketing Podcast aired in mid 2019. Now over 100 episodes strong, I've realized that there's still more to say. I've allowed for time to head scratch by producing shorter episodes this season.
Hopefully this helps to really give room for thought. Inspirations of your own. 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. All contact info will be provided in the show notes. Now on to the show.
This episode we'll be talking about sound and sadness. When you think of the word sadness. What images come to mind? What emotions? Does sadness mean Devastation. Heartbreak. Loneliness. Misery. Depression. Longing? With all of these different definitions for sadness, How can we possibly define and confine them within one interpretation of a musical playlist? A UX designer friend of mine wrote a very thought provoking article discussing a Spotify feature she was developing.
It identified musical preferences by the user selecting a mood, such as a bright mood, and then navigating to a drop down defining said Bright mood further. Happy Euphoric. Relaxed. Sentimental. Motivated. Spiritual. Optimistic. By defining the mood beyond the initial suggestion. The app could then better learn that specific user's musical preferences. My mind took this a step further.
What if we were able to program an algorithm of sorts that detected a potential use of too much sadness in our musical choices? Don't get me wrong, I know that this may border on privacy and rights and all of that, but think about the idea for a minute. Have you ever enjoyed sitting in sadness? Have you ever fed that feeling and sunk deeper and deeper into it? If you have. How hard was it for you to dig yourself back out? I would wager it took you longer to get out than it took you to get in.
Suicide and depression is a real thing. It's a dark and disturbing place. And when you feel your lowest, sitting in your sadness almost feels good. Musical choices during these low times play a critical part between recovery and devastation. Believe it or not, sound can actually heal. I've written about sound and healing in the past. Sound can heal at a cellular level. It can also be used as a therapy, which in itself can help more physical wounds to heal by doing so.
If you are mentally in the right place, your body can follow suit. So back to my question. What if AI help catch a slip towards depressive or suicidal sadness levels and course correct by slowly feeding them happier and more uplifting music? In my scenario, appropriate musical choices could elevate you from depression. (sad music playing) To reassurance. (hopeful music playing) To feeling uplifted. (uplifting music playing) To optimism. (optimistic music playing)
And eventually to feeling happy again. (happy music playing) Think of it like an IV drip of music. By working backwards through that user's musical preferences. They could potentially give themselves a dopamine boost by lifting them back up through song. (dance music playing) In real life, no one alternates moods directly from sad to happy. So the music we listen to shouldn't do that either. It wouldn't feel natural and in so saying wouldn't be effective.
Guaranteed that user will reach over and change the playlist if they feel they are not getting enough what they want. A limited definition means a lost opportunity. Suicide and depression aside, limiting a mood choice to one word doesn't really give you access to fine tuning a musical experience. My definition of sadness is different from yours. Heck, my definition of sadness today differs from what I think of in five days or five weeks, or even five minutes from now.
It's all perspective and context, two things that only the individual user can provide. Our journey through emotions is unpredictable. We are constantly living and thinking and changing. Our mood evolves as we go. Here's where I throw marketing into the mix. If we could find a way to give more choices to a user's mood journey, how much more value can we bring to their advertising experiences? Ads are going to happen. It's just a fact.
If we have to experience them anyways, wouldn't we prefer them to make sense to our world? And dare I say, even be enjoyable with the ability to fine tune a mood music experience? Advertisers and marketers could better define their parameters of who they market to. For example, it's summertime and my mood is tending towards summertime music.
To me, that would be the Beach Boys, The monkeys, Santana, Nelly Furtado, Pharrell, Justin Timberlake, etc.. An advertiser might see this trend and target swimwear or sunscreen or skateboards. On the other hand, my neighbor is in the summertime mood too, but he plays Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Janis Joplin and the Ramones. Those ads would be totally inappropriate and or irrelevant to him. By targeting advertisements based on subsets of musical moods.
The brand has a better opportunity for a higher ROI. I'm excited to see how we can better use this opportunity of streaming radio playlists with proper cultivation of Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and all the other large conglomerates streaming radio stations. There's potential to both save lives. And more accurately market to an audience. Sell me this pen. A really weird combination, I know, but this just shows that the sky is the limit when we make sound on purpose.
Thanks to art lists, Max Hixson for Beach Day, my summertime example, and Bunker Buster for Catnip Addict, my low key summertime example. I also snuck my own tracks in there, anthem as my happy music example, and heartbreak as my devastatingly depressing example. Oh, and those chords progressing from sad to happy. That was me too. For those interested, I would love to chat with you further about your sound presence and sonic strategy.
Send me a message at DreamrProductions.com, or you can come find me on LinkedIn or Twitter. 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.