Most of us enjoy a good film. The soundtrack of the film guides you through the emotions of the plot and settings telling you when things are happy, when they are sad, scary or romantic.

With music’s ability to connect emotionally to an audience how can you make that same connection to your customers?

Consider this romantic scene.

 

The romantic setting to the right conveys emotions of relaxation, calmness and pleasure.

But adding (for example) a string quartet playing a composition mainly using minor chords, perhaps even a few detuned notes would disrupt those feelings and make you think again about what exactly are you seeing.

The music would be telling you that not everything is as it seems, there is something sinister happening, perhaps one of the individuals is up to mischief, or perhaps another person will appear soon to create some sort of conflict.

So clearly the music is a key part of delivering the setting and communicating to its audience what to expect that setting to offer.

 

Translate this into a business environment and we can see that selecting the right music for an environment would have great benefits in delivering what you wanted your own customers to feel and know about your business.

These emotions will then form part of your customer’s understanding of your brand.

Building your brand’s own sound track isn’t as costly as creating a score for a hollywood film when you engage Melody Pods in that process.

We create soundtracks regularly where the collection has themes running through with compositions and melodies gently reminding you again and again of the main theme and with instruments and arrangements reused just like a band that defines its own ‘sound’ for an album.

The compositions continue to gently remind the customer of your values because the melody is designed to evoke the appropriate emotions that your brand wants to convey.

But surely this is the stuff of science and hollywood film composers only?

Sound Branding: Creating your own soundtracks as part of your brands music identity gives you that emotionally connectivity to your customers.

A branded soundtrack like this can leave your customers with the sound of your brand in their minds throughout the rest of the day after they have visited you. Your brand continues to play in your customer’s head for a long time afterwards.

Connect this same branded soundtrack to radio adverts and other mediums you have available to you such as free music downloads, CDs in store, website and online promotions with videos will extend your music identity across your branded promotional activities.

Making sure this soundtrack continues to give your customers a positive feeling happens when the sound branding team fully understand your brand, you objectives and your customers.

Please give us a call today to talk to us about creating your own branded soundtrack. Creating background music collections for specific customers is more affordable than you might think.

Please fill out as much of the following form so we can begin to understand your business.

Hello! how can we help? Please note: our service is offered via our free Android app via the Google Play store. This can be used on Android Tablets and Smartphones. Other options available for corporate clients and resellers. 0 Please tell us how we can help.*If you have a lot of questions then please ask for a Skype call. 1 Please tell us about your business, what you sell, and describe your customer's profile:* 2 Please enter your website address here.*Your website will likely answer many of our questions. 3 Please enter your company email address:* 4 Alternatively, would you like to chat over Skype?*Please tell us your Skype name, when you will be available (and your local time zone) so we can hook up and wait for you to be available. 5 Submit 6

As we know with our own developed tastes over many years of enjoying music, music provides a soundtrack to our lives. So matching your business brand and corporate identity with that of your customers is a great way to get connected to them and to develop an emotional relationship with them.

“According to Josepth Pine [of Starbucks], a brand creates and experience..’when a company intentionally uses services as a stage, and products as a tool, to engage with their customers emotionally.’ The goal is to create memorable experiences that in turn evoke desired customer associations with the brand” ¹

Can you imagine this retail location without sound? 

Branded background music playlists can increase sales by 20%² and more compared to no music of even more if the music selected detracts from the customer experience. The wrong music can inspire negative emotions that are likely to lessen purchasing likelihood (retail) or reduce staying power (restaurants & food retail) and reduce average sales per cover.

So how do you work out what music works for your business?

Of course you have your own views, you have your own taste in music as well. There would be good reason to think that the music you like might fit to your customer base as well since you probably like and enjoy the company of your own customers in many cases such as coffee shops and restaurants. Except there is a lot more to playing music than just playing music.

Playing the right music will enhance the experience your customer has with your service and thus your brand

So,specifically how can you better understand:

• What types of music match your brand?
• How can you use music to support your business objectives such as increasing your sales?
• How can music be distributed reliably across all your locations and reduce the time and cost it normally takes to organize this?
• How can you be sure that you have music ready to match the changing moods of customers?
• What about different playlists for the seasons? or for times of the day?

 

 

Next in this series we will detail how small, medium and large businesses solve the background music challenges today and what you can do to choose best practices amongst all of them.

If you would like to hear more about how we can help you grow your business with music collections designed for you then please fill out as much of the following form as you can.

Hello! how can we help? Please note: our service is offered via our free Android app via the Google Play store. This can be used on Android Tablets and Smartphones. Other options available for corporate clients and resellers. 0 Please tell us how we can help.*If you have a lot of questions then please ask for a Skype call. 1 Please tell us about your business, what you sell, and describe your customer's profile:* 2 Please enter your website address here.*Your website will likely answer many of our questions. 3 Please enter your company email address:* 4 Alternatively, would you like to chat over Skype?*Please tell us your Skype name, when you will be available (and your local time zone) so we can hook up and wait for you to be available. 5 Submit 6

 

References

1_{(Sounds Like Branding, Copyright © Jakob Lusensky 2010 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc)}
2_{Sullivan (2002), a person is likely to stay in a restaurant playing soft music 20% longer than if the music is loud, with a slight increase in the amount of money spent on food and drinks. For grocery stores, it was found that the volume made no difference on how much money was spent.}

_{Another study by Caldwell and Hibbert (2002) found that when slow music was played, patrons stayed for 20% longer but also spent more on food and drink – in fact, up to 50% more (Play That One Again: the Effect of Music Tempo on Consumer Behaviour in a RestaurantClare  Caldwell,  University  of  Strathclyde,  Scotland Sally  A.  Hibbert,  University  of  Strathclyde,  Scotland)}

Melody Pods is pleased to announce a series of articles around sound branding and creating personal background music identities for businesses, small and large.

Melody Pods is pleased to announce a series of articles around sonic branding and creating music identities for businesses, small and large.

With the bricks and mortar businesses particularly on the high street becoming more competitive, businesses are looking for more opportunities to differentiate themselves from their competitors, strengthen their brands and support their business objectives with increased footfall and sales growth.

Sensory branding is growing in retail and where the larger organisations have the resources to do so, they are looking at all the senses to communicate their brands with their customers.

The most immediate sensory impact for customers entering a business will focus on visual branding and the sounds within the location. Within any location there are numerous sources of sound that music has to contend. Music of course is a key part of this but not the only element.

The complete set of sounds offered up to customers needs to be itemised and analysed. One great example of this is within coffee shops who attract customers with fantastic coffee machines. Yet those same coffee machines can attack the senses when used coffee is hammered out of the filters to make way for new coffee for your cup.

The acoustics of a location can make this worse. Where walls are hard and flat with little interruption, sound will bounce around and continue to hit customer’s ears from many angles.

On a more positive side, the other sounds that need to be understood include cash machines, doors, chairs, security exit warning sounds and even the sound emanating from fluorescent lighting.

Within this series we will be mainly focusing on the area where Melody Pods can help customers, this being the selection of the right music to match your brand and your business objectives.

So stay tuned and we will be publishing our recommended guidelines for creating a background music identity soon.

Alternatively, please fill out as much of the following form so we can begin to understand your business.

Hello! how can we help? Please note: our service is offered via our free Android app via the Google Play store. This can be used on Android Tablets and Smartphones. Other options available for corporate clients and resellers. 0 Please tell us how we can help.*If you have a lot of questions then please ask for a Skype call. 1 Please tell us about your business, what you sell, and describe your customer's profile:* 2 Please enter your website address here.*Your website will likely answer many of our questions. 3 Please enter your company email address:* 4 Alternatively, would you like to chat over Skype?*Please tell us your Skype name, when you will be available (and your local time zone) so we can hook up and wait for you to be available. 5 Submit 6