Music has been used for commercial use for approximately a century. Since the beginning of the use of sound for communicating with stakeholders, companies are seeking new (more) creative ways for using different elements of sound. However, the scientific evaluation of this part of marketing is fairly young, being significantly researched for only about 25 years. Since new methods of research are rapidly emerging, this field is relatively unexplored. Researchers have been struggling even with unifying the terminology, let alone understanding sonic branding in relation to building brand image, buying intentions, long term relationship with brands, etc. The process of branding alone is a long-term process, taking years and decades. This is why I believe we will be able to fully comprehend the effects of sonic branding only when we evaluate it through the whole life cycle of a brand. If we wish to understand the effects of any marketing activity, we need to evaluate it from many different perspectives. Therefore, we decided to use three different research methods: sonic analysis of commercials (which has shown us trends and standards in creating advertising music), survey (to understand the conscious attitude towards a brand) and EEG (to understand the subconscious level of experiencing various audio-visual stimuli). The analysis of five versions of a commercial, each having a different background song, showed us a weak correlation between the conscious and subconscious methodological approach.
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