How To Use Music To Boost Your Brand by Liz Goodgold

I love Liz’s post this week about how to boost your brand with music–she mentions putting music on in your office or on your voicemail background. I’d like to suggest adding it to your website or blog with a carefully selected song that’ll boost your brand. I helped my friends Christine & Jeff Serowik choose this song (from Shockwave Sound) for their hockey camp business website. I think it’s the music equivalent of their slogan, “Kick Ice”. What do you think?

Music To Our Ears

• Have you noticed yourself grooving to the recent tunes in TV ads?
• Do you find yourself actually running back to your TV because you’ve heard a retro song?
• Did you catch yourself truly enjoying a commercial for a change?

Well, I did! And, I’m not afraid to admit it. But, as a brand blogger, I feel compelled to take a look at what’s working and most importantly, what you and I can do to also create marketing messages that sing.

Brands That Are Making Music
Chase Bank seems to be orchestrating this band of music with its ads today. For a sampling, take a listen to John Lennon’s Blue Sky, Queen’s I Want It All, and Grover Washington Jr. ‘s Just the Two of Us.

The key question is: does it work? The answer is a resounding “Yes!” Why? Because this bank is pounding hard the message that while it might be new to banking in California (my home state), it is not new to been banking. In fact, they tout, they’ve been around for years.

By playing music from a few decades earlier, it subtly reinforces that it too can remember when those were the hit songs.

Breyers Ice Cream is using “How Long Has This Been Going On”, but the music is primarily background music. In other words, the song isn’t integral to the :30 second spot. But, that doesn’t seem to have silenced the baby boomers who are ecstatic to have this tune back out in the popular media.

Swiffer “Baby Come Back” commercial is almost a parody with the lyrics supplying the punch line: the abandoned mop is urging a female consumer who switched over to Swiffer, to “come back.”

Key Lessons to Learn

The common thread throughout all of these ads is that the music is appropriate to its target market. These ads wouldn’t resonate if, for example, the music was taken from Eminem’s new single.

Good retailers, such as Neiman Marcus, have zoned their music so it’s appropriate to each department and prospect. Next time you’re in a store, wander from the teen’s department to the women’s department and listen for a discernible difference in the music choice. The last time I was in Abercrombie & Fitch, for example, the music was so loud that I clearly knew this music wasn’t intended for me, but for the younger, hipper customers.

How Can You Use Music?

Remembering that music also influences our mood, try music as background to your office. Or, if your office is in another room of your house, try putting music behind your voice mail greeting. Heck, you can even use music when you have to put callers on hold!

Until next week…..Liz

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