Music as a language — How & why music is more important than ever?

It’s no more just music, it’s an aid to marketing for business as well

Not a long time ago, music was an escape door from a stressful life. Now, not only music is a massive industry, it’s a brand recognition medium.

Just like colors, music is also an aid to empower brand recalling. I don’t know about other nations, but in India, I remember brands like Bajaj, Ujala & Amul (in the ’90s or early ‘20s) running ads that had music leading the branding from the front.

This music is nostalgia for anyone of that era. This music has a very powerful brand recall value, so much that even after almost 3 decades, people can recognize the brand, even the music is nowhere heard.

Funny thing is, the ads mentioned above have been just for a year or two.

To name a few, these are some brands that had music that had the lead role.

Music has been the most important element of ads & movies in India.

Ads & movies have commercial value, it’s business. People pour money to reap the benefits later.

You get the point.

But ever wondered why music and not anything else?

Of all the types of media, music has the highest impact on both the conscious & subconscious mind.

Music is both ‘the business’, & ‘for business’.

Let me share some ways brands have used music to grow their business, how you too can use it for your business & some studies that will help you stomach this whole thing.

Currently listening: 12,000,000 Clips

Understanding ‘mere-exposure effect’

The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon that makes people make preferences for products & services based on the familiarity of that thing.

You can familiarize people by two things, colors & music. Both doing the talking with the subconscious mind.

The magic lies in the stimulus. The receptors in your ears that make the brain remember something when they receive familiar inputs or in this case, music.

In the 1960s, Robert Zajnoc’s experiments exposed the subjects to a familiar stimulus that led the subjects to feel positive.

This came as a shock because when the subjects were exposed to similar stimuli but this time it was never presented before, they didn’t find it positive.

At first, Zajnoc thought that it was the positive (& negative) words that were used in the experiment that made the subject feel positive (or negative) about it.

But he soon found himself to be so wrong, when he tried exposing the subjects to shapes, colors & photographs.

It wasn’t the words, it was how they were exposed.

Once he realized this, he presented the subjects, some repeated stimuli. But this time, Zajnoc showed the stimuli that the subjects weren’t consciously aware of (completely random stuff).

The subjects showed ‘affective bias’ towards the repeated stimuli.

For eg, you wouldn't consciously remember that random person you saw in the coffee shop you visit every single day, unless you see him/her ‘repeatedly’, or atleast thrice.

Zajnoc compared the results of stimuli exposed longer (which was just enough for the subjects to be aware of it consciously) with the stimuli that were exposed so briefly that the subjects did not show any conscious awareness.

“Another experiment exposed Chinese characters for short times to two groups of people. They were then told that these symbols represented adjectives and were asked to rate whether the symbols held positive or negative connotations. The symbols the subjects had previously seen were consistently rated more positively than those they had not. In a similar experiment, people were not asked to rate the connotations of the symbols, but to describe their mood after the experiment. Members of the group with repeated exposure to certain characters reported being in better moods than those without.” — Wikipedia

If you’re not interested in the experiment (In case you are interested, here’s the research paper if you’re interested in reading further), I’ll jump to the results instead (& how you can apply it to establish as a brand)

Just before I begin the sweet part of this post, I want you to know the whole experiment burns down to one sentence,

“We make judgment first (subconscious thing), and then seek justification (conscious thing)”

Music for business — building perpetual fluency for your brand

Perpetual Fluency, another fancy term that describes the ease of processing a memory that lives inside your head, thanks to repeated stimuli.

Okay, I’m gonna throw yet another fancy word, but this one’s a bit more fun.

Semantic Satiation, the weird phenomenon where the repetition of a word or a phrase loses it’s meaning to the listeners.

No! Nothing’s wrong with you.

It’s your brain that dives deep into understanding how the word sounds, leaving behind the meaning of that word.

It’s good that your brain does that! Sign of an active brain 🧠

How music impacts consumer behavior & mood?

Malls do it, stores do it, filmmakers do it & brands do it.

All smartphone brands have their own copyrighted tune. People recognize the brand just be the tune, no wonder the default caller tone is set to that particular tone that’s highly recognizable.

Music designs how much you’re buying — if the music is good & makes you feel good, you’re definitely buying more. Aren’t you?

The reason is you feel good, uplifted & sometimes motivated.

I’ll tell you a little story that’s still fresh.

I was in college days when I visited the nearest mall. Temperature & smack that was talk of the town back then.

I first time I heard the music, I didn’t know the name or any particulars about the song. It was back in my high-school days.

The next time when I heard the music being played in a shopping mall (it was a coffee shop, Barista if I remember it right), I immediately recognized it.

I spent some immediate cash to listen to the song.

And the next thing I know is, I went there again, and again and again.

Those were the days where the Internet didn’t prominently dominate India. No Spotify to quickly download, No Shazam to recognize the song.

You see what happened here? The coffee shop had a repeating customer.

They earned it.

Moving on…

What do Gyms do?

Loud & energetic music makes you sweat hard & mirrors in the gym let you see your shredded physique.

The music talks to your subconscious mind without you even realizing it. You get accustomed to working out more with that kinda music, feel fit and assure yourself that you’re never leaving the gym membership unless the gym owner decides to be complete nonsense.

Music triggers emotion, emotion becomes a habit, a habit becomes a paradigm.

Music plays with the buyer’s behavior. Music controls it.

Here’s a ted-talk that’s not directly related to this post, but it tells a lot about customer behavior while shopping:

The core essence of this not music, it’s repetitive music. Music triggers the memory and creates an urge to go back to the place where you heard it first.

Just like any other animal, music controls us. Which is good & bad, depends if you’re a consumer or seller.

Where do words work? The hidden hacks that put your subconscious mind to work

Words in a way are music nodes, just not melodious sometimes. Not just that melodious tone, any sound wave works. You just have to package it right.

#1 Webinars: The host guides you to take some action by repeatedly saying the call to action.

Just before I began working on this post, I attended a webinar. Leaving alone the topic, let's focus on the call to action.

The host repeatedly said to comment a yes for the question “Am I making myself clear? Give me yes if I’m clear”

Heard this thrice, and bam! I was typing a yes in the comment section.

#2 Retail & shopping: In the year 2000, a survey was conducted that showed that the speed of music played in the stores directly affected the time customers spend inside the store.

#3 Restuarant & Cafès: The music creates an ambiance that makes you spend more time inside and hence spend more. Everything that’s inside a restaurant & cafè is to retain you inside the premises. Obviously, you wouldn’t sit idle, you’d order something.

I get it, you cannot fund copyrighted music, you can create or use royalty-free music to create a recall value inside your target audience. There are a ton of services out there that has royalty-free music that you can use.

The more you make the audience hear the tune, the more likely it is that they recognize you as a brand just by listening to it.

Once the tune registers in their subconscious mind, or once you see people recognizing your brand by music you use.

Or the words you use to interact with your customer. It can be in the form of text or real sound waves doing the magic on the subconscious mind.

Business is fun if you can understand how to influence the consumer the right way.

This was my bit of how music can make businesses have more sales, establish a recall value & influence people with the music.

If you need any help regarding your business, you can reach out to me on a chat or schedule a paid consulting call.

Music is highly influential, I’m still listening to this song on loop.

Talk soon,