Joel Beckerman — Founder, Composer & Producer, Man Made Music
Joel talks to TheNextGag about being on stage at the Cannes Lions, the increasing importance of audio and Sonic Humanism.
Joel Beckerman is a Founder, Composer & Producer of Man Made Music, a strategic music and sound studio, in the USA.
Joel Beckerman is the Founder of Man Made Music, a strategic music and sound studio that exists at the forefront of music, sound and brands. As innovators in their field, Man Made Music has partnered with global brands such as AT&T, Disney, Deloitte, Abbott, Hulu, Nissan, QVC, IMAX and Subway to craft unique sonic experiences.
His work began in network television creating themes for Entertainment Tonight, HBO Features, CBS This Morning, Super Bowl on NBC, ESPN 30 for 30 and has evolved into pioneering a musical approach for products, brands and environments.
Beckerman, a known thought leader in sound and business, is the author of The Sonic Boom: How Sound Transforms the Way We Think, Feel and Buy and a Fast Company Most Creative. Beckerman has led talks on stages around the world including SXSW, London Design Week, C2 Montreal, Fast Company Innovation Festival and Future of Storytelling.
Joel was on stage at the 2018 Cannes Lions in a session called “Communicating Health Stories Through Sound”.
What we’re seeing across industries is a blurring of the lines between brand, entertainment, marketing and product.
THENEXTGAG: HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE MAN MADE MUSIC ?
JOEL BECKERMANN: Man Made Music is a strategic music and sound studio. What that means essentially is that we create original sound and music for entertainment and brand experiences, working with clients such as CBS, ESPN’s 30 for 30, Hulu, AT&T, Allstate, Abbott and IMAX. We also create sound and music for products and devices, even partnering with Nissan to create the sound of their future fleet of electric vehicles.
AT&T is possibly the most 360 of the sonic branded programs we’ve created, spanning across broadcast advertisement, sponsorship and retail spaces, and devices. What we’re seeing across industries is a blurring of the lines between brand, entertainment, marketing and product. Sound can create the through line between all of these experiences, helping the brand to show up at every touch point.
TNG: CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR WORK OUTSIDE OF TRADITIONAL SONIC BRANDING ?
JB: Our work with Nissan was certainly a foray into a new level of connected devices. The sound that we ended up creating, which Nissan called Canto, or Italian for “I Sing”, is the external sound of the vehicle as it accelerates and decelerates up to 30km/hr. It has implications not only for pedestrians as a safety measure but it also intentionally addresses the cacophonous nature of our city streets.
Additionally we are working in developing the sounds of home robotics, and exploring the world of themed parks and museums.
Lastly, what we are really excited about is the work we are doing in healthcare. Right now, hospitals are horrible places for people to get better because they are between eight to twelve medical devices in most emergency rooms constantly sending off alarms around the clock. We are working on strategies and soundscapes that are much more useful for doctors and for nurses, but also much more calming for patients.
It’s one of our stated goals as an organization to solve this issue of Alarm Fatigue.
And then, there are specific things that we are doing with our sister company, Ecco VR, and a partner company, AppliedVR, which is developing visual and sonic soundscapes for chronic pain patients in hospitals.
TNG: HOW DID YOU END UP ON CANNES STAGE ?
JB: I was honoured to be invited to speak at Lions Health this year about a combination of what what we are doing for patients and for caregivers but also what we’ve done with sonic identity systems for global health brands such as Alzheimer’s Association and Abbott.
For the Alzheimer’s Association specifically, we created several variations of their primary brand anthem with different emotional takeaways — this way they have a flexible system they can flex for a variety of messaging, while always staying on brand. For example, the primary brand anthem is somewhat celebratory because the Alzheimer’s Association is always looking towards building solutions and coming up with cures and preventive measures. But occasionally there are needs for a quieter, more pensive arrangement for more sensitive content. This type of flexibility can be especially valuable for healthcare organizations which often have disparate audiences they must cater to.
Sound is this unseen powerful force for healing, for guiding people’s choices, changing their moods in an instant and making emotional connections.
TNG: WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE PEOPLE TO TAKE AWAY FROM THE TALK ?
JB: I wrote a book about four years ago called “Sonic Boom”, subtitle, “How sound transform the way we think and feel and buy.” Really the premise of the whole book is what I call Sonic Humanism, which is using music and sounds to make people’s lives richer and simpler.
The main takeaway of the talk tomorrow is that sound is this unseen powerful force for healing, for guiding people’s choices, changing their moods in an instant and making emotional connections. It is a very powerful tool. In terms of creating wellness, sonification of data, making caregivers jobs’ easier and also that we can thoughtfully score sounds in hospitals, that we can thoughtfully use sound to make people’s lives richer and simpler.
TNG: AFTER MOVING INTO PRODUCTS, CARS, AND HEALTHCARE, WHAT IS THE NEXT ENTRY FOR MAN MADE MUSIC ? ARE YOU GOING INTO PODCASTS ? INTO VOICE ?
JB: It’s interesting you mention that. We have been doing some prototyping and just got some research back. We work in partnership with a company called Sentient Decision Science that specializes, among other things, in subconscious research.
Are you familiar with any of this sort of subconscious research?
TNG: NOT AT ALL.
JB: The type of testing that we are working on is called “Implicit Association Testing”. So, if you think about in a testing situation where you are forced to make a choice, like “Does X feel more this or that?” or “Are you more less likely to do this or that?” And when you put people under time pressure, they stop thinking and they respond more subconsciously.
We did this prototyping of three existing Alexa skills. One is buying a movie ticket, the other one is turning the lights on and off in your house and the third is getting a stain out of your jacket, which has multiple steps.
What put each of those experiences into research as is and then tested it against the same experiences with intentional sound and music added. The sound we implemented changed for each experience, for buying a movie ticket, it felt like you were going to the movies. It had music and sounds sort of like in the movies and there was a rewarding sound when you were actually successful in your purchase.
For the light on/lights off one, is utilizing the semiotics sound. Are you familiar with semiotics ?
TNG: NO.
JB: Semiotics is the science of symbols. In the same way, that perhaps fifteen meters away, you could see a stop sign and know what it is without having to read the words. It is a symbol.
Sound has symbols as way of intuitive communicating meaning. Like the click of a light switch or the securing of a deadbolt. Both of those sounds instantly communicate meaning. So in the case of the Alexa light prototype, we created a stylized version of the light switch “click” — something that could potentially be ownable and give a brand attribution, but still communicates meaning, playing off existing sound semiotics.
And the third one, the step-by-step stain removal, we had sort of a rewarding sound every time you finished a step to encourage people to want to continue to the next step.
In this preliminary prototyping, replacing Alexa saying “okay” with a sonic cue increased the emotional appeal of the experience by 45%.
We also saw a drop in the estimated time of the experience, suggesting that the use of sound decreased cognitive load.
Adding a musical intro and outro to a transactional experience of purchasing a movie ticket, increased emotional appeal by 35% and people were more likely to perceive the experience helpful, easy, and fast.
Actually, it is obvious when you think about it, but the vast majority of companies that are thinking about Alexa skills are just thinking about the voice and they are not thinking about how they might use sound to make the experiences richer or more intuitive.
Joel Beckerman
Founder, Composer & Producer
