We’ve heard of brand voice, brand image and brand awareness – but what about brand sound? Some might think a brand is visual – something we can see, touch and smell. Future Dimensions believes a brand is all those things, and more.
Much More Than Background Music
If you closed your eyes and smelt a certain fragrance you might easily be able to identify it, or what if you felt a certain brand of shoe? You could most likely pinpoint what brand of shoe it is. There are distinct things that make up a brand, but what about how it sounds? If you closed your eyes and listened to music – would you think of a certain place or be able to associate that music to a specific experience you had?
Music is powerful: it can take us places, remind us of things and alter our mood. Instantly.
In-store Sound: Getting in The Zone
There are many factors that add to atmosphere in a retail environment, music being a front runner. Why is it so important to include music as a marketing tool in the overall customer experience?
We outline a few simple, but very good reasons here:
- Relatively reasonable to provide – but has a big effect!
- Easily changed – playlists can be curated, changed, and managed to suit trends. New hits and music genres come in and out of fashion all the time.
- Music and sound have a level of ‘predictable appeal’ to certain target markets, based on age and lifestyle – making it a very targeted marketing tool.
All of the above can result in consumers and shoppers spending more time (and money) in the stores where the music they are shopping to speaks to them on a particular level. Naturally, in larger stores, different areas play different music – referred to as ‘zoning’. This makes complete sense: if we want each niche demographic to hear their music of preference playing in the department they are most likely to spend more time in, in turn increasing their customer experience ten-fold.
Make Shopping an Emotive Experience
Research shows that people respond far beyond merely the stimuli that they get from the product in front of them – whether it be a pair of jeans, a luxury brand of lipstick or a perfectly presented pastry and cappuccino on the side. The other objects around them, such as the staff, the shop layout and signage and the atmosphere, influence their decisions and experience. This is what we call ‘Atmospherics’ – and it is a key principle of marketing in the retail environment. More specifically atmospherics is the effort retailers need to make in order to create buying environments that evoke an emotional response and increase the probability of making the decision to purchase whatever is in your basket.
We are by our very nature emotional creatures, and we thrive on experiences which leave us feeling a sense of joy and happiness. This is why the sound of your brand is so crucial to your customers – those who keep coming back to experience something more than just walking away with a new pair of jeans.