Why Do Brands Use Music In Ads

Music has always had an important place in people’s life. Indeed, iTunes Store now sells 21 million songs each day. Nowadays, we can listen to music anywhere: at home, in our cars, in stores and thanks to the radio, mobile phones, mp3 players. Sometimes we do not even realize when we are listening to music. It can be considered as a universal language and can enable to reunite people from all backgrounds. For instance, in TV commercials, there is most of the time music in the background or a jingle. But what are the reasons why brands use music in their advertisements? First of all, it helps to support advertisements structure and continuity, to catch consumers’ attention and to entertain them. It is also an easier way to target consumers and to help them memorize the brand.

One of the basic attributes of music is to support advertisements structure and continuity. According to David Huron, “music is used to mediate between disjoint images” (1989, p561). It is used as a transition. Music is employed as an uninterrupted background and it is also used to emphasize dramatic moments.

It contributes to an effective advert by entertaining customers. Music makes the commercial more attractive and therefore engages the attention. It does not need to have any link with the product or the service promoted in the ad, “in order to play an effective and useful function” (Huron, 1989, p561). If there is no talking in the ad, it can permit people to stay focused. However, according to Zander (2006), the choice of music for an ad must be, normally, done carefully. It creates attention, gives implicit and explicit messages, generates emotions and helps to retain information. Gorn’s experiment, in 1982, showed that, through two pairing pens of different colours with both well-liked and disliked music, 79% of the subjects chose the pen with music they liked. This demonstrates that consumers have an important affection for music, creating a conditioned reaction. Nevertheless, “the personal experience and affect with the product are factors that represent limits to this paradigm” (Gorn, 1982).

Some products are so common that brands need original ways to promote them. To make their ad more interesting, brands are sometimes using famous singers in their commercials. For instance, Beyoncé Knowles is Pepsi’s “brand ambassador”. The brand is using her songs and she is part of their commercials to sell their sodas. They are trying to put a message across this ad: “Live For Now”. Obviously, this has nothing to deal with sodas but it helps to promote them. In this case, the use of music, and of a famous singer in the same occasion, influence consumers’ behaviours by creating attitude and emotions.

Moreover, it is easier to memorize a piece of music than spoken language or images because “music tends to linger in the listeners mind” (Huron, 1989, p562). The use of a rhythmic background increase the memorability of a product or its name. Marketers are using it as a marketing strategy. They are looking for a catchy song which will get stuck in people’s mind. According to Steve Hall, “they want their brand message to pop in there too every time you hear that tune”. A classic jingle is the most common musical technique to help memorability. Marketers know that, most of the time, the melody will persist mentally long after the actual sound disappears.

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