An Investigation Into Sound and Music in Branding: Premises and Practices of Production

Introduction

The decline of traditional visual and auditory communication and the exponential growth of products, services, and organizations, coincides with the existence of an experience economy, a concept put forward by Pine and Gilmore in 1999. The experience economy, which was established from the end of the 20^th century into the 21^st century, in a scenario of search for differentiation, occurred concomitantly with the emergence of markets such as sensorial branding and, more specifically for this study, sound and musical brand communication, such as sound branding and music branding.

This conjuncture is characterized as mediatized and increasingly crossed by technological innovations that affect the physical and emotional senses of individuals, making clear the importance of investigating the stimulation of sensorial experiences of brands. Therefore, the notion of experience economy is considered, in which, instead of assets and services, sensations are an economic activity, and affections occur through the senses (Pine & Gilmore, 1999, p. 12). As such, there is the sensorial branding, a differentiated strategy in terms of reducing the use of traditional visual and auditory media in communication between brands and their stakeholders.

Then, using stimuli to the five human senses to generate emotion, experience, and memory, and creating a sensory identity for brands, sensorial branding is a growing market based on the production of new forms of interaction through the body´s main sensations, which are visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory. The current demands of the market scenario have created, thus, a search for deeper experience and relevance of the brand with their consumer audiences through tools that affect the subject, on a neurological level, such as the cerebral impacts of the use of sound and music, constituting an auditory sensorial dimension of brands.

In view of this, it should be added that the study in question involves the perception of auditory sensory experiences of brands in view of the existence of a neurological concept of taste. This concept is understood as a construction of taste, and in more detail of taste for sounds and music attributed to brands, which is constituted through the individual´s ability to process information at a non-conscious level, without having immediate and complete perception. Gustafsson (2015, p. 31) presents that there are quantitative consumer studies – for example Oakes & North (2008), Crisinel et al. (2012), Vijaykumar et al. (2012) – proposing that sonic branding works mainly on a subconscious level, which can be utilized by marketers.

What is argued here is that what is constituted is a memory of the body, and not specifically a memory that originates from conscious attention. This definition is considered due to the significant increase in investment in multisensory communication in the last few years. In terms of multisensory communication, according to researcher Erthal (2018, p. 189), “[…] the Sound Branding agencies, which create audiologues, jingles, brandsong, brandvoice, brandsoundscapes etc. planning characteristic soundscapes” are part of new forms of business, being considered emerging markets that work with corporeal affectations, taste, and consciousness.

In short, the overview of this chapter includes the experience economy, concomitant with the emerging sensorial branding and sound and music branding markets, to the relationship between stimulus to differentiation and neuroscientific perspectives. Thus, the main objective of the study is to investigate the notions – on the production process and its effectiveness with the public – of those who produce the sound and musical identity of brands in agencies that work specifically with the elements sound and music to communicate brand identities. The contact was made with agencies in the emerging Brazilian and Portuguese markets in order to analyze what they think about the public, their reactions, and how this influences the development of sound branding and music branding projects.

The chapter is organized as follows: after presenting the most pertinent literature review, the results were discussed of a qualitative investigation that included 7 individualized semi-structured interviews with six professionals from sound branding and music branding agencies, three Brazilians and three Portuguese, and with one neuroscientist and neuromarketing specialist. Finally, then, were presented the conclusions, the implications, and the avenues for future research.