Music leaves a mark. We all know this intuitively. Whether it be through catchy melodies or playful lyricism, it appears that people have a natural affinity to love music. We can explain this simply through music’s ability to create potent emotional responses in listeners, and there’s plenty of research to back up such a claim. But it goes a step deeper.
Not only does music evoke strong emotions, but studies have suggested that those strong emotions play a large role in making memories. Put simply, listening to powerful music can create powerful, lasting memories.
In an advertising context, this labels music as an important tool in creating strong, lasting impressions in viewers. A tool which, if used to its full potential, can help a product or brand stand out from the swarm of advertising noise which surrounds us all in the 21st century.
Let’s take a closer look at four of the key types of music mobilised in advertising, all of which harness this great potential.
Does Music Really Make That Big a Difference?
We can all easily understand the assumption of music enhancing advertisements. After all, over 84% of advertisements which we come face-to-face with on a daily basis, be it on social media, streaming sites or TV, feature music—so it must be important.
There are a whole host of ways in which this music affects viewers, but we can break these down into six defined categories.
1. Appealing to Emotions
Whether upbeat, motivational, serious or sophisticated, music provides a direct avenue of communication with viewer emotions. Choosing the right music can help evoke such feelings in a viewer, connecting such emotions (or emotional changes) with the product/brand.
2. Aiding Narrative Structure
Within its melodies, lyrics, twists and turns, each piece of music holds its own narrative. These musical narratives can help to reinforce the visual narrative of an ad, navigating viewers through the trajectory of the ad.
3. Creating Tonal Shifts
Classical music and 808-heavy beats often don’t share the same ground but placing them next to one another could create a hugely affective tonal shift. In this way, music can be an effective tool in creating dramatic changes within an ad—whether they be changes present within one piece of music, or changes made by placing contrasting songs next to one another.
4. Establishing Brand Authority
Popular songs are expensive; to an extent we all know this. Thus, featuring an incredibly well-known track, group or piece of music in an advert can help associate a brand with quality par excellence. Not to mention that a well-known track may also help with…
5. Building Memories
As we’ve already established, emotions within music help us build strong memories. Meaning that pairing a particularly affective tune with a product/brand may help to boost its memorability.
6. Appealing to Target Audiences
Products and music both have their niches. When these are made to overlap, it can be very powerful. While this isn’t necessarily applicable to all products or advertising campaigns, choosing the perfect music to suit your target market can help bring an advert even closer to them.
How is Music Used?
Looking closer at the adverts which use music, we can draw some more interesting conclusions.
Of the 84% of ads which use music, 9 in 10 advertisements use music (be it one or more tracks) continuously throughout the entire runtime, while only 1 in 10 would use music in part of the commercial. While this may initially sound like its virtually essential to use a track all the way through, remember the tonal shifts that can be crafted from splicing together multiple contrasting tracks.
There’s a slightly more even divide between ads which use instrumental music—63%—and those that use lyrical music—37%.
Lyrical music can have an edge in terms of presence; often featuring more prominently in an ad and thus allowing its influence to be felt much more. In contrast, instrumental music is commonly used as a background element, creating a “sound bed” for elements like voiceovers or dialogue to be placed on top of.
Thus, it’s clear that the style of advertisement may dictate how music can be best implemented.
The 4 Key Types of Music Used in Advertising
While almost every style of music has found its way into at least one advertisement, the soundtracks to most ads can be broken down into four clear categories. Each which hold their own pros and cons.
1. Contemporary Pop
The simplest way to connect with contemporary audiences, especially specific demographics, is to play them something they can vibe with. Contemporary pop music—be it R&B, pop-rock or rap—does exactly this. Studies have even found that pop music in ads can increase viewers’ attention, emotion, and memory by 20%. With that affective power even rising with multiple viewings.
A fantastic example of this is Samsung’s recent S20 advert featuring the BTS’s earworm, ‘Dynamite’.
The catch? Well, pop music isn’t always going to be popular. Meaning that ads using contemporary pop music are likely to age very poorly. Fortunately, given that advertising campaigns have a limited run this may well be irrelevant for shorter campaigns. Leaving the cons of cost—most very popular pop music rights are very expensive—and the fact that certain musicians may not want their music advertising specific products, as many see it as a kind of brand endorsement.
To get around these issues some advertisers opt for instrumental versions of pop songs.
2. Iconic Tracks
Around 32% of commercials feature well-known pieces of music, with most of these coming from big brands with big budgets for licensing. But there’s a good reason for this, as songs which have already solidified themselves as classics clearly have the ability to stick in people’s heads—doubling down on that memory making we’ve talked so much about.
The use of iconic tracks also hits a second major positive: clout. By featuring well known songs a brand is not only associating themselves with great music, but they are showing they have the funds to afford it. A perfect example of this was Microsoft’s “Start Me Up” campaign which launched the Windows 95 to the Rolling Stones’ track of the same name—costing the company a hefty $3 million to secure music rights alone!
Weighty price tags are clearly the main con of using iconic tracks, but there is also a more hidden con: reputation. Today reputation matters, and if an artist’s reputation is suddenly muddied—R. Kelly style—you don’t want your ad campaign to backfire due to association.
3. Classical and Instrumental Music
While pop songs may be the most effective at delivering an emotional punch, they aren’t suited to all types of ads. That’s where classical music, and other instrumental music, comes in.
Classical music is timeless and can encompass a wide range of musical tones, even in a single piece. The genre is also packed with recognisable, and memorable, tracks which can often be bought for a fraction of the price compared to their pop counterparts. This makes it perfect to be implemented across many types of media—including advertising.
As classical music most often doesn’t feature a vocal track, it also leaves plenty of room for additional elements—be that voiceover, dialogue or diegetic sound. It’s also almost undeniable that classical music comes with an air of sophistication; something which can be used to reinforce the prestige of a brand or to fuel an entertaining audio-visual parody.
The MacBook Pro “Bulbs” advertisement is but one in a sea of excellent examples of all of this.
The only drawback of using classical music is in its ubiquity. Requiring careful implementation to avoid cliché.
4. Jingles & Custom Compositions
We all know jingles—some clever and catchy, some cliché and crass. Perhaps the toughest form of music to get right in advertising, a jingle is a type of branded music that will stick with a brand for multiple advertising campaigns (potentially years or even decades) to become a key part of their image.
If done right, these phrases or tunes can become calling cards of the brand, helping to condense the ideology or “feel” of a brand into a short, snappy melody or lyric.
“I’m Lovin’ It”, McDonalds’ iconic slogan, originated from one such jingle produced in 2003 by the, then, preeminent Justin Timberlake.
But jingles don’t just need to be done by well known musicians; ad campaigns like Melbourne Trains’ “Dumb Ways to Die” have shown a catchy jingle can surpass even the cause it was a part of.
The issue with jingles is they are almost impossible to perfect, with many brands trying and failing miserably. Meaning that you may need to be ready for a lot of trial and error when undertaking this type of music production for advertising.
That said, there are many musicians who dedicate their craft to creating the perfect jingles and custom compositions for advertising: such as companies like Jingle House.
Remember Your Brand and Your Consumer
With these key forms of music in mind, you may already be able to pick out your favourite. But when doing so it’s fundamental to ensure the choice aligns with your brand identity, target market and advertising destination. While the first two are self-explanatory, advertising destination can be more subtle.
While you can assume most viewers will hear the audio in a television ad, you cannot be so sure for social media advertisements. Behavioural metrics show that around 85% of viewing on Facebook is done with the sound off, meaning that it may not be in your best interest to secure expensive musical rights for an ad there.
And, ultimately, while music has the potential to increase the efficacy of an advert, we have to remember its not all in the music. In other words, a great advertisement campaign requires quality across the board from concept to visual execution to the right music.