Marketing guru Martin Lindstrom writes about "addictive" sounds in Fast Company with all the glee of a mob boss who just figured out how to get a new hyper-addictive drug on the streets of his territory.
There's no doubt about it, sound is immensely powerful. And yet 83% of all the advertising communication we're exposed to daily (bearing in mind that we will see two million TV commercials in a single lifetime) focuses, almost exclusively, on the sense of sight. That leaves just 17% for the remaining four senses. Think about how much we rely on sound. It confirms a connection when dialing or texting on cell phones and alerts us to emergencies. When the sound was removed from slot machines in Las Vegas, revenue fell by 24%. Experiments undertaken in restaurants show that when slow music (slower than the rhythm of a heartbeat) is played, we eat slower--and we eat more!
Sound used to be a vital tool of branding because it was invented on radio (i.e. the NBC chimes) but it's taken a back seat to visuals in the TV and HDTV age. Lindstrom is struck (as he should be) by the success of the Intel sound, which ranked among the most "addictive" sounds he tested in a trial of deep brain response. If a computer chip can be given a "sound" by marketers, imagine how much further advertisers could take this.
OR we could take charge of our own ears and brains and take more steps to improve the signal to noise ratio of what we hear. Demand more noise abatement and buy better speakers. Go to more concerts. Sit in the park and just listen. We get a vast amount from our ears semi-consciously because they're so hyper-evolved and sensitive. But as with our other forms of attention, if we don't attend to them, advertisers will hack that powerful and wide-open port we carry around on the sides of our heads.
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