What is the role of sound in marketing? Richard chats with Aifric Lennon of MassiveMusic about the power of sound to affect people's moods and perception around brands and products. From licensing music to creating sonic logos, there are many types of sounds that can be connected to a brand. Sounds and music are more visceral to our minds than things we see - to the point where we often don't realize the impact! But careful use can be a powerful tool in your efforts to keep your brand top-of-mind.
Brandon Wehn (00:08):
Welcome to the show. This is Brandon Wehn, and you are listening to the Understanding Consumer Neuroscience podcast, brought to you by the folks at CloudArmy. In this episode, Richard talks to Aifric Lennon of MassiveMusic about the power of sound to influence connections to brand, whether with licensed music in advertising, or a unique jingle.
Richard Campbell (00:37):
Hi, this is Richard Campbell. Thanks for listening to Understanding Consumer Neuroscience. Today my guest is Aifric Lennon, who is a director of research strategy at MassiveMusic, which is a great name. What does MassiveMusic do? Thank you for coming on the show, but what is MassiveMusic?
Aifric Lennon (00:52):
Thanks, Richard. Yeah, great to be here. It is a good name. Yeah, we get a lot of jokes and slags about our name. "Are you really that massive?"
Richard Campbell (01:05):
"How massive are you?" Yeah.
Aifric Lennon (01:07):
"How massive are you?" Yeah. But MassiveMusic, it was founded over 20 years ago now in Amsterdam by a guy called Hans Brouwer, and we are now a global creative music agency. So we specialize in helping brands find their voice and tell their stories through music and sound. So everything from developing ownable sonic identities, to curating impactful music strategies for brands, composing music for advertising, product sound development, voice strategy, the entire ecosystem of sound and music when it comes to helping brands be more effective in that space.
Richard Campbell (01:50):
I mean lots of advertising uses licensed music. I always wonder about how they pick the music to license in the first place. I mean on one hand, is it even available and does it make financial sense? But associating yourself with a song, not a small thing.
Aifric Lennon (02:07):
Definitely not a small thing. So there are of course some excellent examples of brands licensing hit music and doing that in a really clever, strategic way that fits their brand and that feels really ownable. But sometimes we see cases where brands quite subjectively is really hooked on something quite subjectively, or the director of the advertisement himself or herself is really hooked on a track and has it on the edit for the entire production process and decides, "Okay, yeah, this has to be the track that we put on this ad". And often maybe it's not grounded in strategic thought.
Richard Campbell (02:52):
Yeah. That whole idea of you're not the customer, and that seems like the trap you're falling into there.
Aifric Lennon (02:58):
Yeah, absolutely. And oftentimes that's a big challenge. The people sitting in the boardroom making decisions on music are not the audience.
Richard Campbell (03:09):
Well, and the nature of popular music is that it is transient. So I mean, I get it if you hit it in the window where it's in the gestalt, but it's not going to stay in the gestalt. You're not always going to pick a McCartney Let It Be that's going to last for centuries. You're probably not going to pick that song, you probably can't afford that song, so you're going to get one that's in the minds for a year or two and then it's effectively dated.
Aifric Lennon (03:34):
Totally. And look, it's a really great way of driving attention, driving that fame for an ad. If you want to really capture the zeitgeist and capture your audience and you do that strategically, then absolutely hit licensing can be a really effective way of doing that. But there are considerations, as you mentioned, like longevity, trends, which are... Music trends nowadays are moving at really rapid rate.
Richard Campbell (04:00):
Fast. Especially when you get into the TikTok land.
Aifric Lennon (04:03):
Yep.
Richard Campbell (04:03):
It's minutes. Like it's crazy. I don't think you can make material fast enough half the time.
Aifric Lennon (04:09):
No, and we see that quite often with clients who want to jump onto a trend on TikTok and they want to license a trending track, and by the time they actually get through the paperwork and we help them through that process-
Richard Campbell (04:22):
Right. Make the deal.
Aifric Lennon (04:23):
The trend is nearly passed.
Richard Campbell (04:24):
It's over. Yeah.
Aifric Lennon (04:26):
Yeah. So sometimes we do recommend actually thinking about are there other options on the cards? Is there a way to drive the fame and achieve the desired effect, but in a more ownable way? Can you think about you re-recording a hit track, but with a young up and coming artist or with an artist that feels more relatable to your audience? Is there a way of tapping into some of those more grassroots artists, potentially saving cost as well.
Richard Campbell (04:58):
Sure.
Aifric Lennon (04:58):
Being able to craft something that feels more like the brand's personality and style, rather than just borrowing?
Richard Campbell (05:03):
I mean now you're taking on the production part of it, but I would argue this what I hire you for. It's like, "Find me an artist who's willing to do a version of this song that we like". I love that opportunity. That's going to be some time too, but you're kind of creating a unique asset then, at least for a period of time. For as long as that song is relevant.
Aifric Lennon (05:25):
Absolutely.
Richard Campbell (05:26):
Yeah.
Aifric Lennon (05:26):
Absolutely, yeah.
Richard Campbell (05:27):
That'd be a pretty special thing. Like I would be excited to have made something like that. Hopefully it also makes a good campaign.
Aifric Lennon (05:34):
Yeah, totally. And there's less risk in terms of ownability at that moment as well. There's always the risk. We have seen it, even a few cases this year, where brands have licensed a hit track and then less than a week later an adjacent brand has launched a campaign using the exact same track, and they're both airing on the TV or on radio at the same time. And it's like how are you going to drive distinctiveness for your brand if you're kind of falling into the sea of sameness?
Richard Campbell (06:04):
If you're using a licensable product. And then what I'm thinking on the other side of this is then you have a crisis around the artist, and you don't want to be associated with it anymore.
Aifric Lennon (06:13):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (06:14):
Yeah. All of those things play into that. I mean this is not the only kind of sound that has a role in this, but I think it's something a lot of people relate to in this, "When would I listen to music? What does that shape look like?" and I appreciate your insight there. It's like making a remake is a pretty powerful thing, gives you a little more control, and gives you a double association because maybe that other artist represents your brand in a better way along with this song. So that's really cool, I'm excited about that. [inaudible 00:06:45] on it.
Aifric Lennon (06:45):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (06:45):
What about when you're thinking about the sort of brand associations, of course the classic one, for better or worse, is the McDonald's jingle. But I also think about the Intel chime.
Aifric Lennon (06:55):
Yep.
Richard Campbell (06:56):
When I think about the biggest brands, I don't immediately have an association with something like Coca-Cola and a sound. There's lots of elements of Coca-Cola that are definitive branding things, but I don't know that I've ever gotten a nail to sound. Other than that old Christmas song, but that's going way back these days.
Aifric Lennon (07:12):
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (07:13):
But how do those things emerge? Do you get into that business of making a jingle? Would you call it a jingle?
Aifric Lennon (07:21):
I mean, yeah, some people like to call it a jingle. We use the term sonic logo, sonic identity, sonic signature. There's lots of interchangeable terms. Often we joke at the office around we should put out some sort of music and sound bible or dictionary to help people understand the glossary of terms. But yeah, I think historically the trend in advertising was creating jingles. When sonic branding first emerged, jingles were the popular thing.
Richard Campbell (07:58):
Going back to the beginning of radio, right?
Aifric Lennon (08:00):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (08:01):
Radio needed financing, financing came from products. You only had sound to play with, which also happens to be a very powerful force. You made jingles, that's what they did back when radio was black and white.
Aifric Lennon (08:16):
Yeah. Exactly. They're a really, really powerful way of driving that instant brand awareness, mental availability. And actually in the past five years, we have seen a bit of a resurgence of the jingle.
Richard Campbell (08:31):
Mm-hmm.
Aifric Lennon (08:34):
Brands even Just Eat here in the UK, they're like a food delivery brand, have quite a famous jingle now that's arguably debated as one of the best performing sonic identities out there. And they've even managed to kind of imbue that jingle into culture. They've had Snoop Dogg and Katy Perry come and kind do versions of it, and it's become this kind part of the zeitgeist.
Richard Campbell (09:01):
It's kind of meme-ish now.
Aifric Lennon (09:02):
It's kind of been meme-ified, yeah. So I would say that the main difference between kind a jingle and what we would call a sonic logo is the jingle is often including the brand name, it's usually kind of a longer piece.
Richard Campbell (09:16):
Right. It's not just sounds, it's also words.
Aifric Lennon (09:18):
It's words, yeah. It's longer, it's usually very musical, very memorable. An ear-
Richard Campbell (09:22):
It's an earworm.
Aifric Lennon (09:24):
An earworm, exactly.
Richard Campbell (09:26):
But what is branding but getting into someone's mind and having a positive connection. And we have that with sound all the time, whether or not it's associated with a product or not. I swear there's certain songs in my life that bring out smells, like they were associated with a time in my life where that smell was around.
Aifric Lennon (09:44):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (09:44):
And so I hear that I'm like, "Oh, I smell that thing again". You want to plug into that. There's something very visceral about audio over the more intellectual advertisement that has to be visually computed, like related to. Sounds plug deeper into your brain. Humans have always... For crying out loud, even great apes drum. That's pretty primitive, it's really wired deep in us.
Aifric Lennon (10:13):
It is. It's very innate, and the way that we consume audio and especially melodic or musical audio is often very, very implicit and subconscious. And I think that's partly why historically it's been difficult to measure and quantify the impact of music and sound in advertising, because often the impact is very subliminal or implicit.
Richard Campbell (10:44):
Mm-hmm. And this is where neuroscience comes to play. We're all about the implicit. So sound has a big role to play there.
Aifric Lennon (10:50):
Absolutely. And so that's definitely the path that we're on, at least in terms of the team that I run, is how can we really get to the heart of how music and sound is influencing consumers? And on a day-to-day basis, we're using implicit methodologies to assess how specific sounds that are being created across the MassiveMusic offices, how are they implicitly or subconsciously impacting consumers and target consumers for the brands that we work with.
Richard Campbell (11:30):
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I got to imagine that's a challenge. Come up with four jingles, figure out which one is effective. That's an interesting set of tests to run.
Aifric Lennon (11:38):
It is.
Richard Campbell (11:39):
You can't focus group that.
Aifric Lennon (11:41):
Nope.
Richard Campbell (11:42):
You're trying to get implicit testing done here. This is where folks like CloudArmy probably come to play is, "How do I present a set of tests that get to that implicit behavior?"
Aifric Lennon (11:51):
Totally, yeah. And I think as you just said, quite rightly, it's not something that you can focus group. And actually asking people to rationalize why they feel or what they think about music and sound or why they feel the way they feel can be a real challenge because-
Richard Campbell (12:15):
Yeah, yeah. We already know.
Aifric Lennon (12:16):
Yeah. And often people find it quite hard to describe.
Richard Campbell (12:19):
Why do you like this band? Right?
Aifric Lennon (12:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I like them.
Richard Campbell (12:26):
Like why do you like this song? Because I do.
Aifric Lennon (12:27):
Yeah. So it can be quite hard to rationalize. So I think that's a big reason why, amongst many other reasons, why working with CloudArmy and their implicit methodologies. Combining them with our sonic branding and music testing frameworks has been fantastic because we can really... We don't have to ask people to rationalize. We can really get to the bottom of the gut reaction.
Richard Campbell (12:51):
We can measure it. But it also clarifies for me, the reason we don't see as much sound in marketing is you have to be on board with neuroscience and the implicit side of marketing to even recognize how valuable sound will be.
Aifric Lennon (13:06):
Yeah, totally.
Richard Campbell (13:08):
They go together.
Aifric Lennon (13:08):
Yes. Yeah, they absolutely do. And the whole reason that we set up the research department at MassiveMusic I became, and a few colleagues, quite frustrated with... We were working with more traditional market research agencies, and we just became quite frustrated with A, the lack of focus that was being put on music and sound as part of wider market testing for advertising for branding. And number two, more importantly, the lack of robustness in the measurement frameworks. And we firmly believe that when you're thinking about measuring sound assets, sonic assets, music, voice, you do need to be really nuanced in how you do that in actually the research designs that you put together. And so we didn't feel like we were able to tap into that expertise externally, so we decided to take matters into our own hands.
Richard Campbell (14:15):
Nice.
Aifric Lennon (14:16):
And set up our own internal research department, and obviously working with external experts like CloudArmy as well, to really try and crack the code. Really try and uncover the true value of music and sound for the brands that we work with, and help them to dial that up and actually realize the potential of it.
Richard Campbell (14:42):
Awesome. And I presume it worked out, right? You guys have got a great array of clients. Can you tell me a story of how you measure that and tweak it? What does a win look like?
Aifric Lennon (14:51):
Yeah, we're working with a lot of clients.
Richard Campbell (14:54):
Mm-hmm.
Aifric Lennon (14:54):
So yeah, I think one example is a client of ours here in the UK where we work with them on a kind of a 360 partnership basis. So we've not only developed their sonic branding, so they're kind of sonic logo that they play at the end of their ads and their long form brand anthem, but we also work with them on campaign music. So finding the right track to license. They recently put out a brand campaign, and we also have developed music strategy guidelines for their music selection below the line. So it's kind of a full 360 partnership, and we've partnered with them not only on the creative side, but on the research side the whole way through.
Richard Campbell (15:39):
Nice.
Aifric Lennon (15:40):
Yeah. Their big goal is to try and welcome new, younger, more diverse audiences. And I think, yeah, I mean across the entire scope of work with them, we've been leveraging consumer data and insights. So everything from measuring and predicting the effectiveness of their sonic identity assets. So in the case of this brand, we had I think it was three routes, three different sonic logo options, brand track options that we tested. We looked at things like how well were these assets expressing the desired brand positioning, which in this case was a brand who wanted to be perceived as much more modern than what they had been previously. As well as some other brand traits. We also looked at predicting the memorability of the sonic logo itself.
Richard Campbell (16:29):
Right. Can people sing it back?
Aifric Lennon (16:31):
Yeah. Can people sing it back? But actually the implicit exercise for that is really interesting because it's all about placing the target sound in a [inaudible 00:16:44] of other quite similar sounds, and asking respondents to pick out which sound they'd heard earlier in the survey. But when we think about the implicit layer on that, we were also capturing not only how accurate were people, but what was the speed of response as well. So how quickly were people able to recall that they had heard that sound. It's a pretty good proxy for mental availability there as well.
Richard Campbell (17:10):
And is the goal to recall the brand? Like what do you get from a good sound in terms of what it does to the consumer?
Aifric Lennon (17:18):
So ideally the sound, I guess a gold standard sonic logo, will instantly trigger the brand, number one.
Richard Campbell (17:30):
Yep.
Aifric Lennon (17:31):
And then with that carry some of the desired brand personality and positioning. So instantly trigger the brand and express the richness of that brand's desired profile. Whether that's we are a modern, eco-friendly and organic brand, and ideally you want the sound to really embody that brand personality.
Richard Campbell (18:02):
Right. Get to those phrases, those ideas.
Aifric Lennon (18:05):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (18:06):
Is there almost a call in response to it? Again, I'm going back to that McDonald's jingle with "I'm loving it". You can hear the jingle and half the time the people say the words immediately afterwards, with a grin on their face.
Aifric Lennon (18:17):
Yeah. And actually-
Richard Campbell (18:19):
Whether they buy the product or not, but the brand association is amazing.
Aifric Lennon (18:22):
Totally. And actually what you pointed out there, people humming the McDonald's sound with a grin on their face, the grin on their face is another important point.
Richard Campbell (18:33):
Yeah.
Aifric Lennon (18:33):
You want your sonic identity to trigger a positive emotional response that can then be attributed back to your brand. So that would be the third lens I would say is... I've heard clients and just industry people in general in the past challenge, "Does a jingle or sonic logo need to be appealing? Is it not good enough if it's just really memorable, even if it's a little bit annoying?" And actually the evidence that we have seen and that I've seen would say that yes, actually it is important for it to be appealing and for it to elicit a positive emotional response, because we know that positive emotional response is linked and will be linked to building that memorability. So the two things work hand in hand.
Richard Campbell (19:22):
Yeah. You want it to be in a positive association. Not all press is necessarily good press here.
Aifric Lennon (19:27):
Yes.
Richard Campbell (19:27):
But memorable is also memorable. And I mean we know repetition is important in this equation. In fact, in some respects, the same way that a new pop song gets saturated on the airwaves, so to speak... These days the airwaves look more like internet connections.
Aifric Lennon (19:43):
Mm-hmm.
Richard Campbell (19:44):
Is part of pushing it into the gestalt. There is a reason to do that surge with your brand, because it does get cemented and then you can do a lower level of maintenance after that once folks are on board.
Aifric Lennon (19:57):
Totally. And actually coming back to McDonald's, that was an incredibly powerful strategy that they came up with which was to launch their sonic identity kind of under the radar as part of that Justin Timberlake track that was affiliated with that campaign. And what that did was really saturate the market with this song and really build positive associations.
Richard Campbell (20:26):
Yeah. I wonder if it was an emergent thing. It was just another campaign, and it worked so well they ran with it?
Aifric Lennon (20:33):
Maybe.
Richard Campbell (20:35):
Yeah.
Aifric Lennon (20:36):
Maybe, yeah. It might've been. Or it could have been some really clever strategist or planner.
Richard Campbell (20:42):
Sometimes you want to think it's 4D chess, but I also think recognize you've got a winner on your hands and taking it as far as you can is effective too. I notice that often these sorts of brand sounds and things, they come at the end rather than at the beginning. Is that a deliberate strategy or have we tested all those different flavors?
Aifric Lennon (21:01):
Yeah, it's a very good question. And I think in the past where we were in a world where TV and long form advertising was king, signing off a piece of advertising with the sonic logo became the norm. And I suppose that whole structure was designed to really fit with TV advertising, radio advertising being the kind of main channels. And I think where we are now in the land of TikTok and social really rapidly becoming the focus of a lot of brands in terms of their media plans, I actually think that things are shifting a little bit in terms of where should we be placing our branded sound and our branded moments. Because often, especially when you think about platforms like TikTok, it's not that often that somebody will actually watch the entire or listen to the entire ad in full without skimming.
Richard Campbell (21:58):
Swiping, going off somewhere else. Yeah.
Aifric Lennon (22:00):
Swiping, yeah, swiping forward. So actually I think things are shifting, and we're certainly with some recent clients exploring openers. So sonic openers that are maybe slightly shorter than the full sonic that can really kind of trigger the beginning of an ad and hook people in from the start, knowing that they may not actually last until the end of the advert.
Richard Campbell (22:28):
You know what I think about is the movie theater, the way they do the Dolby sound before the show begins.
Aifric Lennon (22:34):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (22:34):
Kind of setting you up for, "You're about to have an experience".
Aifric Lennon (22:38):
Totally
Richard Campbell (22:39):
Now compress that into 30 seconds of TikTok. You've got a second or two to have someone go, "Oh, this is going to be great because of that opening sound". That's fascinating.
Aifric Lennon (22:49):
Yep. And I mean think about even the likes of Netflix, one of the more famous sonic logos of the modern day, the "tudum", that's also an opener. So things are definitely changing. We're also seeing and deploying some really interesting sonic frameworks and sonic toolkits for brands where it's even more agile than that in the sense that we're trying to come up with toolkits where brands can actually imbue branded sound even in the middle of an ad. So what happens with product sound, right? Those brands who are looking to develop a sonic identity that spans beyond just marketing and into digital apps, even physical products, and how do they show up in advertising? So some of the brands we've been spearheading this product sound to marketing approach include Apple, Skype. I saw a great example about a year ago where Apple closed off the end of their new iPhone ad with the charging sound. So that was the... And I think it was to reinforce the fact that this new iPhone had way better battery power than the previous iPhones. But playing around with sounds that exist in your own brand ecosystem, and looping things like product sounds into marketing can be a really interesting approach as well to imbue that extra sense of your brand within an advert.
Richard Campbell (24:23):
Yeah. Well as soon as I hear product sound, I think about the sound that a product makes anyway and making that more intentional.
Aifric Lennon (24:30):
Mm-hmm.
Richard Campbell (24:30):
In a past show, we talked about how they deliberately put packaging together so that when you open and close a package, it felt good. It became a signature of the product that the package itself was quality. And so the idea that you would tailor the sound of the product to elicit a positive emotion.
Aifric Lennon (24:51):
Totally.
Richard Campbell (24:54):
Yeah.
Aifric Lennon (24:55):
Yeah. Sound of packaging is a whole other space that we're not experts in, but I am fascinated by. And again, Apple do quite a lot of work in that space don't they? Around even the unpacking, the experience.
Richard Campbell (25:06):
Of the whole ubi. Yeah, how I open a box. The fact that there are popular YouTube videos of opening a box just gives you a sign of how it plugs into some minds. How it affects things, that all of these things play in.
(25:21):
I've certainly dealt with in working with advertising firms, they build a mood board. "This is how we talk about your brand. This is the colors that we use and the logos that we use and so forth". I presume you do the same thing in sound, it's just trickier to put it in place that says, "This is how it should sound. This is how you open, or how you close, or the interstitial". Like where that would fit in just to make sure folks use it correctly.
Aifric Lennon (25:47):
Yeah. It's a really fun process. So that does involve mood boarding, but in our case it's audio mood boarding.
Richard Campbell (25:56):
Right.
Aifric Lennon (25:56):
And yeah, the first phase is very much grounded in research and really understanding the brand, the competitive landscape, the touch points where the sound or sounds might be heard, and really kind of building a picture of how and where the brand in question should be deploying sound and what should they sound like. And after that phase, we will pull all of those insights into early thinking around creative strategy, and then we'll host what is usually the most fun session of a whole sonic branding project, which is the audio mood board workshop. And we'll have a number of different sonic territories that are usually born from the brand's personality, so the brand's values or a combination of values, tone of voice, personality traits, and we'll start to build up different sonic territories. And within those sonic territories start to trigger different pieces of existing audio. So that could be long form music, short form sounds, and we'll host a very collaborative session where we'll listen to these sounds as objectively as possible and discuss and rate as a group with the brand and usually the agency whether that sound and question or a piece of music and question feels like a good fit for the brand or not.
(27:21):
And it's really interesting, even though we're listening to a whole load of different pieces of audio, often by the end of that session, at least if we've done a good job, there's a pretty solid consensus between stakeholders on the kind of references that feel in the right space. And yeah, when it comes to... Obviously then we would go into our creation phase, our development, working with our composers and talent. And testing, of course, understanding how the sounds are impacting consumers. Are they doing the job that they should be doing? But yeah, in terms of deployment we always provide guidelines to really help. It's one thing understanding how do I deploy my own assets like a sonic logo or a piece of brand music. But when you think beyond owned assets into the world of music selection and licensing.
Richard Campbell (28:17):
License. Yeah.
Aifric Lennon (28:18):
How do you maintain the essence of your brand sound when you're borrowing, when you're using borrowed memory structures, when you're licensing hit music?, and how do you keep that strategic as well? So often we'll provide guidelines and reference points on that kind of stuff as well.
Richard Campbell (28:34):
Yeah. Well, and timeliness with all of that, especially playing in popular music, it's almost like you only have so much time to study it before you have to act or it becomes irrelevant.
Aifric Lennon (28:44):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (28:45):
So there's some real pressure there as well, and an interesting challenge all around. I feel like all so often this is an afterthought, that the audio comes later. That often we've built a bunch of assets and it's, "Oh, we should also have audio". I just wonder how we change that, or if we need to?
Aifric Lennon (29:04):
Yeah, I mean it's definitely one of the things that keeps me up at night, gets me up in the morning. Yeah, I think music all too often is an afterthought. You're in an edit room obsessing over the color of an actor's jumper or the art direction, and meanwhile you haven't put a second thought to what your track's going to be for your ad. And I do think a big reason for that pertains back to what I was mentioning earlier around music often being very subjective, very tied to-
Richard Campbell (29:39):
Very personal.
Aifric Lennon (29:40):
Very personal, very to identity. Our music tastes crystallize in the teens, like 14, 15 years old.
Richard Campbell (29:47):
Yeah. And follow us for the rest of our lives.
Aifric Lennon (29:50):
Yeah. So I think music has always been a very personal, subjective thing, and that unfortunately makes its way into marketing decision-making rooms when it shouldn't, because really it should be a strategic asset just like everything else. I think another problem that we've encountered is just that maybe that lack of substantial evidence to support music's role in driving sales specifically, and driving that bottom line. So I do think some of the research that we are doing currently with independent partners to actually validate music's role in business effects will help to hopefully shift the narrative and start forcing people to consider music earlier in the process. Yeah, I think the more evidence that we build up in terms of music's power to drive success for brands, the more we'll start to see it come earlier in the process, I hope.
Richard Campbell (30:51):
For sure. I wonder also, I've seen this in the graphic design side. We've had these conversations where testing has been done with the appropriate demographic, the group they want to approach for their product to build a set of guidelines before pen was put to paper to say, "These are the colors and these are the styles that appeal to this audience". And you sort of put a box around the designer to now work within that constraint, what do you find? They often get very creative results. I wonder if we could get that place with sounds where we already know for the audience we want to approach, "These are the sounds that work, now let's craft something", and build it that way.
Aifric Lennon (31:32):
Hmm, that's interesting. Yeah.
Richard Campbell (31:34):
This test, then develop, then test as opposed to, which I think is the more common practice, certainly in the advertising space, which is creatives create and then you test it.
Aifric Lennon (31:45):
Yes.
Richard Campbell (31:46):
And hopefully they went down the right path. And it sounds like a lot of sound is developed that way, and the testing comes second. As opposed to, "Can we do early testing that sets parameters before we create?"
Aifric Lennon (31:57):
Hmm, I really like that. I really like that. And it plays into actually some work we're doing at the moment around building, helping brands who maybe either already have developed their own sonic identity assets or for whatever reason that's not a priority for them. Building music curation guidelines or music strategy guidelines for brands, which is similar to what you're describing, where we'll do some research and come up with some guardrails around the genres, aesthetics, instrumentations that the brands should be considering, types of artists that brands should be considering that will help them be distinctive in their category and drive success.
Richard Campbell (32:49):
And you do have a whole music industry beside you there, right?
Aifric Lennon (32:52):
Yeah, yeah.
Richard Campbell (32:53):
The music industry is already saying," Hey, here are songs that are being successful in these demographics", which can kind of give you a starting point right off the bat.
Aifric Lennon (33:00):
Totally.
Richard Campbell (33:01):
You've got another force working in your favor.
Aifric Lennon (33:03):
Totally, totally. And I think historically, again, all music decisions historically have mainly been based on gut. And actually, if we can bring data into the conversation earlier, as you're mentioning, to kind of provide those early guardrails for creatives to then go off and work, I think it could be a really, really positive thing. And we are starting to do a little bit of that and are seeing some great results.
Richard Campbell (33:29):
Well, and my experience, what I've seen so far is when given a bit of a box to live in, they're almost more creative because constraints also empower, let's try stuff. As opposed to the blank sheet where you can do anything and you're almost too many choices. I kind of want to constrain the choices to press against those things. So I think the more I could gather, the more things folks would be excited to create on that.
Aifric Lennon (33:53):
Absolutely. I always love creative constraints, and we always talk about creative constraints at MassiveMusic as a positive thing. And I think especially in today's world where there are just endless amounts of potential tracks, artists that you could be thinking. The democratization of music production and where we are.
Richard Campbell (34:12):
For sure. The long, long tail we have today.
Aifric Lennon (34:14):
Yeah. So I think the more that we can provide some creative constraints that allow, hopefully, even more creativity in the long run I think is a really positive thing. Absolutely.
Richard Campbell (34:24):
Yeah, very exciting. Aifric, it's so much fun to talk to you. This is really bringing to me this idea that sound has a lot more power than we normally think about. In some ways, all best implicit, because it's implicit, it's just something you like. So we don't think about it as a product so much because it is so inherent to us.
Aifric Lennon (34:43):
Totally.
Richard Campbell (34:43):
That way maybe if we take it on a little more and make it more part of the practice we'll get a lot more power from it.
Aifric Lennon (34:48):
Hear hear.
Richard Campbell (34:48):
Thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate your insights.
Aifric Lennon (34:51):
Thanks so much, Richard. Great to be here.
Richard Campbell (34:53):
And we'll talk to you next time on Understanding Consumer Neuroscience.