It takes nothing more than a catchy melody to make our day, help us finish a workout or bring people together. So how does the sound of a melody help us so much?

Everyone around the world listens to music, and it provides some form of personal listening for us all. Music has been reported to act as a stimulant, and a depressant for the brain, it can relate to us on levels we wouldn’t think possible. Songs can relate to us so well that we turn to them when we need to get into an emotion/mindset.

Research carried out by Valorie Salimpoor, at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, involved 19 participants being handed music excerpts. Using a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Machine (fMRI), they were asked to state how much they’d pay for each track. The underlying trend stated that the more activity there was in the nucleus accumbens, the more money the participants said they would pay for the music.

Although there may be an element of bias based upon the tracks chosen, there is one fact that we can gather from music over the last 100 years. Any single piece of music can and will result in two totally different emotional responses. One person could say it’s the best song ever, another person could say it’s white noise or messy.

An example close to home is the office I work in , which consists of tastes ranging from modern house music, to alternative rock, to classic chart toppers, to explicit rap or hip-hop.

In business/marketing, music is a fantastic tool for influencing customers purchasing decisions, as the sound can connect to consumers on a personal level and can act as a signal to want to buy their products/services. Music that speaks the right words and directs key signals can help us retain price signals, key dates etc.

A few examples of songs that are easily recognizable in Ads are those that John Lewis use yearly, they play a key part in driving sales, the same applies to games like Fallout 4, driving games and car retailers, the track provides a mood that increases consumer attention span.

To read more about music in advertising and the media, click here

Written By Harrison Jones

References: https://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/15/health/brain-music-research/index.html https://www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/music-advertising-marketing.aspx