Who hasn’t found themselves victim to a vicious earworm jingle once or twice in their lives? As a human being, I hate them! They’re irritating and get caught in my head on repeat after hearing them once or twice. As a marketer, I love them. They work for every reason that people dislike them. For example, as a native Coloradan, I’ll always know how to find the Tree Farm (if you know, you know). Recently, our team was discussing the “O-O-O-Ozempic” jingle. It's a prime example of how these jingles work. If a person is seeing their doctor for a weight loss prescription, which medication do you think they’ll ask for? A generic semaglutide they don’t know the name of? Or “that one brand, it sounds like this: “insert jingle here”?
In our current economy, attention is the most valuable currency. With consumers being exposed to thousands of advertisements a day, most are going in one ear, and out the other. It’s typically the annoyingly catchy jingle that sticks. Hear it once or twice and it’s permanently embedded in your brain. Music is an incredibly powerful tool to be using in an age where no one is paying attention to ads anymore. A familiar tune cuts through the noise of the 4,999 other advertisements a consumer is exposed to and ignoring daily. It sticks out like a sore thumb in the best way.
I’m a newbie in this world of experiential marketing so this discussion made me wonder how music can affect what we do, as it's typically outside the realm of television or social media campaigns. I've concluded that music is an especially valuable aspect of what we do as experiential marketers. The sonic experience consumers are having is just as important as what they see, touch and smell. Whether this looks like the presence of a DJ booth, a specifically curated playlist or live music, it’s so important to remain conscious of how music can benefit the consumer experience.