What Are We Hearing Now? May 2018

This year we have collected the best audio branding and audio marketing articles each month. 2018 is the year of audio branding, which can be seen in the sheer amount of articles about the topic. We found great articles on why audio branding is important now, what are the benefits and how to get started.

Pandora for brands said that: “there has never been a better time to be a marketer who invests in audio.” We could not agree more.

Wired for sound: Why brands need to shift the emphasis to audio experience

In her current role as owner of the branding consultancy Ultimate Business Propeller, Clemett says all too often marketers overlook the importance of creating distinctive audio experiences for customers, opting instead for stock music and sounds.

“It is just almost too easy,” she says. “They just become vanilla, so there is a real risk of going with the cheapest and easiest way out.

Storytelling in a universal language: how brands can leverage music to reach audiences

Many brands are adapting by finding ways to tell their stories with no sound, but I believe this approach will prove less effective as it underestimates the influencing power of music.

A study from Nielsen a few years ago looked at the effectiveness of more than 600 ads, and the research showed that those with music performed much better across four key areas—creativity, empathy, emotive power, and information power.

The music playing while you order could affect what you eat

University of South Florida’s Muma College of Business, and his colleagues conducted an experiment at a café in Stockholm, Sweden, in which they played various genres of music on a loop at two different volumes—55 and 70 decibels—over the course of several days. Food items on the menu were categorized as healthy, non-healthy or neutral

The findings showed that while the louder music was playing, 52% of customers ordered something unhealthy compared to 42% when the quieter music was playing.  Similarly, the proportion of customers who bought healthy items was higher during quieter times.

Voice search and the future of retail advertising

The two most obvious distinctions between traditional search and voice search are the way consumers phrase questions and the way answers are presented. Traditionally, typed searches involved short keywords and simple phrases with many text results listed. In contrast, voice search is generally made up of longer action-oriented phrases, including complete sentences phrased as questions, generally producing a single answer.

Search engine optimization was built for traditional searches, combing websites for keywords and ranking by relevance. Voice search has spawned a new field called “answer engine optimization.” While SEO and AEO do overlap, smart marketers will need to consider semantic nuances and the more conversational tone voice search yields as they configure their behind-the-scenes coding.

8 Steps to Build a Voice Skill That Aligns With Your Brand’s Vision

Creating a voice app can be pretty rad—and challenging—experience for a producer, because you’ll likely encounter problems you can’t turn to Google to answer. Don’t count on everything going smoothly— it won’t and it’s going to be rejected a bunch of times before it’s ready for the big show.

If you’re a producer, designing a conversational experience for voice may lead you into uncharted territory. While we can’t fully protect you from a few sleepless nights of quality assurance testing, these eight pointers may help you get to where you need to go with this new and burgeoning marketing tool.