The Power of Music

Does music make advertising more effective? There are a few things we know for sure, like how music tends to make things more emotive. And when things are more emotive they affect us more deeply.

A way to measure this is with the Harvard Implicit Attitude Test that tracks the speed at which consumers answer questions about a brand; the deeper the connection, the faster the response time. In a recent study involving VW marketing, ads with music increased response time to brand-affinity questions by 11 percent over the same ads with no music signaling that a deeper connection was achieved by incorporating music.

And IPA dataBANK recently compared ads with and without music and found that the ads with music enhanced their effectiveness by 20 – 30 percent on achieving the desired business results tied to the ad.

Which is also why so many brands, from State Farm to Taco Bell, are going beyond ads and making music part of their marketing DNA.