When it comes to ad creation, many details ask for your attention, such as well-executed visuals, catchy narration, or a memorable packshot. Either you are adapting or filming a new spot, you have to face audio effects. Freedom or challenge? After learning some techniques, you can get the best out of your spot with the help of your audio.
Audio effects - who are they?
In an advertisement, one can find different types of audio effects: jingles, music, little sounds, narration, emotional sounds like showing satisfaction or disgust, and many more. While sometimes these sound easy, adding these elements can have a strong effect on your advertisement. Even a little strange sound can lead to resentment, and a little jingle can strengthen a whole branding strategy. And when you have the freedom of changing and developing your audio, why wouldn’t you do that?
Affect of audio effect
According to our neuromarketing research results, audio effects can have a strong effect both on engagement and emotional resonation.
While it is obvious that each sound elicits different emotions, positive or negative, how does it influence the level of engagement? Is a great narration something that strengthens curiosity? Let’s see how the engagement curve changes due to the influence of audio effects.
What is engagement?
Our Engagement metric shows people’s level of involvement in the story they are seeing, or, in some cases, the amount of cognitive effort it takes to understand it. Although it is possible to measure narrative engagement with different methodologies, heart rate variability is the most commonly used biometric indicator. To learn more, check out this article.
1.The power of music
According to our results, music can have a powerful effect on engagement. While a well-known song creates the feeling of familiarity, so it can result in growing interest, dynamic music makes the story harder to understand for the older viewers. Younger ones attend more to new and speedy songs, while slow music can lead to loss of attention. It is not a question that music has a strong effect on the level of engagement. However, pay attention that while an ad can be successful simply with music, with or without using voiceover, it can block the understanding of the narration if it is too loud in the background.
If you want to learn more about how music affects emotions, check out this article.
2. Jingle bell
Try to recall at least one jingle now! Easy, right? Using a jingle can support brand building, it helps in background TV watching, and makes your advertising platforms coherent. What is even better, it can strengthen engagement too - when a familiar jingle pops up, viewers show increasing interest. Using those jingles in radio, online videos, TV spots will make your audience sing it while doing the dishes. A nice and strongly used jingle becomes familiar. And what happens when something is familiar? Viewers engage. Perfect recipe, isn’t it?
3. Narration - old or new?
Luckily, even when it comes to adaption, you have the freedom of choosing your narrator (well, in most cases). But how to choose the best option for your storyline? The question is legit: what is better, a well-known voice or a random, new one? While familiar narrators can give us that “I know this voice” feeling and they can grab interest, it locks the opportunity to be unique. How to differentiate as a viewer when you hear the same narrator 9-10 times in an ad block?
Well, it’s quite a challenge to choose whether new or old is better. What really matters is the content of the narration and the way of speaking: giving the feeling that the narrator is talking to the audience grabs attention. Also, rising up the voice during a sentence, or whispering a secret are also attention-grabbing little tricks. Don’t be afraid to play with the voice of your narration! The more natural and interesting those voice levels are, the higher chance you have to be engaging.
4. Harsh sounds
It’s not surprising, but harsh sounds can lead to frustration. But what about the level of engagement? Well, when a scene is frustrating, one thing is for sure: it is not boring. While it can lead to a higher level of attention, it is not guaranteed. When there is a harsh background sound together with narration or a hard-to-understand storyline, it can even block understanding and lead to a cognitively loading advertisement.
Still, harsh sounds can support understanding when they are part of the storyline, thus they just simply help to understand a dark visual or a busy scene for example.
5. Silence
Is silence an audio effect? Good question. In the case of advertisements, silence works amazingly. While there is an extremely strong ad noise, how to be outstanding? Just be silent. We don’t mean to stop advertising, but using silent moments in your ads would grab attention for sure. Just imagine, staying at home, watching TV, or simply just listening to it in the background, and in one second there is total silence - what would you do? Of course, you look at the screen if it died or the apocalypse has arrived. And this is exactly what you want, right? Grabbing your viewers’ attention. Making them curious. Then continue with your brand and we promise, they will never forget that moment in their lives when they got so close to the end of the world. Of course, totally silent ads might not be the best idea, but combining silence with music can bring you great results.
written by Petra Várhelyi
Want to learn more about neuromarketing? Do not hesitate to contact us!
