The Sounds We Can't Resist
If you're like most people,
you're way too smart for advertising.
You flip right past newspaper ads,
never click on ads online
and leave the room during TV commercials.
That, at least, is what we tell ourselves.
But what we tell ourselves is nonsense.
Advertising works, which is why,
even in hard economic times,
Madison Avenue is a $34 billion-a-year business.
And if Martin Lindstrom-
author of the best seller Buyology-is correct,
trying to tune this stuff out is about to get a whole lot harder.
Lindstrom is a practitioner of neuromarketing research,
in which consumers are exposed to ads
while hooked up to machines that monitor brain activity,
sweat responses and flickers in facial muscles,
all of which are markers of emotion.
According to his studies, 83% of all forms of advertising
principally engage only one of our senses: sight.
Hearing, however, can be just as powerful,
though advertisers have taken only limited advantage of it.
Historically, ads have relied on jingles and slogans
to catch our ear, largely ignoring everyday sounds-
a steak sizzling, a baby laughing
and other noises our bodies can't help paying attention to.
Weave this stuff into an ad campaign,
and we may be powerless to resist it.
To figure out what most appeals to our ear,
Lindstrom wired up his volunteers,
then played them recordings of dozens of familiar sounds,
from McDonald's "I'm Lovin' It" jingle to cigarettes being lit.
The sound that blew the doors off all the rest-
both in terms of interest and positive feelings-
was a baby giggling.
The other high-ranking sounds
were less primal but still powerful.
The hum of a vibrating cell phone
was Lindstrom's second-place finisher.
Others that followed were an ATM dispensing cash,
a steak sizzling on a grill and a soda being popped and poured.
In all of these cases,
it didn't take a Mad Man to invent the sounds,
infuse them with meaning and then play them over and over
until the subjects internalized them.
Rather, the sounds already had meaning
and thus triggered a cascade of reactions:
hunger, thirst, happy anticipation.