MANILA, OCTOBER 26, 2012 – Not everything you hear is an accident. Or, it shouldn’t be.
Tony Hertz, creative radio advertising specialist and owner and creative director of Hertz:Radio, talked about the importance of a brand voice/sound at the Philippine Association of National Advertisers (PANA) general membership meeting yesterday, October 25 at the Hard Rock Café, Glorietta 4.
Hertz urged advertisers to “think about the brand and its sound” because there are very good reasons to treat sound with great care just as graphic artists and copywriters take great pains in creating a visual ad. “The decision process in brand adoption is 75% emotional,” Hertz said. And hearing plays a big part in a person’s emotional development.
Sound branding
“Sound branding reinforces and affects emotions or behaviour,” Hertz said. “It gives customers a satisfying experience.” To drive this point home, Hertz played a various and seemingly mundane sounds, from a closing car door to the Nokia tune.
One important aspect of sound branding is to find the feeling. "It adds to the sense of satisfaction," Hertz said.
Begin with a picture
One fatal mistake advertising creative do in radio is that they take the copy from print and use it for radio. Hertz pointed out that print ads are visual and radio is not. Therefore, copy for radio must “begin with a picture”.
And as the radio ad paints a picture for the listener, another thing to keep in mind is to think about the person, which is something that the current crop of radio advertisements does not address. Hertz enumerated the several mistakes in this area which include: talking down to consumers, shouting at them in short bursts and expecting them to take in more information and details.
“This creates a gap – a disconnect – between radio and consumers,” Hertz said.
Retail soundscape
Another thing that Hertz has noticed in the Philippines is the fatal mistake retail stores are doing with the kind of music played in stores. “Customers ears have been almost completely ignored…the result: overwhelming majority of customer spaces have inappropriate sound, a soundscape disaster,” he said.
The brand sound doesn’t begin and end with ads, it must continue on to the retail stores, where customers make that decision to buy your product.
For more information about creative radio advertising, visit Hertz Radio’s Facebook page: www.facebook.com/hertzradio or the PANA website: www.pana.com.ph.
